Tarsus... I don't even know-arsus

So we all know Gogo likes to keep me on my toes, right? Well last night she upped the ante... AGAIN. She came out of her stall fine, went on the treadmill fine, wore her ice booties fine, peed all over her neighbor's face because she's in flaming heat, and then when I pulled her out of her stall to groom her in the afternoon..... HUGE ENORMOUS BALLOON HOCK. It was only on the outside part of her LH, and it was hard. It wasn't hot. It wasn't painful. She wasn't lame. She had no temperature. It wasn't sore. It didn't go down with coldhosing. It didn't go down after a night of poultice. It didn't really go down after a 500lb. dose of banamine in the morning. It sort of went down with treadmilling today, but not really. It was totally localized to the hock yesterday, but today it went creeping down her leg and now the upper part of the outside of her LH is filling slowly but surely. I wanted to sweat it tonight but knew she wouldn't keep that on, so I poulticed it and the rest of the leg tonight again, along with more banamine and coldhosing. Wtf, what is going ON? We'll see what it looks like tomorrow but geez. I thought maybe she kicked the wall but she's in flaming heat, I wouldn't think she would have? I dunno what the crap she did to herself. I could find no indication of a wound anywhere either.

Seriously, Gogo. You are KILLING me here! If it's still big tomorrow I'll get some pictures. I'm stumped here.




In other news, for the first time in a year I actually let someone else work on my horse's feet for a change. And that person also shoes... so that was a BIG DEAL to get his particular opinion. This guy has a very interesting history - he very nearly hung up his anvil and nails to do totally barefoot stuff, but couldn't figure out how to make it work in New England. Verrrrry interesting, as this is the question I always get as a barefoot person in this particular area. Because really, let's face it, wild horses are not frequently found in the wet, rocky forests of New England. A natural trim is universal, but so much of it is environment, and this environment is just that - wet and extremely rocky. Feet have a hard time drying out and toughening up here, and soft feet don't play well with big jagged rocks. Hell, shod feet don't play well with some of our rocks either! So every time he comes to do horses, we always get into these really animated discussions about what is out there that works better than shoes. He keeps everything in the barn bare that he can, and he does a very nice natural trim. So, the last time he was out (Tuesday) I asked if he would look at Gogo, who was due for a trim (only 3 weeks out too... she is spitting out foot now that she's not wearing it off). She has a very odd crack in her foot that looks like trauma but I, again, have NO IDEA as to how or where she could have done this. I wanted him to check it out. As it turns out, he had quite a lot of pointers for me, and so I at one point just said well, do you want to just go ahead and trim her and show me what you mean? Of course, at that exact moment in time my boss came in and asked where her next horse was, so I had to go start tacking. And then I got a ring from one of the employees saying he couldn't catch a horse, so I had to go help him. By the time I got back up to the barn, the trim was already complete... damn. He did some things I wasn't sure I liked - for example, he rasped off all her remaining raggedy-hangy-down periople, something I've never done because why do it? To his credit he was working down some flare so I guess that's how that worked. He also took the heels way down on her clubby foot, maybe a little more than I ever felt comfortable doing, but her feet do look very nice. I was thinking for the first few days she *might* have been landing a little flatter versus more heel-first but I could be imagining that because I want to find faults here. Other than being more invasive than I would have been, I think he did a very good job - left that tasty sole and frog totally alone and just worked exclusively with the wall that needed to come off. We'll see what kind of growth she puts out in response to this trim - but who knows, maybe that heel really was ready to just come off for good and I was not skilled enough or comfortable enough to take it off myself. Time will tell. That being said, in general I can NOT believe how much those heels have come down over the past two years, all of them. They look fabulous.

Top picture was from the other day, and the bottom picture was from December of 2007:



Good picture of the removal of the raggedy periople. Don't really think that was necessary but there is still plenty of it left so there you are. RF looks a little weird in this picture because of the Tuff Stuff on it and for some reason the stain on it makes it look like her heel is running under... I can assure you that isn't the case!






Quite interesting to see just what is going on with those cracks. They were hard to see before. The one on the LF is pretty much totally closed almost, and the one on the RF is tighter than it ever was and looking way less threatening than ever before. Score!


And how do we battle the wet stall? With some super fun soaking and a layer of Desitin slathered on her already cleaned and treated frogs every couple of days... sounds totally odd but it does help keep the urine and ammonia out.







And of course, her tail is still gorgeous even though all the rest of her seems to want to fall apart on me every second of the day!





Gogo is great at this sort of thing though.... random mystery swellings that don't cause lameness or pain, which all seem to resolve themselves within a few days. So let's hope this is more of the same.