The Horses’ Care Remains Essential

Regardless of what’s going on in the world, the horses’ care remains essential. Despite the many changes in our world today, for our rescued residents, life goes on and they continue to receive the best of care.

Several of the horses have had extensive lameness issues. Casper has been very lame recently. The vet came out and took some X-rays and determined he has ring bone and side bone which are forms of arthritis in his pastern. He is also very flat footed and this makes him more prone to issues as well. We gave him bute for pain and decided to try front shoes to see if that relieved some of his discomfort.

While we hoped for a vast improvement with the shoes, there wasn’t one. We are back to square one and are going to try making adjustments to the shoes to make the breakover easier when he is walking, in hopes that will make him more comfortable.

Dakota also became very lame and we struggled to find the cause. Thankfully, he was not having a bout of laminitis. He doesn’t grow a good amount of hoof wall which makes it difficult to nail his shoes on. This round we ended up putting him in glue-on shoes on his front hooves. At first he was still quite lame but after about 4-5 days he was walking much better. We still don’t know the exact cause of his acute lameness but he is thankfully much better. It is a constant balancing act managing the horses’ medical concerns and keeping the horses comfortable, but we continue to make progress.