Beckie Mabbutt

Today the record was broken for the youngest person to take a shoe off on my books. Max Newton aged 8 astounded me today when he confidently took a shoe off his pony Micky with no help from me at all. I can really see a farrier in the making here he didn't seem to struggle at all and didn't once say he couldn't do it. Fantastic determination. A big well done Max you were a star.

I went to shoe Cleo today for Donna Pegler and he had just received an injury to his coronary band. It look like he had been trodden on by another horse as it was on the outside of his foot. His leg was slightly filled so just to be safe Donna called the vet out. The vet prescribed a course of Antibiotics and Bute, and Donna was told to keep it as dry as possible and clean it with hibbiscrub twice a day. If a flap  occurs on the wound the vet will have to be called again. This sort of injury causes quite a problem because the horn tubules grow down from the coronary band so Cleo is likely to have a permanent defect to this part of his foot from now on.

This is what it looked like today. I will take photo's of it every 5 weeks to track how it develops.

This week I got to do a new horse bought by and existing client of mine Sally Stevens. On first impressions Tory had pretty good feet, they were quite boxy and upright with his left front being slightly larger and flatter. On the vetting prior to purchase the vet thought Tory would benefit from some time without shoes to help engage his frogs on the ground and to help open up the back portion of his feet which are slightly contracted. Sally hacks out over different terrains so it wasn't really practical to have him barefoot for now. When looking closer at his feet there was a great deal of heel to be trimmed off and I was confident that over a couple of shoeings I could get him engaging his frogs on the ground even with shoes. I have taken pictures of his frogs this week and will take more over the coming months and update you on the progress we make. Here is a before and after picture of one of his hind feet. Click on one of the images to go straight to the full write up.

If some of you have had a good look around the website you may have realised that on the Newsletter page Issue one is missing! Due to some computer problems a couple of years ago this Issue has mysteriously vanished from my computer and I don't have a hard copy. If anyone has hoarded all the past issues away and still has a copy of it please could you let me know. I really hope one of you has it. Fingers crossed.

I had a great morning out on Thursday to the South of England Show to watch a colt Ferdie that I shoe compete in the 2 Year Old Sports Horse Class. He is such an impressive horse and really did look stunning. He was a little overwhelmed with all the pretty fillies to look at and struggled to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing. That's men for you! :-)

 Here he is...

You can see more horses that I do in the Horse Portfolio section.