Max

16hh IDxTB 13 Years Old

Background

Max is an 'interesting' horse and to be honest one I'm not entirely sure where we are going with.

We got him on loan in April 2004, primarily for my mother to ride as her hacking horse Chester had been retired due to having a couple of mini strokes.

Max is a lesson in that just because a horse is in full work, and being competed, and being kept at full livery in a professional yard, that beneath the surface all may not be as it should.

When we tried him out he was very good, both my mum and I rode him in the school and a week or so later his owner boxed him over to our yard and we hacked out. At the time his owner remarked on how good he was being, as he had a tendency to be a little bit spooky, he also mentioned that he wasn't very keen on tractors but would be ok as long as you let him look at them.

None of this really phased me, Max was being fed a huge amount of course mix and I feed a fibre based diet. I thought that he would become a bit less spooky and more chilled out in a less demanding environment. How wrong I was!!

When we got Max in the April he looked like this:

I was quite surprised by his condition because I knew he had been having a lot of hard feed and also doing a lot of dressage schooling, he didn't have the muscle tone that I would have expected and had a lot of atrophy around the saddle area.

With any new horse I get the basics checked out, things like teeth, back, saddle, worm counts etc. The first professional to see him was the dentist. She took one look inside his mouth and said 'you haven't bought this horse have you'. Basically his mouth was one huge wave, with massive hooks that had caused his cheeks to be a bloody mess. He was very very uncomfortable to be done and she did what she could and we arranged for the rest to be done under sedation. She was also concerned about a front tooth that was decaying and may have had an infection going in to the jaw, which we agreed to keep an eye on and have now agreed that it will come out. The dentist thought that he had probably never had his teeth done by a EDT. Jayne is very astute, she asked if he was obsessed with his food, he is, to the point of being very defensive over his bucket. Once he has been given his dinner you can't go in to his stable and try and do anything with him, even just to hang a rug up or something. Jayne thought he had probably never been able to get the full goodness out of his food due to his teeth and that he had had to fight to eat. When you put the bucket in the stable his back legs used to kick out as if he was warning off something behind him.

Next up was the EMRT therapist. Basically he was a mess, we knew he had wire scars, his owner thought he had been run through a fence as a youngster. What the EMRT practitioner picked up was muscles with holes and scar tissue inside them. He was very reactive around the saddle area and his TMJ was very tight, probably linked to his tooth problems. He had three treatments and was not very happy to be done, when certain points were touched he would stamp a foot or kick out behind. Eventually the EMRT therapist got him to a stage where she was happy for him to start doing straight line work.

While the EMRT work was being done, we got the saddler out. Max came to me with a nice Frank Baines saddle, I wasn't very happy riding in it as the stirrup bar placement was too forward for me and I prefer dressage or WHP style saddles. It had been bought brand new and fitted for Max and his owner. It didn't fit, the saddler said not only did it not fit, she couldn't see that it would ever have fitted, besides which it was completely the wrong style for Max's confirmation. So we bought a nice second hand Swaine and Humphries holistic tree dressage saddle which I love and Max went very nicely in.

We were ready to get going and hit the road, Max was a little star, no sign of any spooking but he was a lot worse in traffic than we thought. He wasn't only worried about tractors, anything large coming up behind him would prompt a panic reaction. He would leap forward, he would come back to you but would quite often be cantering on the spot on the road until the lorry or bus had passed. This was ok with me, but very disconcerting for my mother who is not a confident rider.

By July 2004 Max was looking like a very different animal, he was more rounded and had a better topline across his back. He is carrying a bit too much condition in this photo but his muscle tone and back is much improved.

And then the fun really started. Max started to come out of his shell, he had actually been quite shut down when we first got him and as he physically started to feel better, he started trying to push himself with us. It started off with things like handling, having his feet picked up and things like that and progressed to very stallion dominant like behaviour where he would squeal and strike out at you in the field, and at any people or horses riding past his field.

This made him very challenging to handle and ended with him kicking Neil in the head when he was picking out his feet and sending him about 6 feet across the yard.

At this point we had had him a year and I gave notice to his owner to have him back. He had also been on the receiving end of some very strange behaviour when he had come to see him, to the point that he couldn't even handle him at all. Not surprisingly he didn't really want to have him back and a sort of impasse was reached. We had Max rig tested and it came back negative, a general blood screen also came back fine.

By this time I had decided to distance myself from him emotionally and we stopped trying to work him. He switched on to the magnesium and Top Spec diet that we now feed all our horses in 2005 and apart from his day to day care he was pretty much left to his own devises.

And then I started watching him. Max is bottom of the pecking order in the field, he isn't bullied by the other horses but he is kept in his place. He gets very anxious if he is left on his own so we usually bring him in first, if he knows it's time to come in, but the other horses are by the gate as well, he gets very agitated.

Sounds seem to set him off, a dog barking that he can't see, or any high pitched noise that he doesn't know where it's coming from can also get him very agitated. If he is in the stable he will start piaffing on the spot and throw himself at the door. We have discovered that he is usually diverted by food. It makes no sense trying to go in to the stable to calm him down, he either needs to come out of the stable and be tied up with a hay net, or given his dinner and left to get on with it. A crowd of people outside of his stable just makes him more agitated.

This behaviour makes life fun in a livery environment. If he is having a funny five minutes people like to come up and stand outside his stable and make comments. They also think it's fine to wave their whips at him in the field, if they are riding past, even if he has only come over to say hello and hasn't exhibited any weird behaviour. There is a post and rail fence between him and them, the path is wide, what exactly do they think is going to happen? He's got the reputation for being a dangerous horse, there are only a few people I would be happy to handle him, not necessarily because of him, but because of people's attitudes towards him.

These episodes are now getting less frequent, he has Global Herbs Mag Calm in addition to his magnesium oxide and this seems to be having an effect. Something I also plan to try in 2007 is Agnus Castus.

My attitude towards him has now changed as well, I'm trying to smile at him more and I make sure I always reward good behaviour as well as say NO to the bad behaviour. I also don't take any bad behaviour personally. I'm trying to understand him a bit more, he's not aggressive, he is defensive aggressive, if we try and understand what his triggers are, we can hopefully avoid them happening. This doesn't mean we creep around him, if something happens when we bring him in from the field we don't accept bad behaviour but we deal with it and then let it go. This approach seems to be working, his behaviour is much more level now, we are much more confident about handling him, I'll happily nip underneath his neck now instead of walking around his back end. I'm confident that I can gauge his moods and if he is in a hormonal mood, then we don't push it, we may not change his rugs and he may go straight in to the stable for his dinner. Is this avoiding the issue? possibly. Does this give us a better relationship with each other? definitely.

I once spent some time with Liz Morrison who is a NLP practitioner, she was talking about not setting yourself up to fail. At the time she had quite a highly strung mare and when we arrived at her yard she had made the decision not to ride her but to turn her out instead. I thought this was quite a strange decision, if you had decided to ride your horse you should. But the horse wasn't in the frame of mind to do good work. Liz started talking to us about balance of moods when you ride your horse, you could be in a really bad mood, and your horse is in a good mood, you go for a hack and it lifts your mood and makes you feel happy. Your horse could be having a bad day, you could be feeling very positive about things and decide to do a schooling session, whatever your horse throws at you you are in a good place to deal with it and however the session turns out it's still a positive experience. And then there are the days when your horse is in a bad mood and so are you. Sometimes going out for a blast can make both of you feel happier, but sometimes riding should be the last thing that you do, turn the horse out in the paddock and go and have a nice pub lunch or something.

This is my interpretation of what she says but I agree with her completely. If I've had a bad day Max is not the horse to spend time messing about with, he is too sensitive to mood. If I need cheering up I'm much better to spend some time with Jamie who although he is a full TB is a lot more chilled out and guaranteed to do something to make you smile. The trouble comes when all of us have had a bad day, and then we fight over who does which horse!

The plan for Max is to get his tooth taken out towards the Spring. We have been having some interesting discussions about this, the Dentist is sure that she can remove it standing up, the vet that took the x-rays wants to do it under a general anesthetic. I'm not happy about a GA if it's not necessary, there are always risks associated with this, and technically he is not mine (although possession is 9/10th of the law and all that!). The dentist has said she is happy to spend as long as it takes, I think the vet would prefer it to be done under his control.

In the meantime we will progress with his barefoot transition and start introducing some work in hand on the roads, if this goes well then we will also start some groundwork again in the school. I'm not sure he is ever going to be a horse for mum although she has said she is happy to ride him in the school, but we will see what happens.

Max takes a fairly simplistic view on life, he likes his food and his haynets, he likes being groomed and having scratches. I really don't think he would think life was any better if he did another 20m circle in trot, or perfected a canter half-pass.

Feet

Max is our latest horse to go barefoot. We had not taken him barefoot before because we thought he was going back, as he doesn't appear to be going anywhere we decided to take the plunge. He probably has some of the worst feet we have got coming out of shoes, mainly because we have always struggled with buggy frogs and mud fever, even in the summer. Neil was understandably not looking forward to doing the shoe removal, and due to how busy we were, it was done at night, standing in the yard using our fluorescent portable lights. We weren't sure how he would take to this either, but he was a little star, a complete gentleman and very easy to do.

Max went barefoot on the 16th December 2006. Neil whipped the shoes off before I had a chance to take shod photos but I have got some unshod but untrimmed. I apologise for the quality of these pictures, it was dark and we were moving quickly to make sure he wasn't uncomfortable.

Near Fore 16th December 06. The shoes had been on about eight weeks when they were removed. This pictures shows under-run heels and white line disease around the nail holes. On a white foot this is quite easy to see, it's the black areas around the holes. On this picture it looks like there are two rows of nail holes. This is correct, the quality of hoof wall is not good and the farrier struggled to place the nails sometimes.

The white line disease and hoof angle is interesting. Since becoming interested and learning more about barefoot hooves we have been asking our farrier if Max had got white line disease (knowing full well he did), he always said no. We used to asked him what he thought about Max's feet, his normal reply was, 'they are not the best feet in the world, but they are not the worst either', usually followed by, 'he's got typical Irish Draught feet.' This is a farrier that we have known for 20 years and tried very hard to get interested in barefoot. It's difficult when you have loyalty to a farrier but you don't think the best is being done by the horse. A broadminded farrier will make the journey with you, he may be sceptical about it but he'll give it a go, unfortunately any other type's services really need to be dispensed with.

Near Fore Solar View 16th December 06. In this shot we have simply removed the shoe nail by nail and then lifted the shoe away from the foot. Doing it this way minimises chipping. You can clearly see the outline of the shoe, the horn is unviable and very flaky, when it's rasped it makes a dull sound, like it is very brittle (which it is). Max is on the same food as the other horses, which is a recommended barefoot diet. The only difference between him and the other horses is that he wears shoes. The heels are not very visible in this picture but they are very contracted, Max has been shod by bringing the ends of the shoe up to the frog. The reddy brown areas are rust from the shoe.

Near Fore Solar View Post Trim 16th December 2006. This is the near fore following the first trim. It was a conservative trim as the first trim out of shoes often is, the excess hoof was trimmed with the nippers and a conservative roll applied as the thickness of the horn is not very good. The majority of the white line is black, indicating white line disease. For this first trim we simply sprayed the foot with Milton which is why it appears wet, we will let Max get used to his newly naked foot and do a soak in a few days time.

24th December 2006. Max has his first soak, he is wearing the Peter Laidely high tech soaking boots (basically car inner tubes and velcro). As he was being such a good boy we did three 10 minutes soaks on his front feet, and two 10 minute soaks on the hind feet.

This is the near fore following the soak. The hoof wall is very thin and the white lines are still black. What has always troubled us with Max is the slit that can be seen between the heels, the central sulcus is very deep, this traps muck and bug. Max has always been very sensitive to have his feet picked up and while he was wearing shoes we were unable to treat this properly (you can not soak a shod horse in Milton or any chlorine/bleach based solution as it causes the nails to rust and breakdown in the hoof).

And this is what both front feet look like following the soak. This is eight days following the initial trim. The feet have kept their shape well, there are no chips. One of the benefits of the shoes being on for eight weeks before removal is that the nail holes are very low to the ground, within a couple of trims these will not be visible.

To my mind these feet look like hind feet, the heels need to decontract, the hoof will widen and the toe will come back, the whole hoof will become a more rounded shape. This isn't going to happen overnight though, the back of the foot is very weak, we need to get rid of any bug in the frogs, make sure he is doing a heel first landing and wait. 'A Tincture of Time' as Peter Laidely would say.

For the first two or three days Max was quite cautious on his new feet. He has to navigate of drop of about eight inches out of his stable and the yard, the yard drop on to stones. The drive way to the field is also quite stony although they can pick their way through it if you give them time to find their path. There is also a grass verge either side of the drive that they can walk on if they want.

Max never sought out the grass verges, he picked his way carefully up the drive and once in the field was sound and confident. As he has a tendency to strike out with his front feet, he's not the sort of horse we want to boot up to bring in from the field so unfortunately he has had to make the best of it, so far I have not been worried about him though, we haven't had any funny comments from fellow yard members.

He is now striding in and out from the field well, he takes the odd cautious step over a large stone but is fully sound over smooth concrete. Our main priority at the moment is to get rid of the white line disease and also the bug that is lurking in the depths of the collateral grooves.

Near Fore Lateral View - 4th January 07

We decided to do the second trim on the 4th Jan, 15 days after the first trim. This is post trim, it may just be wishful thinking but already it's looking a better hoof than 15 days ago. The heels have come back somewhat, the nail holes are nearer the ground and only one row of nail holes are visible. The feet kept their shape quite well, there was a couple of raggedy bits but apart from that no real chipping.

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Near Fore - 4th January 07

A terrible photo, it's hard taking digital photos in the dark when you can't see the display. A mustang roll has been applied, actually Max isn't a mustang so I think I'm going to call it a Berkshire Bevel. The hoof looks ok, however appearances can be deceiving, I anticipate that the top part of the hoof will grow in at a much steeper angle and that in a month or so these hooves will look quite flared and bell shaped. We will need to keep on top of this. There isn't enough growth at the top to fully gauge where his feet want to be, really you need about 1.5 inches to make an accurate guess.

Near Fore Solar View - 4th January 07

This photo shows how thin the hoof walls are. The white line is not yellow/white, although I have been soaking I am still not on top of the white line disease. I'm still worried about the deep groove between the heels, he has these on all four feet. At the bottom of this groove muck is accumulating and they are always a bit stinky, a hoof pick goes in quite a way. The heels are still very contracted, which isn't really a surprise, it's only been 15 days.

This is a bit of a close up of the back of the frog. There is not really any definition to the frog, there should be a natural depression or scoop which is the central sulcus which does not have a crack in it. The frog should also have more fullness to it, rather than being a defined geometric triangle shape, it should bulge slightly then taper to a point. If we don't get on top of anything lurking at the bottom of this crack, then his frog is not going to start functioning properly (as he will be uncomfortable and not doing a heel first landing). Once he is more comfortable and placing his hoof correctly, the digital cushions and lateral cartlidges will strengthen and the heels will start to decontract.

At the moment we are hosing off his feet and brushing off any mud at night. In the morning when his feet are dry we are either trying to get bug buster cream into the slit by pointing the nozzle into the slit and encouraging the cream in with our fingers, or by using the dental floss technique with a bit of bandage. This is hard to do on your own, ideally you need someone to hold the hoof and someone to dental floss.

The good news is that Max is less reactive to having this done and the hoof pick is coming out less stinky so progress is being made.

Off Fore Lateral View - 4th Jan 07

I have included a photo of his off fore as well this time as it is quite interesting. Looking at this photo I can see a vertical depression running down the length of his hoof. This doesn't look like a crack, it's more like a fold in the hoof wall, a bit like an event line but vertical instead of horizontal. I've not actually noticed this on Max's hoof before so I will keep an eye on this, it should just grow out. This hoof is Max's problem hoof (well more of a problem than the other problem hooves). Max sustained a wire injury when he was young and this hoof has a scar on the back of the heel bulb. This foot has always been steeper than the other one and they have never been a matching pair, this is fine, they don't have to match, but it does also correspond with some muscle wastage up in his shoulders and withers.

Off Fore Solar View - 4th January 07

In this shot you can see that the hoof wall thickness is pretty much the same as the near fore, however the heels are more contracted and the frog is even weedier than the other one. He is much more sensitive to have his off side feet picked out, and sometimes it's a real struggle, once you have picked the hoof out, he doesn't fully weight bear on it and will often stamp the hoof. We have got a long way to go with this hoof.

If I can't get on top of the buggy frogs I will bring out the big guns which is a Milton soak, an application of bug buster through the slit and then completely covering the frog with bug buster and taping on a nappy overnight. This should allow the cream to soak in rather than being wiped off by the bedding.

In terms of soundness Max is walking up and down the stoney track very happily, he still isn't seeking the soft ground and occasionally does the odd jog. I would expect him to be sound in the school, moving out well on smooth tarmac but need protection if he were to be ridden over rough ground. In himself he seems very happy, being quite cute and loveable at the minute and has been very calm to handle even in all the stormy windy weather we have been having.

People often report that their horses have had a personality transplant coming out of shoes. I have usually put this down to a diet change and the introduction of magnesium, however Max's diet has not changed, the only thing to change is the shoes coming off. It's early days but I like this new Max, he is very cuddly.

We are about to change Max's bedding from Ecobed cardboard to Aquamax wood pellets. We have already done this with Charlie and found it is very absorbant (both horses are very wet), the wet doesn't come up to the surface so it doesn't get trodden on, and the feet are very dry and hard in the morning, regardless of how wet and muddy the legs are the night before. It's saving us about 20 minutes per stable in mucking out time as well, which is handy because we are fighting against the wet weather and scrubbing, soaking and applying cream to four horses takes quite a while.

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