We gave Charlie a couple of days after taking her under our wing to get settled in and comfortable with us and her surroundings. After one week, we began in phases to trim her hooves down to the point where she'd be comfortable. Sheila and Dana took turns tending to her feet until we were able to give a good finished set-up barefoot trim. Our goal is to give her hooves the opportunity to heal. She has severe separation from the coffin bone and hoof wall, so the first thing we did was figure out where her break over point would be and trim down to that to prevent further separation as the hoof wall grows. As you can see from the pictures she has connected growth at the top 1/4 beneath her coronet band. We want to continue this down to the ground.

You will notice in the pictures what appears to be blood. Please be rest assured this is old dead laminae tissue that has grown out and did not cause her any pain as we trimmed her. We found some old scarring from an abcess. She was also quite pigeon toed. Only a few weeks after her first trim we noticed she's straightening up a bit! Very exciting news! Her heels were very crooked so we balanced them as best we could to prevent bruising.

Notice at the very top near her coronet band how the hoof is starting to grow at the correct angle. Here she is growing connected tissue, and we want to continue this growth over the next 8-12 months. To do so, we trim her ever 4 weeks with a nice mustang roll. We look forward to each new trim!

After hacking a good 3 or 4 inches back, we rasped any flaring to keep leverage off of the toe to prevent further separation. Much of the hoof that we trimmed off was stretched sole and laminar wedge which is built up dead tissue. She has good thick hoof wall! We are confident she will grow a beautiful hoof!