Beckie Mabbutt

This is a pony from Utah worked on by a friend of mine Jen Reid. Tia came to Jen with multiple problems, but the main concern was the lax tendons. This is an exceptionally fiddly job as the feet are so small. To give the tendons a chance to strengthen a heel extension was used, it was made out of wood then glued on.

My Mum visited the Check Republic this year and on her travels stumbled across some horses and "like mother like daughter" she took some pictures of the shoeing for me.

I can't tell you much about the style of shoeing but these shoes would have been put on with the thought that this would help pulling carts over cobbled streets. They look quite extreme with a large toe grab and huge rubber wedge across the heels. The trimming leads to a few questions as well! If any of you see any interesting feet whilst you're abroad and your not too embarrassed to snap away I'd be really grateful to see some more shoeing across the world.

Here is a radiograph of a splint. The splint bone is attached to the cannon bone by an Interosseous ligament, if this gets bashed or becomes damaged it ossifies and forms a solid lump. In June I added a post of a new splint on a different horse, so you can refer back to that to see what it would look like externally.

Here is a picture of the heels of Ossie. At first when I saw his heels due to the two symmetrical splits I thought something had burst out the bulbs of heel. Then a few weeks later one of the other horses trod on the heel of his hind shoe and significantly bent it. So having found no form of abscess or reason for anything to have burst out of the heels I know think he must have been playing a little close to his field companion and as a result got quite a bad tread injury.