Hoof Recovery Patient Update

Cricket and Classie are improving. Actually, as with most horses in their condition, they have good days and not so good days. I'll look out to see them moving out across the pasture at a fast walk with no sign of lameness and the next day, I'll see one moving slowly with a definite limp.

I’ve been working on their hooves about every 6 days. By that I mean, I’ve been looking for signs of sloughing sole, overgrown bars that are ready to let go, frogs that want to slough off old diseased tissue. Each time that happens, there will be a bit of wall that I can take down as well.

Yesterday was a good day for them. The work I did on their feet wasn’t comfortable and Cricket asked me to stop several times. But her hooves were asking me to keep going, so I did. I suspect they both have large subsolar abscesses - once drained, much of their hoof pain will begin to dissipate.

I rinsed the sole and frogs of their front feet with Nolvasan Surgical scrub – chlorhexidine, (which I've also used to successfully treat rainrot and summer itch) and packed the collateral grooves and soles with Nolvasan ointment - applied it like a poultice to the entire sole. Then I wrapped the hooves with vet wrap and put them in Soft Ride boots.

Because they are moving so much better now, especially Cricket, the boots don’t stay on as well. But Cricket is a little power house and she will often charge off from a stand still and to a dead run, leaving at least one boot in her tracks.

But that’s okay, I don’t want to leave their hooves overly protected because my goal isn’t to soften the sole tissue and take any hoof components completely out of function. (The main problem caused by shoes.) Yet, at the same time, I’m trying to cure the thrush and keep any bacteria from entering the hoof corium through small fissures that are typically present in an unhealthy hoof.

I don't have pictures to add to this post, but I will upload a few with the next.