If The Shoe Fits!

Well I suppose you could say we have not had much luck. after Faith came back from the hospital we had her feet done. Now Faith and feet just don't go so well. You see she needs to be trimmed in a way that puts her front feet more on an angle to take weight off of her heels. In a sense you are rolling the toe in. She also has pads on in between her shoes, they are wedged to give her even more of an angle. we first noticed this about a month from when we first got her. she was very off, camping out, and tripping. we had our vet come out and take x-rays of her feet and legs. At one point we were afraid it was navicular. navicular is when there navivular bone moves out of place causing it to be very uncomfortable for them. it is most common in quarter horses which is what her breeding is. luckily the radio graphs showed us that her hoof wall and bone were off angle, hence why we re angled her feet. It is so difficult to go to knew places because you must find new everything, you get vets and farriers that know how to work on your horse and it is hard to find it all again. When she was shod the farrier must have missed a detail because she was off, another way of saying uncomfortable. almost like a limp. she was off for about two days, and there was a race on the weekend and i was hoping to take her. on Friday we finally decided we had to do something. we thought of doing different types of shoeing but we were afraid of putting too many holes in her feet. we finally decided to get her some bute until we can make a decision. Bute is like Aspirin only for horses, its a pain killer. as we were on our way to get some we saw a farrier pull in. one we have heard good things about. we asked her to take a look at her feet. she found that the soul, the bottom of the foot, wasn't trimmed enough. it should be a very slight slope, hers was more flat and then a sudden drop, this was putting pressure on the pads and hurting her feet. if she had not had pads it may not have been a big deal. she trimmed the soul and like that my horse was once again sound. the next day i took her around the barrels. she did so good i felt she could take it up a notch, my horse has yet to fail me. i decided to take her to the race and exhibition her. well on Sunday morning we missed the exhibitions. this was fine by me, as long as she could be in the show atmosphere, but of course Pat, one of the guys at the ranch, got me to enter the race. it was a 5D race and i wasn't in it to win it, so what did i have to lose? i loped her to first so she could see what she was doing, she was going into it blind sighted because i did not exhibition her. she had a nice first barrel when she was going across to second she bobbled a little because she wasn't to go back to the chute, but once we got to our spot we had a nice second, on third i came into it too wide, i know i was scrambling for the reins so i must have pulled her off of it but we cam around it nicely. she had nice turns around the barrels, it was simply the approach. i was totally happy with it though. without any practice she was simply amazing, and still my horse has yet to fail me. threw everything, being ill, hospitals, feet, lack of practice, but the show must go on!