Dare we hope that the FEI has come to its senses?

Perhaps the FEI has gotten a fad out of it's system.

     That fad being the huge trot (but forelegs only), as seen in the performance in the 2010 WEG by Moorlands Totillas.

2010 World Equstrian Games, Moorland Totilas and Edward Gal

    I didn’t get to watch anything more of the 2018 World Equestrian Games than the team dressage and the Grand Prix. 

    The sponsor of the Games didn’t quite come out and say it, but many of the events were rained out, and I do mean RAIN. Hurricane Florence, while having been downgraded to a tropical storm, brought FEET of rain to all of North Carolina. Entire towns were flooded. 

    Having witnessed natural disasters before, I often feel it’s rather rude to carry on with something as specious as a horse show when there are people drowning or clinging to their rooftops. 

   But, as is so often the case, when there’s money to be made, the guy whose pockets are the ones filling up say, damn what happens to others, let’s continue. 

    Of course, the televised dressage mentioned none of this. In fact, the skies were , for two days, ominous but dry, save for one poor Dutchman, who was caught in a cowpissing downpour. 

   (an American saying is ‘it rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock”) and only when you see that actually happen do you get the idea. 

    The freestyle dressage was cancelled, the cross country postponed, the endurance race (I can’t call it real endurance) was canceled in the middle of the race, and an endurance horse was put down due to heat stroke (it gets HOT and humid in North Carolina). But I digress.

   There were amazing performances in the individual event. 

    Of course..well, of COURSE, Isabel Werth won it. She’s won it so many times, and in most cases, deservedly so. Sometimes I wonder if it’s given to her because she’s, well, y’know, Isabel.

    In both competitions it was a tight, tight race between the Germans, the Brits, the US and the Swedes. Scores were high and differences between points were razor thin, on the order of .1 or .2. There was tremendous talent out there and fantastic horses.

  

     Which brings me to this post.

     At the 2010 WEG, Moorland Totilas and Edward Gal swept the boards. Totilas apparently blew the judges away with that HUGE trot...his forelegs virtually vertical at the trot. 

     But his hind legs? Wellll, unless a trot has changed since I was a kid learning what a balanced trot was, it wasn’t balanced. With Totilas it was all foreleg, and a bit of hind leg.

     This apparently so wow-ed the judges that, in the last 8 years, it seems as if

one’s dressage horse simply could NOT win if he didn’t kick his forelegs out like a can-can dancer. Flashy? Yes. Dressage? No.

     If you read of what happened to Totilas (as he was later re-named) after the Games, he literally burned out. He is no longer competing.  His new owner/rider could not get out of Totilas what Gal had demanded and received. Totilas said in so many words, eff it, I hate this shit, I’m DONE. 

    His refusal to work tells me that all that flash and dazzle was forced.  His huge trot wasn't natural, it was commanded.  Once he had the ability to say 'no', he said No, I mean it. I'm done.

     Remember Fuego XII at the 2010 Games? (now named Fuego de Cardenas). Fuego was a grey, PRE stallion, ridden by Juan name name name Diaz, representing his Spanish homeland.

    Fuego started dancing the moment he entered the ring. It was noticeable right from go that he was a horse who loved what he was doing. He was a ham, soaking up the cheers and adoration of a crowd that loved him solely because they could see what he was: a gorgeous stallion performing with so much brio and bravado, let's say it: joy.  Did you see that look on his face? The controlled power, the swagger, the machismo oozing from every pore of his snowy skin,  the bounce to his trot? It was added by the HORSE, not asked for by the rider. 

   Horse and Hound Online magazine has a video of Fuego dancing at the 2010 games. If you can watch it without chills going up your spine, maybe...well, maybe that’s just how I felt about what was, to me, an incredible (if not quite technically correct) performance. 

https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/european-championships-news-spains-fuego-injured-and-withdrawn-403482

As a complete aside, someone noticed..and wrote about his unusual shoes:

https://hoofcare.blogspot.com/2011/10/dressage-fuego-style-its-whats.html

    When Fuego and his rider got low scores, the crowd BOO-ed. “Official” videos of the event edited the boo’s out, but it’s real. We boo-ed. Dressage people simply do NOT do this. I think we scared the judges. I was ready to put them to the stake. Couldn’t they see that this was a horse who was doing dressage out of love for it? Whereas Totilas was..let’s put it mildly...obeying his rider. 

    In retrospect, I admit that Fuego wasn’t quite as good as the other horses, but still, which would you prefer? A horse doing something out of love for the activity? Or a horse that is doing what he’s told?
If Totila's trot wasn't quite a true trot, then how could the judges not allow the same for Fuego? 

 

Fuego de Cardenas, snipped from Horse and Hound Online Magazine

Edward Gal and Moorland Totilas by DigiShots.

     The reason I bring this up is because at this years’ WEG, I watched Edward Gal ride out on Glock’s Zonic.

  
    A KWPN, Zonic could be Totila’s twin. Gal rode him the same way he rode Totilas in 2010. Zonic’s forelegs were in the next county. It was high school, circus horse stuff. He had the same huge,booming trot in front, with so little action in the hind legs that it was as if they were there solely because FEI regulations demand that a dressage horse must have four (4) legs.

   By all appearances, Gal's plan was to win the same way as he did in 2010. Not with the same horse, but with a look alike and the very same way of riding.

Edward Gal and Glock's Zonic snipped from Pinterest.

    This time, though, the judges saw past the high kicks and scored him low enough to keep him out of the winnings.    


  Perhaps the FEI judges have begun to sober up from their Big Lick of Dressage binge. Throughout the entire test(s), it wasn't the high forelegs that won...it was good riding, harmonious and balanced.  With a few copycat exceptions the top three horses were all ones with a balanced trot, even in back and front. 

     Those horses won because they deserved the win, through excellent horsemanship and proper dressage.

       Grey baroque horses  aren't what the FEI believes to be the "ideal" dressage horse.  Dark bay or black Northern European warmbloods are the 'ideal". We boo-ed the judges decision on placing Fuego's 2010 performance because we saw what was obviously a double standard.

    Fuego's performance might not have been technically correct or 'within regulation'-but neither was Totila's. 

    

My apology to Western Equitation and the evils of Rollkur

Lifted from "The Mugwump Chronicles" a Word Press blog.

Before I begin this rant, let me relate something I learned from one of my massage clients.

A woman owned a very lovely Arabian stallion. She’d bred and raised him. He was a complete gentleman. She could hand breed him or let him out with his mares. She could lead him past a mare in raging heat without him turning a head or a hair.

He was gentle as a lamb, beautifully bred, well conformed, and perfectly trained.

He could not win in the show ring. 

Why?

Well…then..as now…judges didn’t want to see a gentle, quiet, gentleman of an Arabian stallion. They wanted to see a hyped up psycho on a lead, racing into the show ring on hind legs, eyes bulging, nostrils wide, screaming his head off, dragging his handler by the lead rope. They wanted to see flash and insanity, not a well-trained, quiet horse. A horse galloping, spinning, kicking, bucking was far more entertaining than a quiet stallion you could reliably put a toddler on. 

The tales of an Arabian stallion (or any gender) being artificially jazzed up  before ever entering the show ring…with drugs, whippings, insertion of foreign objects into its anus…are not apocryphal, or even anecdotal. They are true. It’s all to win a piece of fabric. 

The owner was excused from a show ring on more than one occasion because her stallion wasn’t insane. She was accused on more than one occasion of ‘sedating’ him. WHY sedate a quiet horse? She retired him from showing because she was disgusted with the expectations of a registry more impressed with insanity than horse training. 

To continue:

There are times when I have to admit I am wrong.

Now is one of them.

In the past, I’ve been a fairly harsh critic of “western equitation”. Most especially, I’ve disliked, vociferously, the WE’s fashion for the horse to go ‘low and slow’. Their horse’s gaits are so very slow, slow enough that a lame human like myself can easily keep up on foot beside a ‘’’jogging’’ (trotting) Quarter Horse.

What I disliked most, though, was the fashion for ‘peanut rolling”. 

Well, at least he's on a loose rein

This was the form they approved of, one where the horse’s nose is a mere handful of inches above the ground. I could always tell, just by ear, when a Western Equitation class was being held in an arena, just from the coughing of the horse.

I still don’t like it, because it appears to me as if the low hanging heads were forced into that position.

Now I wonder if I was wrong because of typical bias, or wrong because while I’ve heard that the way they’re ‘trained’ is by tying their head high the night before a show, I’ve never actually witnessed it.  Somehow, though, I believe that it’s forced carriage. While a horse at liberty does carry his head relatively low, it’s not THAT low. 

In the past few years, I’ve heard that WE judges have changed their positions and now want to see a higher, more traditional head carriage, and a more natural speed of trot and canter. This is good news, and more power to them.

My bias has showed in my failure to attack the opposite position, that of rollkur , an affectation that is now common in upper level dressage. (This was not intentional. I don’t have the opportunity to see upper level, international dressage.)  

Is this a happy horse? NOT. His rider is a VERY famous and professional rider. This is "rollkur'.

 “Rollkur’ also known as ‘deep’, took the dressage world by storm. No one protested, because deep pocketed donors liked it, and famous riders and trainers did it. Suddenly, the horse that was ‘deep’ was winning despite not being correct.  In rollkur (I won’t go into the biomechanics of it too deeply), the horse’s head is sharply overbent, in some cases, the horse’s chin is literally touching it's chest. (as in the photo above).

WHY this occurred is beyond me. Was is it to give the impression of collection? Obedience? (to me, it looks like abject submission.) Acceptance of the bit? Or, was it more one of “that is so cool looking”? 

I think it is the latter. Dressage people, it appears, are no more resistant to a fad than any spangled, teal colored  spandex ‘western’ body suit than any Western Equitation costume designer. Flash wins ribbons. 
 

Butt ugly, but that's what wins ribbons. Don't think the clothing manufacturers wouldn't love to convince the FEI to accept shit like this in the gravy train of  dressage.

 
Like my friend’s Arabian stallion, substance, gentle, proper training and presentation gets the gate.

What is even more offensive is that several people who should know better, went all aboard on rollkur. It’s one thing to say, I want my horse to look like this because I’ll do anything-even hurt the horse- to get the prize.  It’s another, offensive thing altogether to say, if you don’t agree with me then you are obviously a moron. It is utterly criminal for the judges to flop over in acceptance of rollkur, in complete denial of the very rules they are hired to adhere to. 

Dressage ideology used to be based on the concept that things like collection must be achieved correctly and NOT by the use of force. Perhaps in the days since I learned about the basics of dressage, that has been dismissed. Perhaps the line about a horse’s head being ‘vertical’, neither ahead or behind the bit, fell off the page as the regulation was being printed. It certainly is being ignored by FEI judges.

Rollkur is, in reality, ‘overbent’ to a ridiculous degree. The rollkur horse is so far behind the vertical (aka behind the bit) there IS no ‘vertical’. It’s ‘diagonal’. It is achieved, in many cases, by bits that are decidedly NOT a ‘simple snaffle’ or a curb. 
No, they look at this monstrosity:

I see three sets of reins, and this 'double bridle' doesn't look very gentle.

Being ‘overbent’ or ‘behind the bit’ allows for higher movement in front, yet another concept of dressage being subsumed by flash. Now you see upper level horses (like Moorland Totilas) doing “high school’ movements in the same vein as Spanish riding.  I remember watching the World Equestrian Game’s horses in freestyle dressage…and Totilas won, I believe, by his high stepping.  

 This was NOT what I learned of classical dressage in the 70’s. In those days, balance, harmony and symmetry was the desired picture, not the  high stepping (in front and shuffling in back ) of a circus horse. But…when big money/big names take on a fad, even the FEI is not immune to the pressures.

As seems to be the case in competitive horse showing, dressage people are no different from the WE folks in going to extremes. Here’s a photo of a horse being ‘trained’ into carrying its head in “rollkur’.

 

This is not 'training'. It is  TORTURE.

 How different is this from a Western Equitation horse I saw being ‘trained’ by having her head tied by the bit to the cinch of the western saddle on her back? Was this ‘suppling”? Is this picture showing a horse ‘in training’? No. (note, too, how gaunt he is).

This isn’t ‘training’. It’s TORTURE. There’s not a bit of difference in the mindset here: force a horse into a physical position. Not one whit. Different flavor of horsemanship, but still-forcing a horse to hold its head in a way unnatural and uncomfortable, all for the sake of fashion, is CRUEL. It is abuse. It is certainly not Horsemanship. 

Now I begin to see that the WE folks, perhaps, weren't alone in training their horses to go in a specific head carriage for fad reasons, although I can’t think of a good reason for it, any more than I can justify rollkur.  In a nutshell, I believe in allowing a horse to carry his head like he wants. 

So. To the Western Equitation folks, I apologize. I was wrong. I was being a snob. If your horse rolls peanuts WITHOUT BEING FORCED, more power to him…and you.

So now we come to Raven.

Sue and I have been riding Raven on a very loose rein for about a year.

Raven has a long back, so it is difficult for him to shift his weight to his hindquarters. He’s heavy on the forehand. In addition, he had a heavy, ‘upside down’ neck, coming from that heavy on the forehand work. 

Sue came to the realization that Raven wasn’t happy with the typical collection, or being on the bit. 

So she let him have his head, literally. We’re still making him ‘work’ but not “in a frame”. By allowing him to trot, canter and mostly walk on a relatively long, relaxed rein, we are seeing something interesting: his neck has slimmed and has, over time, become arched. His back is coming up underneath us, and he is carrying himself. The underside of his neck is no longer bulging out. Allowing him to ride with his head down allows his back to come up, his weight shift back and his forehand to lighten. 

Here is how it works:

This is the mechanics of equine movement.

Most importantly, he has stopped ‘arguing’. This is not to say they were fighting, but Raven would not ‘listen’ to Sue. 

When she gave him more rein, his resistance stopped. He began to dance with her. His head came down and his eye brightened. 

To add: this is how a natural lowered head looks, and how Raven is traveling now.

Now I’m not saying he’s peanut rolling. Far from it, literally. He’s carrying it where he wants to carry it. The difference in his attitude and happiness is amazing. He always has been a good work horse, always ready to be ridden and worked. But now he is happier, in ways I cannot elucidate. Is it ‘pretty’? That depends on your definition of pretty. I think seeing a horse carrying himself, with a calm tail and a happy face, is far more attractive than a wired up horse in chains.

 I took a lesson on him a while ago, and the trainer kept urging me to take up more rein. I found myself holding onto the bit with hands of iron, and I don’t like that. I didn’t feel him ‘seeking contact”. I felt myself with a rock hard grip on his mouth. He took it without complaint, but I..I felt guilty afterwards.

I came to the conclusion that, if furthering my education in riding dressage means using the reins as a weapon, well, then, I’m not going to. If dressage has become nothing more than an overly expensive fashion show, I am out of here. 

I will still ride to the ancient precepts of dressage: harmony with the horse. WILLING obedience on the horse’s part, me doing MY job of carrying myself and working WITH him, not against him. Most especially, I won’t FORCE him to do something that might Look Good but isn’t in his best interest.

The impossible half halt

    In the dressage (and English) riding world, there is this invisible, obnoxious thing called the 'half halt'.

   It's been described in many different ways: it is akin to pushing in the clutch to prepare your transmission to change gears. A way of preparing the horse for a change in gait. A means of telling your horse to collect himself, balance himself, calm down or  speed up.
I read the articles written by professional riders, riders who KNOW how to ride, and they toss the term off as if it was something EVERY one uses-except me. 

  I haven't a freaking clue how to do one.

  Oh, it's not through lack of research and personal training. I've read the books, the magazine articles, talked to the trainers, the pros, even people who claim they can see when a rider does a half halt. I've read articles by people who claim they half halt all the time, every single time they do something as simple as change rein. 


  Every one of the sources knows how to do a half halt...and their descriptions are all DIFFERENT.
  Every single one.

 
  "Squeeze with your calves to stop the hindquarters." "Set your hands without pulling on the reins."" Don't use your hands".  "Push with your seat bones and squeeze the reins three times". "Stop following him with your pelvis." "Stop him and then change your mind."
"Use your core to push the horse up into the bridle".

  Don't start me about 'core'. It's the term du jour. Everything, I'm told, can be solved if you only use your core. Really? I didn't even know I had one until I used a training aid, and now I know I have my "core" "engaged" ALL the time-without any result whatsoever. 


  I have tried. I swear to all the equine gods I have tried.  

 Any 'pushing' I do with it merely scooches me up closer to Raven's withers. He must wonder what in the bloody hell am I doing up there, wiggling and pushing and pulling and squeezing and changing my mind for no reason whatsoever. It shows, too, as he calmly continues on with whatever he was doing in the first place. 

  I've read the Master: Alois Podhajsky. Not once does the word 'half halt' cross his pages.
  "Riding Logic' s W. Museler mentions that a properly made horse is 'taken up by half halts' but that is as far as he goes. "Classical Equitation-Simplified's author takes two and a half pages of very detailed instructions on how to do a half halt and for god's sakes don't use the hands.  This author: moi: doesn't have the brain capacity to be able to do more than a few things at once. And those things are usually "breathe from your diaphragm". "Keep your ear shoulder elbow heel aligned'.  'Engage your core core core core core core'. Damn it that's six things all at once. Now I have to add more?

  I give up. From now on, I refuse to do a half halt, or attempt one. Because I am beginning to realize that, with a million different ways of doing one, it means there IS no such thing as a
half halt. 

  I take a bit of comfort, though, again from the Master, Podhajsky, who said in utter dejection: "I think I better give up riding altogether. I am never going to learn it!"

The OMG moment

     Most of my life was spent thirsting after horses, not actually riding them. 

   As a city kid with few opportunities to ride, I learned to ride  by the following method:

1. Find a western saddled horse whose owner is sufficiently stupid enough to let a green kid get on it.
2. Climb on.
3. Hang on
4. Get off.  

   Even when I finally was able to own a horse, I didn't ride Jordan all that much. He was beautifully trained and I kept him home, where I had no place to ride for the vast majority of the year, due to rain, rain, and last but not least, rain. That's where I learned that a covered arena is one of the finest things a rider can have. Not having one meant that one had perhaps a few weekends in the summer to ride...but with gardens, jobs, a household to keep and a lazy, high maintenance husband (not my current one) it doesn't leave much time for riding.

  I have spent an enormous amount of time afoot, learning to handle, massage, breed, teach (as opposed to train) horses, but it wasn't until 2011 that I began to seriously want to learn to ride. This was after my divorce, after my remarriage to a normal man, after I'd been laid off for the last time, after I lost hope of ever finding a decent paying job again,  and finally accepting the fact and begin enjoying retirement.

   Thus I began leasing horses, which in four cases was a expensive exercise in masochism. My "owners' (those who owned the horse) were whack jobs, shysters, or outright psychopaths. I had given up on leasing a horse after two years of pain and frustration when out of the blue, Sue offered me the use of Raven. For free. It works out beautifully for both of us: she works full time, I can do things during the time she's working, (i.e. have the farrier out or the vet check), sort of be her Girl Friday. (doesn't that date me. Now it's Personal Assistant. Whatever). I started blogging about it, too. I was truly lucky, but Sue took her time...a VERY long time...before she allowed me to ride Raven without her being present. I promised her I would not ride him without her permission.
One woman at the barn said, 'why don't you ride Raven?" I said, "Sue doesn't want me to ride him without her being here." "I won't tell. She'll never know." "True...but I will." 

I could have snuck in a ride when she was at work, but when I give my word, I KEEP it.

  When I decided I wanted to REALLY learn to ride, I realized that the best way to acquire the necessary balance and self confidence so vital to properly learning to ride could only be done by riding bareback.

   When you're ten years old, rubber boned, and convinced that you will never die, you learn to ride by osmosis.
  When you're in your late fifties, are brittle boned and all too uncomfortably aware that there are things worse than death: paralysis from the neck down, for instance; you learn to ride by conscious effort and a great deal of trepidation. And a helmet.

   Thus I embarked on learning to ride by going back to basics: bareback. 

   I don't ride every day. Perhaps I would have come to this moment sooner had I done so, but there again, I have a Life. It is full to bursting with things that have nothing to do with horses. It means I ride maybe two times a week. 
  Thus the OMG moment I had a month ago took..oh, four years.

   But it was worth the wait. 

   Last month I was riding Raven alone in the arena.  (I was given free rein ((pun fully intended))to ride whenever I chose several years ago.)  I felt comfortable. I asked, inadvertantly, for collection..and GOT it. It was an incredible feeling.

  I've held off writing this till now. First, Life got in the way, but also, I wanted to BE SURE.

  Within a week of that collection ride, I was riding..again, alone, bareback..and felt the connectivity I'd only felt a few fleeting times. This time, though, it lasted the entire ride. I was 'plugged in' to Raven. Our spines were connected. I felt comfortable, balanced, at home. I felt SAFE. I was relaxed and assured. I realized I had achieved something, very quietly, very softly...I had learned balance. I was one with Raven. He proved that to me within moments by shying suddenly and I rode it out..as I usually have...without a problem. I waggled my lower legs. I was as secure on his back as if I were locked on. There was two of me..the bottom half was horse and the upper half was human.

  That was thrilling, but I've learned to not expect too much. However, it has remained. I went a week without riding, then me, Sue, Gretchen, her daughter JJ, and another woman who was riding her QH..were all in the arena.  Everyone was swapping horses. Raven is the only warmblood and JJ had stars in  her eyes after riding him. "He's Fun. He's like a rock star" she oozed.

I know the feeling...warmbloods will do that to you. 

I got aboard first and he was HYPED...there was so much energy going on in the arena and he fed off it like a sponge. Really, if there'd been no one else, I wouldn't have risked it. He as that much horse. But perhaps that was perfect, because without warning, we were trotting. I was relaxed and happy. Comfortable, balanced, steering without hanging onto the reins. 
 I was sitting his big booming trot bareback. Sue was on Gretchen's mare and her face said it all: LOOK AT  YOU!!!! oh my gosh! 
Oh my god, I thought, that was so easy. It was my eureka moment, but I'll type OMG because..well, it's 2016. Nobody has any idea what 'eureka' means anymore save us oldsters.
  
   A week later, she insisted I ride in her saddle. We are going to trot, she said, and I was ready to try, after my first two successes. But Raven can be lazy. He's got a long back and consequently is always on the forehand unless he's been suitably warmed up, as he had been by Sue. This time he was more than warm, he was hot as a pistol and ready to rock. I asked for a trot and began posting his trot like I'd been doing it all my life. Up down up down and I was even on the correct diagonal. It was easy. It was HIM doing the bounce, tossing my butt out of the saddle just enough. I have to keep my hands low, now I know, but I wasn't hanging onto his face. I was balanced and comfortable.

  Today summed it up. Sue is on vacation and I have Raven to myself. I was in the arena when Missy came in with her grey Saddlebred/Arab cross, Jester. And the barnlord came in. Was she going to give Missy a lesson? Because if that's the case, I will evacuate. I don't mind leaving if someone is paying for a lesson. But, no. She's just there to watch us ride.

 Now that I know what being balanced and in harmony with him feels like,  I had felt something amiss with Raven's walk, so I asked the barnlord to spot me. Is he off on his right fore? She demanded I trot. So ...I trotted. Sitting his trot bareback, I went down the arena, again...comfortable and balanced. I don't think the barnlord knew that I have only recently been able to sit the trot. She had me go round and then said, no, he's okay. 

  Like it was an everyday thing for me, to sit the trot bareback. Like it was an every day thing.

   IT IS STICKING. I am on my way! I can truly say for the first time that I am learning to ride, and I can credit riding bareback for it all. I have learned balance, harmony, and most of all, self confidence. It can be a long slow trial for older folks...I am 61 now, soon to be 62, but we CAN learn to ride. It just takes time and the right horse. And the willingness to accept that starting at the beginning is usually the best way, especially if you go bareback.

   I CAN RIDE!!!

My farrier works miracles (slowly)

   I have to 'post and boast'.

Raven the Beautiful

 

     Look at this gorgeous beast. This was taken in July at a local dressage test. Raven was wired to the max. My gosh, he was high voltage. Sue even wondered if she should do the second test on him, he was so much horse. But we encouraged her to do the test and she came out of it with some very high marks indeed.

     I have made some big steps in riding him. I took a lesson from our super trainer and she's helped me a lot. I am even riding him at the trot bareback, having finally been able to make that transition. Literally. 
My hardest part right now is collection. I still don't have that feel for when he's truly up underneath me. As I noted in my last post, he is not an easy horse to ride. He's long backed, which makes it more difficult for him to collect, and I'm not rider enough..yet... to know it when he is.
But when I do it right, and we're trotting, suddenly it's easy to ride him. Those moments are fleeting yet exhilarating when they do come. They keep me motivated.

      Last year at this time he had just settled into his new home at New Barn. In January we realized that his feet were deteriorating so quickly that soon he would be lame. So we changed farriers. Matt, our new farrier, took Raven's feet as a challenge and ...well, here are some photos of then and now.

     I have, in the past, kept a running account of the progress on his feet. I will condense that to the worst of his hind feet, the left hind. This is a picture of his hoof from January 2015, after we'd been dinking around with the feet for six months of the old farrier. I cannot remember if this was taken before his trim or after. I believe, judging from the fuzz on the ground, that it was after. It was also after we'd given up on the epoxy in his feet.

 

Left hind outside January 2015

 

 

      I still cringe when I look at this. It was so bad. It had white line and, now we know, thrush as well. The crevices were from nail holes that had rotted out. Literally. So we took him out of shoes permanently. Old farrier had steadfastly warned us that "this horse can never be barefoot." With this foot, there was nothing left for a nail to hold onto, as was evidenced in the right hind, which isn't pictured here.

       Now look at this same hoof, 7 months later, after trimming:

Left hind outside post trim August 2015

 To quote an old tv ad.."Isn't that amazing'"

     It IS. We've been feeding him Trifecta, a supplement that contains biotin. We know now that he must have biotin for the rest of his life. Small price to pay for a good hoof. 
We also give most of the praise to Matt, our Wonderful Farrier. He had the courage to take on these ugly feet. We obeyed his 'commands' in dosing the white line, the thrush, and keeping the hoof dry with his concoction of Venice Turpentine/Iodine. 

    What? Yes, it is. It's the same foot. I swear. 

     Matt has done miracles. Notice how he also has slowly improved the angles of the foot to what they're supposed to be. Old farrier had paid so much attention to the 'rotten' parts of the hoof that he trimmed them to the point where there was no heel contact. The heels were contracted. 
     Matt has gently and slowly brought the hoof back into alignment. The heels are opening nicely and in contact with the ground now. He will never go back into shoes. He doesn't need them, and in another few months we hope to take his fores out of shoes, too. The only problem they had was again, Old Farrier had trimmed them to the point where they were beginning to club. 

   Raven is very happy in his new feet. Earlier this month, he was busting around in his paddock with his buddy and tore up the outside. But it was, in my opinion, the very last parts of the old bad hoof. Within days the bent up portion had worn off without damaging the underparts.

   These are new feet. 

    I'm telling you. If and when you find a GOOD farrier, treat him like a king. (well, you know what I mean.) Matt has our business for as long as he wants to keep us. They're minting new veterinarians every year, but I cannot think of more than one young man who is taking on the job of farrier. Every other one is in his early fifties and older. Horseshoeing is part science, part experience, part empathy, and a little bit witchcraft. It uses the same tools as from five hundred years ago. It's archaic. It's also a science, and an art. When you find that man who can do the job right, treat him nicely. You won't regret it.