I posted some pics I took yesterday of Riosa’s hooves after our trim and have some questions and need some guidance please.

1.  Should I be taking her front toes shorter?  There still seems to be a bit of a bulge on the bottom of the fronts which I am working on removing still too.  I want to make sure we don’t end up where we were before with this so want to make sure I keep them short enough.  

After looking at the pics the hinds need to come back more I feel and I need to remove more on the lateral sides of hinds to remove some flare.  Hind heels still need to grow and I have just been bevelling all to encourage heels to move back more.

2.  She still has a lot of sole material which appears to be built up especially on the toe area of her fronts.  Will this eventually just let go and do I leave it until then?  Or is there anything I can do to help promote it to let go? 

She has her boots on 24 - 7 these days with socks and in colder temps wears 2 pairs of socks and a liner made out of material with a foil inlay built in which people use as mining for jackets.  This seems to be working well to keep her feet warm.  She is also blanketed when temps are below 20C and layers are adjusted further when colder than -25C.

I have been working her again (lunging, ground driving with large squares and circles) now that the weather is warmer but have been leaving  the boots on just in case to keep her feet somewhat warm and just removing the socks.   Or should I be taking the boots off too for our workouts if temps are warmer (ranging from -3C to -15C)?

3.  Have her hoofs grown out enough for me to start some
mounted work with her?  Or should I still continue to do ground work with her at this point?

So far she seems to be doing well and made it through the brutal polar vortex weather we had...but it was this time last year that she came down with winter laminitis too. The winter laminitis happened in warmer weather like this after a stretch of cold weather.  Perhaps it was due to the effects of the cold weather and it just caught up to us.

I had her insulin and glucose pulled a week ago Friday and it was sent to the lab on this past Monday so hoping to have results back soon. 

Thanks in advance.

Heather

August 5, 2017, Brandon, Manitoba, Canada

Riosa 
https://ecir.groups.io/g/CaseHistory/files/Heather%20and%20Riosa

https://ecir.groups.io/g/CaseHistory/album?id=8819 


Storm