Playing ball, Lily gets it and a weird hoof thing

Mireya took this photo with a cell phone.
She's darn good at it for 7, don't you think?
Please ignore the goofy hair.
It's 700% humidity right now.

It was a fun, easy day at the barn. Since I had the kids with me, I didn't ride, but instead worked on round pen and clicker stuff. I wanted to get Lily out so we could get her back in the groove. She's been sitting so long that she needs the round pen time to get her head back.

Lily is a great horse and you can get on her even after a long break. But since it's my daughter I want her to take the time to work with her in the round pen.

Boy, were there some bucks! Lily can be intimidating when she's fresh like that, but Sierra didn't worry at all. She knows Lily is just all show. But getting her dialed back to a walk from a trot was just not happening. I went in there and pushed her a little harder, realizing that the usual technique of getting slightly ahead of her wasn't working at all.

So we did many, many turns. Then, seemingly out of no where Lily said "Oooooh! A WALK. Well, why didn't you say so?"

And then she did it all on both sides. Walk, trot, walk, trot, canter, trot, walk.

So we then spent some time doing some clicker training. We had Lily targeting a green lid belonging to one of our barn tupperwares. We hadn't really been working with Lily on the clicker and she was still targeting hands, not objects. By the end she was all over that lid.



Then it was Cibolo's turn. I tell you what, he's darn smart. He came into that pen and immediately did two loops at precisely the gait I asked in both directions. No need to work there. So no more circles - we went right into clicker training.

His eyes light up when we play like this. I've got him touching a big white plastic bag at the end of a lunge whip lately. In fact he likes to blow on it to make it wave.

So I felt he was ready to move on to something not directly connected to my hand. We started playing with a big blue ball. He quickly got the idea to touch it. By the end of our session he rolled it ever so slightly.

It was such fun. I always feel like I get to leap frog our connection when we do this kind of training. Cibolo just lights up. Can you tell from our photo?


Long, cool baths for both of horses and that's when I saw this on his left hind hoof - like a hole, very shallow, right near his cornet band.

What is it? Any ideas?

I'm so tired. I want to write more, but I've been fighting insomnia and the lack of sleep has caught up with me.

Stupid menopause. But that's another post.

Oh, and happy helmet day everybody. Remember, they call it an accident because you don't know when its going to happen. If you make your kid wear a helmet, don't be a hypocrite. Join us, the helmet hair army.

Because they can't put a cast on your brain.

Solo ride, a bad hoof, and a pregnant mare...

Cibolo, with his "you can't catch me" face.

Today I finally got a chance to ride alone. I don't seek a chance to ride alone, I really prefer going with others, but I feel strongly the need to get out and make sure my horse will ride alone.

After ANOTHER game of chase the horsey (SIGH), we saddled up headed out from the barn.

Cibolo is very, very slow right now, which I attribute to his new barefootness - I know he's tender and he's reluctant to hit the road. He gravitates to the edges, which I accomodate as much as I safely can. But his hoof wall is still a mess and he's not too thrilled to head out. I'd say he was barn sour, but he's even slow on the way back.

I was pretty thrilled that he crossed threshold after threshold without balking. We haven't been out alone in over a month and he kept going without a hitch. We were taking a new route to a pond area, and he crossed barking dogs, junked boats, weird rusted metals and only really had an issue getting close to one building.

We came back up the hill and he called out to the horses in a different stable. I didn't worry about it this time. Last time I felt like it was a sign he wasn't listening, but the ride and his responses were perfect. So I figured he was being social.

What do you think?

Back at the barn I met our farrier and she looked over their hooves. The hoof walls are still really bad and she suggested boa boots. I'm switching from saddle shopping to boot shopping now. Any recommendations?



I was most worried about Lily. Here's some pictures of her left hind.



The farrier trimmed it, then put some sort of plastic adhesive. It looked like rubber cement. It's there to protect the hoof while the wall grows out. I'll get pictures of that later.


Now, an introduction. Say Hi to Heather.

Heather was headed to auction when the BO came and got her. She's a OTTB who had no desire to race. She's bred with a champion Aldalusian.

The baby will be an Azteca.




She's due on April 21. So exciting!!!

Hope you had a horse filled Saturday...

Hooves and hoofing it

Cibolo and I discussed his ongoing hoof needs. He wanted to know when he was getting new shoes. I told him that we were trying to strengthen his hooves, and then we'd see. He was not so thrilled. But he agreed to cooperate with the photo session. I'm posting these to create a record and track progress and, hopefully, the healing of the hooves as we try to transition to barefoot.



So, after a brief rinse off, we started. First the bare feet.

Using other photos I've seen, here's a few angles. Right rear. Um. Hind.

Left Hind. (See? I can learn)

Side view. Left...


and right.



Now to the front.




You can see here how high the nails went.



And the plastic gooey stuff to try to hold the structure together.



After our photo session, we went for a walk. It was cold and blustery, and all I was up for was some hand walking. This time it was just me and Cibolo.

We had a nice walk together. He leads so well, it's like having a large, really well trained dog. Then a few minutes of bareback - I was practicing having him stand next to an object and letting me get on. Walk two or three steps, then off. He's improving - he was avoiding mounting blocks and such and we're almost through that.

I still need a really, really high rock to actually be able to get on him without a stirrup. And he's not even that tall. 15.2? I think...

Makes a girl feel old.

Today, it's beautiful. Hopefully we'll ride.

Hooves and a blast of cold

We had a big blast of air come in as it likes to do on the weekends when it would be nice to ride.

Not that I'm bitter. Sigh.

The blast of air came in in the wake of an early morning, beautiful, ferocious thunderstorm. One lightening strike cracked through the sky so close that the lights went out, woke up our oldest (the youngest can sleep through anything), and now all our clocks are flashing.

Today is my day to feed, but I got a call from the BO saying that it was so miserable she'd take care of it, since she needed to check on all the horses anyway.

I did brush Lily and Cibolo and walked them around the rocky area to see how their hooves were feeling.

Cibolo was a bit more ouchy than Lily.

I also took a few pictures of hooves, but I need hoof picture taking lessons, apparently.

This is Lily's Left Front with the plasticy goo that the farrier put on.




Here's the more troublesome Left Rear on Lily. See that terrible crack? You can't tell from this angle but it actually bulges out - it looks like there was an abcess that came out of her HOOF!



Do you think that might have been causing her to be heavy on the front end for the last month or so?




Every other picture I took was really bad. So I'm going to try to wash all the hooves off, get an assistant, and try again.

Here's my question for the day. What is the process for toughening up feet? Just hand walking on rocky terrain? I really don't want to ride with their feet being tender.

Advice is welcome...

Hope you rode today...

Hoof walls, clips and cheating

Cibolo, modeling his bad hoof wall:


I mentioned in my previous posts that our horses had to have their rear shoes taken off and left off. I didn't quite say why.

The photo above may give you an idea. Both their hoof walls are crumbling. I don't like that my horse was in shoes with clips, and now I like it even less. Yes, after 7 weeks he'd lose his shoe, and I gather that's why you put clips on, but the place where the clip was has crushed the wall of his hoof! (Lily, on the other hand, is just plain old cracking.)

This crushing of the hoof wall seems bad to me, but maybe it's to be expected. Still, I wish I'd known about the risk of this happening... I'd rather have to reset a shoe than have this!

I have switched farriers temporarily (I got tired of hauling and the price for the farrier to come to our place is just unaffordable right now). I feel guilty switching farriers. I'm a loyalist, but at over $100 per horse, and an hour drive each way, my budget needed a break. Getting a new farrier is a nerve wracking process. Remember the last time? Yesh. It was awful. I ended up in the middle of chiro vs farrier vs vet. I came out of that more confused than ever.


I'm thinking of moving them to barefoot and getting them some boa boots for days we are on rocky terrain.

Also I'll be getting them back on platinum plus that I had stopped buying (because I can only get it at the vet and I'm just never in that part of town).


Fortunately the new farrier has done great work in correcting the overstriding of the BO's arab, so I figured she was worth a try. She takes her time (seems to me the good ones always take 90 minutes to shoe a horse), and is all about the horse's welfare. She's not so determined to get shoes on a horse that she'll do anything. I like that a lot. (She was also concerned how close the nails were to the cuticle area (I believe she used that term so I'd understand what she was saying - despite reading all these shoeing blogs, I still can't seem to "get" it) and wanted to give both horses a month to grow out some healthy hoof.)

So, at risk of starting a horse shoe fight... Any advice, farriers? barefooters? Bueller?

Natural Balance Horseshoes = are they Nike Airs?

If there's one thing I really believe in when it comes to horse health, it's spending money on the hooves. Like the commercial says, you've got a lot riding on your tires - I figure with a horse, it's all riding on those tough toes. So I've always shelled out a little extra for a good farrier.

Recently I changed farriers, mostly because the one I was using lived pretty far out and with gas prices I needed to get on with a farrier on this side of town. Through a crazy set of calls and connections, I found Donnie Walker.

Donnie has been shoeing horses since he was in high school, and kept it up through several careers. Now he specializes in lame horses and uses something called natural balance shoeing.

Apparently there's a great deal of debate about whether natural balance is better than other forms of shoeing. I'm too much of a newbie to speak to it other than what I've experienced now that Canyon is in these new shoes.

One thing I noticed immediately. Instead of landing on the "toe" part of his hoof, Canyon is now landing flat. Try this: watch your horse at a brisk walk. Follow a hoof. What hits first? Ideally they should land on their heel, or at least flat. Otherwise it's a similar feeling to you landing toe first, your toes slamming into the toe box of your shoe over and over. As a result of this improved landing, he is riding much smoother.

But one thing that is probably helping that is he's now wearing a special wedge shoe for a dropped heel.


Donnie pointed out that Canyon had one shoulder more developed than the other, something someone had mentioned before when I was fitting him for a saddle. The he showed me his alignment. I could see the difference most clearly in his knee, one was nearly 3/4 of an inch lower than the other. Dropped heels are pretty common in horses, and can be a precursor to more serious problems. Or not. Just depends. But given some sensitivity Canyon was showing (see #2 below) I suspect it was beginning to be a problem. So now he's in one platform shoe.

Here's what I've noticed since Canyon's been in his Nike Airs:

1. No more stumbling. Canyon was just stumbling for no reason, and it was getting worse. Now he doesn't. He went from awkward to stable (pun intended).

2. He doesn't fret when I pick up his right rear hoof. He was starting to resist after being really good at picking up all four. Donnie said alway think of your horse's hooves on a diagonal. If you are having trouble with the right rear, check the left front. Sure enough, that happens to be the one on Canyon with the dropped heel. I had never found a rock in it, or anything else to explain why it was bothering him, but now I wonder if it was starting to get sore.

3. It's much easier to pick out his hooves, but I think that's probably more about the quality of the trim.

4. No clicking. If your horse clicks or overextends, it's the shoeing. At least that's what I've been told.


Natural shoeing is not much more expensive than regular shoeing. In my opinion it's a lot cheaper than a lame or hurting horse.

Of course if you aren't riding on limestone all day, I'm told barefoot is best. Still some horses seem tender footed even when they've made the transition to being barefoot. We're pretty rocky in our area, so that may be why.

Special thanks to my hoof photographer, Mireya Brisa, pictured here with the ever flexible and tolerate barn cat, Chester.

BTW, here's a cool illustration of what your horse's hooves should look like properly trimmed.