102. Happy hooves

As Sandy says, in the psycho-killer singsong of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, “He’s ba-a-a-ack!”  It’s her response to Gus’s recovery from the ouchy white-line disease in his feet.  She and I both notice he’s more obstreperous and obnoxious lately, a sure sign of his feeling in fine fettle.  Rather than stump along lamely as we lead him between paddock and stall, he now throws in the occasional neck-craning or foot-planting in an effort to control the direction of travel or simply to resist forward progress altogether.  

Flashing feet . . .

When Sandy sees us practicing the baby-carriage trick in the arena, she asks me to trot Gus a bit so we can assess his comfort level.  I pick up a dressage whip to send him along, but he pulls his refusenik antics until I smack the ground behind his heels.  Then he trots off, and keeps going voluntarily in a big circle.  Most of his steps look smooth and correct, with just a few strides that look very slightly gimpy.  As Sandy and I start comparing notes and I drop my whip arm, Gus immediately perceives our switch of mental focus, so he veers off and pops his front feet onto the pedestal with a sprightly clip-clop.  Of course, for that, he earns a click and a treat and laudatory huzzahs.

We’ve seen his soreness improve and then worsen before, and this time we’re taking no chances.  We agree on at least another two foot-soakings, just to make sure the fungal/bacterial invaders inside his hooves are well and truly destroyed.  I mix up another cocktail of bleachy White Lightning and distilled vinegar, and Gus is so inured to the treatment by now that when I approach with a Ziploc bag, he starts lifting his feet without being asked.  I pour in a few tablespoons of the noxious solution, tie the bags around his ankles with baling twine, and play a Scrabble game on my smartphone while he soaks.

Compared to keeping his feet in tubs of warm water, this is a (mildly smelly) walk in the park.  Still, I’ll be glad to finished with it.  And even gladder to cope with the behavioral fallout of happy hoof health.

89. VIDEO: Pain and pleasure

The soppy, gloppy springtime is always risky for Gus’s hooves.  Last spring he picked up a touch of thrush — a fungal infection of the frog, the soft V-shaped lump on the underside of the hoof — which cleared up easily with medication.  This spring he’s been a tiny bit sore on and off, and since it seemed to resolve once he got warmed up and moving, I figured it was just arthritis.  But today he’s almost head-bobbing lame when each front foot hits the ground.  I find iodine and a dropper outside his stall, and Sandy explains that he has white-line disease — it’s fungal and bacterial, and it can cause the outer hoof wall to crack and pull away from the core of the hoof.  Ick! and owww!   It needs to be stopped pronto.

I figure some games and treats will help distract Gus from his ouchiness, so we try some slow, easy interactions.  When I offer him the baby carriage, he perks right up — the joy of pushing it clearly trumps the pain of walking.  But I don’t want him stressing his hooves too much; to save him from himself, I put the carriage away early.  Now he indulges in his favorite self-soothing activity: rolling in the dirt.  Weight is off his feet, the dust and wood shavings provide a nice back scratch, and he luxuriates in the whole procedure:

I give him a nice rubdown, and Sandy adds an anti-inflammatory to his dinner.  I squirt iodine onto his hooves, aiming for where the white-line crack might be developing.  Now he’s frankly limping on his way out to the paddock, and Sandy contemplates soaking or packing his feet, to keep more iodine on them longer.  We’ll see how he does tomorrow.  Ever the hedonist and never the stoic, he’ll show us clearly just how he feels.