An Eye Opener...

Today was a very intersting day... to say the least! We were at Brian's all day (the Farrier). This morning we started talking about feet again, hence being in a "Hoof Care" class!!! We talked about the philosophy of foot shoeing and more about the T-Square (an apparatus to help the Farrier shoe the horse). The only forseeable problem with the T-Square is that it can really only be used on a foot with perfect or near perfect conformation... and how many of those do you see every day??

We learned how the Farrier can't "fix" conformation faults, only improve the way of going within that fault -- which I had learned before so it was nice to be able to solidify the fragments I have been given over the years!

This afternoon we got to fiddle with feet and see Brian trim a foot and actually MAKE a horse shoe!!! This was really cool!!! The catch to the whole thing was that the feet were not "attached" to a body, per say...

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Yes, at first it was really weird when Brian lifted the tarp and all of those feet were just laying there, but in the end it was ok!

Here is Brian measuring the foot to see how large to make the shoe.

Below is Brian making the shoe!

After making the shoe you have to fit it to the foot:

We got to "tear" apart one of the hooves to see inside, this was really neat. In the picture the red part is the blood of the inner hoof, with the bottom sole of the foot taken off! The little ridges in the blood portion are the Lamina -- an essential part of the horses ability to stand and bear weight.

There are Sensitive and Non-Sensitive Lamina within the foot, the non-sensitive is the part just on the inside of the white line at the wall of the hoof (inside), and the part more inside to that (in the picture of the actual leg) is the sensitive Lamina. The importance of the Lamina is that this is what "attaches" the bones of the horses leg/hoof to the wall of the hoof.

When a horse develops what we call "Laminitis" and when they "Founder" -- which is a really bad, generic name to use -- this Lamina separates and rips away from the hoof wall and the Coffin Bone (the most proximal -- bottom -- bone in the horses leg) begins to tilt downward at the front of the hoof because the Flexor Tendon on the back of the leg attaches into the Coffin Bone and pulls it up. The Lamina is like the opposing force of the Flexor Tendon, when it is not working correctly the Tendon takes over.

We also got to watch Brian disect the lower leg to see the tendons that run down the leg and to see how all of the structures are attached together. This part was cool as well! We got all the way down through the "sesamoid" bones (on the back of the fetlock) to the coffin bone on the inside of the hoof!

Last thing today we went and lunged 2 of Brian's horses to look at their foot wear patterns and conformation. This was really neat but the sun was really bright so I put my sunglasses on and had worn glasses all that day so I didn't have any contacts in and it was really hard to see what was happening!! I managed though!

I think that my favorite thing today was watching Brian make that shoe, this was really amazing! To see that this little piece of metal can become a shoe is really remarkeable!

Thanks Brian for a great day and a half!

Well, I think that this made for a pretty good "hump" day! Over half done my 4th week! I can't believe that it is all going so fast!

Tomorrow we have Business Class all day and the weather is supposed to be cooler so this should be good!

Have a great night everyone, there were some people who wanted to hear more about what I am doing in class... so there it is!!! Hopefully none of you will be puking or your computers tonight!!!

Ciao Bella

Love Sara XXO