Visit Ace's early years on how he came to live here - just click "here".
We spent a lot of time with him as a baby - going for walks and just hanging out. And as he got older we found that he was a bit of a pest, very inquisitive and into things. Quite the character. We had him broke by a fellow with a good reputation and we were told that he was a bit lazy! My kind of horse....
We also found out that he was very accident prone as a result of his curiosity. Winter of '06-'07, he cut his right hind foot up into the pastern. We doctored it and kept him in the barn out of the cold. I babied him!After some time, we decided it was time for him to be turned out. He didn't even make it one day - That evening it was noticed that he had cut the side of his head wide open (the area I would call the cheek) and he must have cut a nerve since his bottom lip just hung. Oh he was a terrible sight! The only explanation maybe was that it was pretty cold and one of the others took after him and he wrapped his head on the round bale feeder. We are unsure... So back to the barn for more salve...
I did get him all healed up for that spring.... We did a little bit of riding but mostly took it easy on him since his hoof injury was uncertain... he had cut from the hoof up into the heel and into the pastern... It healed nicely and the farrier indicated we would just keep an eye on it and with more riding it may be determined that he may need a special shoe.
We were unsure what he had gotten into but suspected it may have been the tin around the lean-to next to the barn (their shelter).. so we removed some of the tin.
Spring of 2008, he cut his foot again right over the same area and worse. It was determined that he was trying to cut his hoof off -- The vet visited again - this time her intern took pictures of what she called an interesting injury. He cut right on top of the first cut and then higher up - it was much worse. We had to keep the hair shaved so that it would heal as well as possible.
The wound was cleaned and cut back to help avoid any larger scarring. Then we were back to soaking his foot in epsom salts and applying a neo-predef powder (which was a different med the second time around - it worked wonderfully). He was given an antibiotic injection and meds for the next 7 days.
Soaking, applying powder and wrapping.... And I believe he enjoyed every bit of it! One thing to note is that through both of his hoof injuries he was never lame - he never missed a beat. Each time I waited for him to come up lame and in fact the second time I cried because I thought he had really done it and we were looking at facing the issue of putting him down. The vet said he's the one to keep - he is one tough guy!
The farrier was just here in January and each time he finds it amazing that this has turned out so well. This visit he found that the hoof is now starting to fill in but reminds me that that area will never be "hoof" strong and in fact may need to be cleaned back out occasionally. From the top side it is not so noticable but the underside of the hoof is somewhat malformed.
This isn't a very good picture - but you can see the entire right side
of the hoof doesn't even look correct - and his frog area is not shaped as usual either.
Our riding style has changed from running to fun shows and trips out West to "old people riding" -- Our main riding now is just a jaunt (which is right down his alley) around our property. So for the meantime he is okey dokey! And I'm very happy that our farrier is quite young.... he seems to have a very good handle on this one!
