This is Wooda, a 9 year old Quarter Horse mare, who foaled a beautiful look-alike filly in April. Wooda has foundered with a chronic founder, rotated coffin bone situation on her right front (misdiagnosed at first as "only" a club foot) and a 'sinker' founder on her left front. She was diagnosed as insulin resistant by her vet, and her owner made immediate changes to her diet. She took her off of alfalfa and switched her to timothy hay, and stopped feeding her Cappers Mare & Foal.
She was immobilized with pain the first time I went to see her and was barely able to tolerate lifting her worst foot, her LF, despite being on bute and banamine. The second visit, after over a week on her new diet, she was able to lift all four feet (with effort on both of our parts!) for very short periods of time. I hope to get better photos and angles in the future, I got a little distracted by everything else going on and the mare of course cannot tolerate lifting a hoof just for a photo op...
There are current xrays which I will try to get copies of to load to this page, I don't have them digitally at this time.
The photos were taken during my 2nd visit to her, my first "real" trim.
Wooda is wearing padded Old Macs part of the time, but her owner is going to start removing them more frequently to allow the hoof to breath and relieve some of her rubs. She also bought some medicated Gold Bond powder to sprinkle in the boots to keep the moisture and "funk factor" down. I gave her some "moleskin" which is padded soft material for human foot problems, to apply over the worst of the rubs and help prevent them from getting worse. While I was there Wooda shuffled on her own one time down and then back up her slightly sloped paddock, so she is becoming comfortable enough to move on her own (she was bootless for that walk).
JUNE 9th
This is her right front, the "club" foot and the one exhibiting a chronic founder appearance. The owner had her shoes removed prior to my visit. (can't imagine that was an easy task, getting them off!) First image before my trim, 2nd image afterwards. My goal was to remove the leverage on the painful lamina that is taking place by the long dished toe. I cut the toe wall back to the sole junction (where white line/lamina and sole meet) and did a little roll. Since she cannot hold her leg up, I did a lot of the work from the top with the hoof on the ground, by nippering the wall with my 1/2 rounds, and then rasping and smoothing the outer wall with the hoof on the ground and digging a little trench in the dirt to give my rasp some room. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the sole of the hoof, because she couldn't hold it up long enough for me to coordinate the hoof and camera to snap the shot. Trust me when I say it was FLAT. I also lowered her heel as much as I could, to attempt to bring her rotated coffin bone a little more into alignment.
This is a picture of the front of the hoof, you can see the damaged lamina at the toe.
This is her left front, which is currently a little more painful than her RF to her. I ended up just rasping her heels a teeny bit because she has almost ZERO sole depth. If you look at the 2nd picture near the toe of her hoof wall along the front of her hoof, you can see a collapsed appearance to the wall - this is "when" she sunk... think of it like the rings of a tree, telling a story. Her white line is damaged at the ground level, but doesn't have the very stretched, bloody, 'chronic' appearance that her left front has.
I will be trimming Wooda again in 2 weeks, and will continue to update this page with her progress. Hopefully someday I will be able to post photos of her playing with her filly! :-)
JUNE 24th ~ looking and feeling better!
Wooda was doing much better this visit. Able to hold her feet up for a little longer and shuffling around somewhat. She had little thrushy pockets under her bars so I tried to clean them out carefully and inserted some antibacterial gel in them to try to combat it further. Living in boots and pads is an invitation to these issues, but it's the lesser of the evils right now.
Right front
Left front
July 15th ~ setback :-(
It's been 3 weeks since the above trim, I went on vacation in between. Wooda had gone back downhill this visit and was extremely sore. :( I ended up playing around with more boots and padding options for her while I was there, and forgot about taking photos so the two shown are all I have. I provided her owner with information and phone numbers on how to get some tested low sugar hay that had become available locally, as well as Katy Watt's DVD "Feeding the Carbohydrate Intolerant Horse". We had previously talked about soaking the hay until it was tested, and she joined the EC list moderated by Dr. Eleanor Kellon. The diet has to be absolutely, positively buttoned up in order for the horse to recover from the acute phase, and this mare is saying she has not been buttoned up yet!!
The owner gave me the most current xrays that she had, taken in May (one month before I saw the mare), and I tried to get some photos of them to share here. I also marked them up as best I could. It's really helpful if the vet marks the hoof with a thumbtack and metal tape to note where the sole and wall are in actuality. I guesstimated in my 'drawings I also included the non marked images.
