Fixing Problems and the New Ride Season!

Well, we had October, November, and December off this year to recuperate from some strain in the front legs. Thankfully, his ultrasound showed there was NO scarring and nothing was permanent, he just needed some time off :). Turns out, after xrays (from Dr. White), ultrasounds, and palpations from Dr. Ken Marcella, that our problem was in his feet! Note his awesome Coffin bones that we were worried may have been the problem :)

 

Marco has rather oddly shaped feet and moves a little different, so he needed custom shoes ;). He has a very short wide foot, so even though the regular shoeing looked normal, it was not good for his odd shaped foot and exaggerated movement. He had too much toe, and the regular shoes came too far forward for his unusual conformation. He has a massive amount of roll on his front hooves, to the point that we wore down the front of shoes to nothing within 4 weeks. So, now we are trying the Natural Balance shoes done with a little bit of a twist from the ordinary application. These shoes sit more under the hooves, and allow for his massive roll without interference. They also protect the coffin bone more than regular shoes (so I was told). His shoes have to be custom made, taking a shoe that is much larger than his foot, and cutting it shorter so that it fits both the width and the short length of his foot... this is rather time consuming :/. The farrier then uses an electric grinder on the inside of the shoe that touches the foot and bevels it out to keep the shoe from causing a pressure build up... I think I am saying that right ;). While this is not something for all horses, I think it may be the trick for Mr. Marco and his specific issues. So far, all has been working out pretty well! He has definitely loosened out in his stride, and his back has even come down to a relaxed state rather than the tensed up back that he had before. It looks as though part of that issue (his back always being tense) was from his trying to compensate for the front end issues :(. We have gone back to doing conditioning rides in January, and in February we started really kicking it back up and he did a 21 mile ride at Dry Creek, which is NOT an easy trail. He came out happy, relaxed, and ready to go! No back cinching up, no sore legs or swelling :) So we will try this out for this season starting with Red Barn Run in March! This will not be a big season for us, as we don't want to over do anything and risk the Most Loved Marco in any way :)... and we are also starting out Miss Shiloh. So this should be an awesome, fun, laid back year in endurance for us, we won't be doing anything but enjoying the ride :)