Beckie Mabbutt

Right here's a little bit of a competition for you. Below is a radiograph of a horses foot. There is something significantly wrong with it. I challenge you all to find the problem and let me know. First person to call me with the correct answer gets a freshly baked cake at the next shoeing :-)

A fellow Farrier friend of mine Jen Reid works at a Horse Sanctuary in Utah and this poor horse Riley came to them. Riley had a broken hind leg, and generally she was in a very poor condition. Here are the before and after pictures after some serious surgery and some TLC. Amazingly with her prosthetic leg she still manages to canter and buck round the field. I've seen pictures of a donkey with only three legs but never a horse. I hope to meet Riley one day on one of my trips to the States.

Here is a Quater crack on a warmbloods foot, click on either image below to see more about cracks.

This is a Donkey that arrived at an Animal Sanctury in Utah USA in a very bad way. This is not a donkey I've actually seen, a friend of mine Jen Reid, a Farrier that runs this Sanctuary showed me these pictures and I wanted to share them with you. Jen did get the chance to trim this little donkey after these pictures were taken, but quite rightly this donkey was put down as it wasn't going to have a good enough quality of life.

It's shocking to see animals get to this stage.

I've just had a great week in Cincinnati at the worlds largest Hoof Care Summit. It is a conference for Farriers all over the world with 75 lectures taking place over a four day period. As well as attending as many lectures as possible I was also working on a Booth at the Trade Show. I was proudly representing the Equine Lameness Organisation, an organisation that is based around providing Information and Education.

Here are a couple of pictures from my trip.