feet

someone who'd seen the photos i posted in the spring sent me a message saying such things as molly's frogs looked not right through lack of contact with the ground (the message was recent, even though the photos werent'). i printed it off and showed my farrier today when he came out to trim molly's feet. he was quite amused. my farrier trains other farriers and is good at what he does ... including barefoot trims. Molly's happy with her feet, no signs of any lameness, goes over anything (that is when she goes at all LOL!). we also discussed asymmetry and related conformational issues.

in terms of the asymmetry at the back - i have to get the physio to ring the farrier, he won't take it from me as he's been caught out in the past with the old 'chinese whispers' messages and i can quite understand that! so i shall have to get lee to ring him. also said, a bit difficult to do too much remedially without shoeing, and i don't want to do that ....

generally, we both remain of the view that the more work i can get into her the more balanced she will become generally and thus the more balanced her feet will be in turn.

before he came, I'd done some neck stretching exercises in the stable.

after he went, i took her into the arena to loose school. She was in a bit of a hooly mood at first, took herself off full tilt and even threw in a buck (which I haven't seen her do loose before!) - i think because it was a bit windy and the others were way over the other side of the field and not standing watching as they usually do!

but all the time she had an ear on me ...

eventually she slowed down and walked; my plan had been, of course, to see if i could get round to the right side of her head without too much grief.

i did indeed manage to do that, she remained standing still whilst i stroked all over the right side of her body and even walked round me properly once, instead of doing her usual turn on the forehand to try and put me on her left again!

the first time was better slightly that the second, but she did do it.

but as soon as she gets a chance, she has me back on her left side again.

still, small progressive step.

I then took her a walk through to the willow tree to cool her down, she'd got herself a little bit sweaty. I suppose we were in the arena about 1/2 hour, probably longer than I'd intended

overall i was quite pleased.