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Nipper


Wry Foot &
Crack Due To Coronet Injury


March 14, 2006 - Shoes removed

March 24, 2006 - Dropped Quarter Flare

May 12, 2006
August 25, 2006 - Rear Feet Still Thrushy & Wry
October 15, 2006 - Relaxing Heels!

Nippers flared side quarters dropped so radically in her first 2 weeks out of shoes that she didn't wear them down! She had a stall bedded in shavings and it was still muddy in her paddock, and the pictures below capture how the wall actually relaxed down relative to the toe, which was actually passive on a flat surface.

BEFORE - March 14

 

AFTER 10 Days - March 24

Another improvement noticeable in the feet above is how the heels on the AFTER side are relaxed and decontracted relative to the heels on the BEFORE. Many of us feel that the rear foot, including the digital cushion, will begin to regenerate quickly if a barefoot horse is able to move comfortably, and the After picture on the right shows a plumper area above the heel bulbs. I'm told that we'd need to have excellent Ultrasound or a CAT scan to measure this growth accurately.


Nippers front feet looked great ten days after removing her shoes. Her front heels and wall flare had relaxed so nicely..... her feet actually looked comfortable.

When I take horses out of shoes I encourage clients to keep the horses moving COMFORTABLY and usually require that the horses be booted for exercise until they are very sound barefoot.

Nipper's owner was booting her as I asked, and was being conscientious in other ways as well. Nipper had symptoms that indicated that she was out chiropractically, so Jill had the best Chiropractor / Acupuncturist team in the area come by for treatments, and followed that up with massage. I could tell that they were helping a lot, but Nipper was still very testy about her back feet.

Something was still wrong, and neither Jill or I felt it was the crack.

Nippers Wry Foot Conformation hadn't been shed with the shoes as we had hoped, and so far the effects of the chiropractic adjustments weren't changing how she used her feet. I continued to look for answers in her feet even though I was hoping it would be part of the Chiropractic puzzle that Dr Ganelle Dippe LDC, had on her plate.

The jagged edge of the cracked foot continued to bother me as well. I was worried that the descending wall would snag on something, so I rasped the edges down then used a hoof epoxy to try patching it.

It was worth a try, but unshod feet that are transforming rapidly are so mobile that all of these epoxies end up cracking and falling off in hours or days.




Linda Cowles Hoof Care
Serving the greater SF Bay Area & Northern California
Copyright 2008 Linda Cowles
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