Jewel’s new shoes

Jewel greeting one of our younger guests at the open house.

Jewel has doing well in her training and riding work with shoes on for the last 6 weeks. Our farrier Marla Karabinos was out yesterday to put a new set on. We discovered that she has a pretty significant bruise along the outside of her right front foot under the shoe. This is her high angled “club” foot and was the reason she got shoes on when we found that the hoof was causing her discomfort. Why she has the bruising on this foot is due to the limb deviation which causes uneven loading. Simply put, she lands heavy on the outside of her right foot and this caused a bruise to form.

We are trying a new set of shoes with leather pads cut to fit just under the shoe. The hope is that this piece of leather might help some of the compression caused when she loads that foot. We are also doing a bit more research to see if there is anything else we can do to help her feel better on that foot. She remains sound for riding so far but the bruise tells us there is a problem. She is stoic so she doesn’t show pain while being worked but she’s extremely sensitive to the hoof testers. We will continue to work on getting her hooves comfortable in hopes to help prevent any long term issues. On a positive note, her left knee has reduced a little in size since the shoes have been put on. The support and trim have helped alleviate some of the stress on that leg. Here are a few pictures to understand what the bruise looks like, the conformation on that right leg and the new shoes we put on yesterday.