Victor August 9, 2009 Trim

August 7, 2009, new X-rays of Victors left front foot. It's the worst of the 2,
so only got pictures of the one foot for now.

Now that I can see where the coffin bone is in the foot, I knew I could get a
lot more aggressive with my trimming today. I first soaked his feet for about
an hour, standing him in the grass soaked down with water (Thanks Pat W.for
that idea...) Then when they were a little less solid that when I started, went to
work. First working with my knife to try to pry out some of the shedding sole at the
heels and quarters, then working on trying to find the collateral grooves. There was
excess frog material covering the grooves, so got that cleaned out to see where we
were. Then started working on lowering the heels. This all sounds a lot more simple
than it is! This horse can only stand on one foot long enough to get one nip at a time,
a little rasp here and there, foot goes back down. Frequent rests and switching
sides to get the job done. 2 more hours later, below is what we have. It's hard to
tell in the pictures really what was accomplished on the bottom of these feet, they
do look different, but pictures don't tell the whole tale here. You can see in the
side shots that the heels were lowered, that was my goal for today. There is a
lot of lammellar wedge on the toes of his hooves, just didn't have any energy left
today to work on that part. I will work some more in a few days or a week and try
to get them into a little better shape.