Sugar

"Our gold does not chink and glitter. It gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark." Chief Joseph

November, 03 - The Beginning

Sugar, November 10, 2003, with one shoe remaining, the left front having fallen off somewhere in the paddock before she was moved to her new home.

Fronts

Left front

Right front. Notice how high the heel is

Left Hind

Right Hind

Body showing the pain in spite of 2 to 4 grams of bute that was being administered daily

Shoe with acrylic

First trim

Left front

Right front

In this picture, taken 11/10/03, you can see the coffin bone wrapped in sole and laminar tissue

As of February 25th, 2004

Body pain all but disappeared by the second week though this photo was taken in Feb.

Left Front

Right Front

What Sugar has to teach us (Feb,03)

I've learned several things from trimming this horse. One, is that horses, range animals if you will, have a tremendous ability to heal if given half a chance. I trimmed Sugar on a weekly basis and was amazed each time I saw her at the new tissue she had grown, at how fast she was putting hoof on. The deterioration in her hoof wall and especially her soles was startling at the beginning. (Compare the Left Front Dorsal and Lateral picture from Feb 25th, 04 with those taken just after removing her shoe.)

Another thing I learned is that a horse in her condition in November can get around, can survive and can heal. I don't mean to overstate this point but I think that we, as human beings, often think the more we do the more we create a positive effect, the more we can control the outcome. So we get out the hammer and nails and build something to force an outcome. This is probably good thinking if we're building something to cross a river. But with animals that kind of thinking, to the extent it does not take into full account the biological reality of the animal, is dangerous. And what was being done to her feet ignored her biological reality with a vengeance!

Sugar brought home the importance of hoof hydration. Proper terrain and MOVEMENT have been deeply ingrained but hydration was not in my gut. She was on 3 acres of soft, flat ground covered with pine needles and this ground was moist most of the time and even so she had her feet soaked daily in soaking boots with apple cider vinegar. She was also pastured with two geldings that kept her moving. Take any one of those elements away and her healing would have been seriously put in jeopardy.

Its always risky business to generalize from the individual to the many, but I would bet the farm that anyone using these same techniques and conditions could duplicate these results. In other words, Sugar may not be proof of the new paradigm but she is supporting evidence.

Check back every so often to see her progress as I will update this page with new pictures of her healing hooves.

As of April 13, 2004

This is a foundered horse, in rehab, on no NSAID's of any kind. She is relaxed and quite capable of getting around.

This is a comparison of her right front hoof. That on the left, just before her first trim in November, '03, and that on the right in April of '04.