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. |