An appointment with the farrier

Usually I am not at the barn when farrier Justin comes because the appointment is almost always right smack in the middle of the day. So after the visit he calls me to do a little review. He's really conscientious about that follow up.

Bestie takes about 2 seconds - "Yep, she looks good" - or something to that effect. This shot shows her feet a couple days prior to the visit; a little long, but not bad. Her hooves typically stay pretty well shaped and smooth, and we've never had to treat her for any thrush.

Now Dude, on the other hand, is a different story. Safe to say "Yep, he looks good" has never been said. Dude's portion of "the talk" usually starts with, "Wellllll, Dude's feet..." Sometimes they're looking a little better, sometimes they're not. Sometimes his front feet look terrible and the back look ok. Or the back hooves look terrible but the front hooves look good. It's a never ending battle.

After years of watching the cycle, I've noticed that Dude's feet don't look too bad until about a week and a half prior to the appointment. That was true with this latest visit. I had been using Life Data Treatment with tea tree oil and he seemed to be responding great to that. About two weeks prior to Justin's visit, I ran out of the Life Data and it inexplicably went missing in the local farm store. And it was really hard to find online. I ended up going back to an Absorbine product. We've used them all. I think there might have  been a few stallbound days in there due to weather. That never helps his feet.

Here's Dude a few days prior to his trim. Again, a bit long. What you can't see in the photo is that the inner edge of his right front hoof was all chipped away. Love the casual resting going on with the back right left. Yup, just hangin' in the aisle.

This is his front left hoof - this is actually looking GOOD for him; there's a defined frog visible although parts of it are kind of soft. He's got super constricted heels.

And here he is all trimmed up. This time, Justin found his rear hooves to be thrushier than his front hooves. His feet got cleaned up pretty well ... the cycle of staying on top of it begins again.

The "whatcha doing" nose.

A cold (but not the coldest) night at the barn

So we've hit a cold stretch here in northern Vermont. I'm looking at my home thermometer and we're at -7 and dropping.

At the barn last night, the clock in the indoor arena registered 12 degrees; wayyy below the temperature I consider my cut-off for riding (25-ish). I noticed after I took the photo that the helpful temperature guide indicates that we were indeed in the "VERY COLD" range last night. This clock clearly was not made in Vermont since what it identifies as the COLD range of 30-60 degrees is more like what's considered to be NORMAL here. :)

The horses didn't go out because of the cold and also because light snow had caused some icy patches and treacherous walking. Since the barn was pretty quiet, I was able to bring them separately into the indoor for some romping time. Bestie rolled, then strolled about sniffing. I got her to free lunge, although she kept looking at me with that "why are you making me do this?" expression.

Dude had a couple long leisurely rolls, then trotted around, and finally, got fixated on a gate latch clanking in the wind outside. 

Here he is, intently staring in the direction of the mysterious clanking noise, apparently using his x-ray-through-the-walls vision while trying to figure the noise out. I kept running around the arena like a crazy woman, trying to get him to run around too. I warmed up, but couldn't distract him; he was far more interested in listening to the clanking. So much for romping time!