Dude and his frogs

This is exciting news: Dude has one good-looking frog! This despite the fact that I have definitely been shirking my hoof-cleaning routine this week. I had to bring the Betadine home to wash out a skin irritation that Dixie has, so I haven't scrubbed Dude's feet in many days, just picked them out. And I arrived late to the barn this whole week, so have been picking them out in the dark of his stall. Bad, bad, bad. Imagine by surprise when I went to scrub them out today and picked up his left front only to find a perfect sturdy triangular frog!

I know I've written before about the trials and tribulations of Dude's feet. They are just plain hideous; always soft and peely on the frog. It's like they're constantly hovering on the edge of a giant thrush infection, and sometimes they cross right over into that stage. Katie once did a tabletop exhibit on thrush for 4H and we had Mr. Textbook Example conveniently around for hoof photographs. Most people look at Dude's hooves and sort of curl their lip in disgust. I think our farrier is so used to them that he doesn't do the lip curl, and he does celebrate the minor successes with me by grudgingly saying at times, "Well, they look pretty good. For Dude." I'm tempted to try to take a photo tomorrow to document this occasion. He's so bad about holding up his feet, I'm not sure I'll be able to hold the hoof with one hand and take the photo with the other. We'll see.

Today I cleaned them out really well with the 50/50 mix, then let him stand in the aisle while his feet air-dried and I got him brushed and reblanketed.

Had a nice ride on Dude today in the indoor. I practiced posting and we did some walk/trot transitions and figure 8s. When I pulled him up at the end of the ride, we both heaved a sigh right at the same time. Pretty funny. Before arriving at the barn I had thought about riding outside because it was a gorgeous sunny day with temps in the upper 30s, but the pathway was total slush and really messy. Our megasnow from Wednesday has gotten ugly.