Edit: Oh I forgot to mention! Instead of doing the all inclusive vaccine dose that the vet usually does, I purchased the FluVac6 and West Nile separately. We gave the FluVac6 2 days ago and so far NO soreness or reaction to be seen! Will do the West Nile in a week or two and I'll be hoping for no reaction there either!
Nothing but improvement since my last post :) I have been really busy this last month so it has been fairly easy to give Shorty time off since that has been the plan. He has gotten a couple baths lately! He has not seemed lame at all ever since he has regained soundness with regular front shoes. We are now on the 3rd cycle of shoes and each time his feet look better and the shoes have to be widened. Ever since those bar shoes ripped off so much hoof wall back in January, he has just needed time to grow a new hoof and it's almost all grown out now. The farrier says there are no signs of him being foot sore at all that he notices, and he works on several who have issues.
I wonder what would have happened had I never gone on that trail ride and then I would have continued to think he was going to need bar shoes forever and that was that. I probably would have kept riding and trying to make it work. It's been quite a mess of a journey and I do feel awful that he had to ruin his hooves before coming to this point. It is hard to invest so much money to just let your only horse sit. Life definitely has its ways to slap you in the face. I do not know if I am silly for thinking Shorty may still have a future of being a using horse of some kind again, but I will say that I am cautiously optimistic. For now I continue to indulge in agility dog sports and take other riding and training opportunities that come my way while Shorty's biomechanics sort themselves out through time. I have a week long apprenticeship coming up with my favorite local horse trainer - can't wait!
I plan to ride Shorty tonight for a bit along with a friend. It'll be nice to get out and enjoy getting on my boy again. It has been almost 3 weeks!
I have pictures that I meant to upload, but for some reason I'm having issues with wifi on my desktop which is where the pics are. I'll try to remember to add them here later!
