Feet and bees

When I moved up here at the start of March, I said goodbye to my very very good friend and very very good farrier, Pat Crowley from Crowley forge. Once I found him my horses never went better and despite Connie have ridiculous feet- thin walls, one big foot and three small and one contracted heel, he always produced beautifully balanced feet and we made huge inroads with her feet. She isn’t able to go without shoes, normally I like to rest their feet for the winter, because she just blows abscess after abscess.

Obviously, in the whole shod unshod debate, I’m pretty pro shoes for horses that are athletes. That being said riders and owners need to educate themselves as to what good balanced well shod feet look like. But then the same thing goes for barefoot trims, it can be as natural as all get out but if it isn’t balanced then forget about it you are only going to have problems. I also do use studs. I’m not so worried at around 1.10m and lower but higher than that it is important for your horses confidence and safety that they have a solid grip on the ground. Especially because I mostly jump outdoors and on grass, and studs allow me to adapt to the conditions I am confronted with. It’s amazing the difference in confidence in a horse that has studs in on bad ground and a horse that is unsure of it’s footing.

Anyway, I digress. I came up here knowing that there wasn’t a really reknown  farrier, but the farrier I had was ok. While she was out of work and on the other horses he was ok, but Connie with her niggly little feet is another kettle of fish. The last time she was shod I said her heels aren’t even. He said they were that some scar tissue on her heel from an overreach was fooling my eye. Hmm. At Te Teko show I started to feel it in her gait. A slight unevenness and changes in her shoulder development that was causing my saddle to twist. Anyway, to my delight another farrier has come into the area whom Pat gave the thumbs up too.

He has done both Malinki and Connie and they have beautiful tidy balanced feet. Incidently, he said to me that Connies heels were uneven :/ The only question i want to ask him is why her front shoes are set back which has altered her breakover. In only a week my saddle has stopped twisting which is awesome because feeling like your saddle is crooked when you are jumping is not  a good feeling. Malinki is going really well. I had put a lot of pressure on her and I actually didn’t know if she would cope at one stage, but we have come out the other side and she is going well. So much so that I have registered the great lummox and next week she starts competing higher than 1m. Having found she likes a lot of contact at the base I am finding things a lot easier with her and she is jumping up into the air a lot more athletically and trying to be clean.

 

On Saturday I noticed a few bees flying around Truckie, and when I came around the corner it turned out that a swarm of bees had nested in Truckie. So many bees, like hundreds of freaking bees living in the chest bin on my truck. They sure moved in fast because they weren't there the night before.  I got the exterminator in and he picked up the majority of the swarm and powdered to kill the remnants. I know I know, so horrible for the poor honey bees. My cousin though being a great bee advocate found a man with a spare hive and he has set it up for our bees. The are moving into their hive in the picture above. The honey guy was so into his bees he was very interesting and we ended up so close to the bees. I'm glad my cousin saved them, because if the exterminators friend hadn't taken them, they would have been exterminated and the honey bees need all the help they can get :| . Still some damn bees in my truck though.