http://clissatlibertyhorsemanship.blogspot.com.au/p/about-my-horses.html
I will take this page down from this blog soon. Please go to the new blog to see a lot more stuff.
Thanks :)
April 2012
I have a new blog specially for recording the process of rehabing Sonny's feet. He is foundered.
http://fixing-sonnys-feet.blogspot.com.au/
I have had to lighten him off a lot so he has lost a heap of weight.
24Apr 2011
Gosh almost a year since I updated the horsey stuff!
Best to start a new page for 2011. I'm constsantly taking photos & could put 100's up here but that would be just too many! lol
Here are a few from this month:-
I'm learning a traditional form of training for dressage used by the german trainers a few 100 yrs ago including at the Vienna Riding School that had the famous Lippizanas. The lady keeping this traditional method alive is from Holland by name of Marijke de Jong "Academic Art of Riding" & she gives webinars as well as subscription learning via DVD.
It involves lots of inhand driving from the ground where all dressage movements are taught without the weight of a rider first. Sonny has been doing quite well & we already have some airs in the form of quite a nice levade.
20July2011
Since I took that photo of Sonny wearing his boots in Oct 2010 there has been constant wet weather which has been very hard on the horse's feet. All have had a terrible sort of hoof rot that only eats away at the heels & heel platforms. It destroyed almost all the heels & platforms of all my horses despite my best efforts to keep them on dry land. It rained & rained, the ground was squealchy underfoot & their feet just never dried out. they all got abscesses & all had really hot feet at times & all were gimpy. None of us were happy campers! Me because I couldn't fix their problems & them because they couldn't run around like mad things like usual.
Then near the end of May the rain finally stopped for a few weeks allowing the ground to dry & harden & so did all horse's feet allowing a good bit of healing. I was so relieved. I had tried all sorts of hoof treatments & applications to stop the bacterial rot but in the end it was mostly dry weather that did the trick. There was no actual thrush.
I will say though that the addition just a week ago of a purple substance called THRUSHBUSTER has been invaluable in speeding up repair. It is the only thing that can be applied to the bottom of a hoof & have it stay there even in wet conditions. It soaks in right away, takes a few seconds to dry, then the hoof can be put back onto the wet ground again without it washing off.
I did make a hard paste from beeswax, TeaTree Oil, copper sulphate, borax that I pressed into the crevices after a thorough cleaning out. It stayed in place but just how good it was at killing the bacteria is really unknown. I'm not sure if it slowed the rot. It's so hard to say for sure if a certain thing has worked when there is continual reinfection. The thrushbuster helped because at the end when the rain had stopped, there was a little actual crumbly & tacky thrush apparent in some crevices on all hooves.
All these foot problems have meant the training has been on hold & of course I haven't ridden Sonny since the wet day I rode along the highway when it was flooded way back in February. I think by the time his feet are well grown again it will be next year. So a year without riding for both of us will be hard to change I think!
Jude has had an itchy outbreak too which caused her to almost scratch herself raw & loose a lot of weight. She has never been an itchy horse but her mother was extremely itchy most of her life. I've been trying to get the weight back on Jude whilst not feeding her too much that might upset her system like sugars, starch, etc. Not a lot of joy there yet.
Cassie is going along ok other than her hoof problems. She is learning the odd trick by watching the others particularly Sonny.
Photos coming soon!
