My Bag of Tricks Arrives

My new box of tricks arrived from Easycare this morning; an Easycare Comfort pad system. Basically, there are three different densities of pads for the inside of Lutine's boots, three different density frog supports and three different densities of frog pressure pads. You can mix and match to get the most comfortable support and protection for your horse.

I added a medium density comfort pad with a soft frog pressure pad to Lutine's boots. The medium density pad was the same as we were already using and she seemed comfortable on her soles with these. I then added the soft frog pressure pad to give her frog a more forgiving surface to bump into as she stands on each respective foot. I decided to use the soft pad as Lutine goes a lot more comfortably on soft ground and the aim is to make her comfortable to move and encourage a heel first landing.

Here are her pads:

She started moving much more comfortably as soon as I put her in them. I put them on her at the bottom of our field and then led her back up to the barn to dress a bite that one of the other horses had given her. She seemed, even then, to be landing less toe first on the near fore. Once I'd dressed the bite with some 'spray on sticking plaster' she had a drink at our water buckets and then proceeded to trot back down the hill with one of my other horses. She wasn't totally sound, still a bit sore on that near fore, but at least she was willing to break into trot downhill! She has been avoiding that avidly since our ground went hard again. I am happy enough with her movement in these boots now that I will start riding her again on the lanes.

Lutine started her Whole Horse herbal mix for movement this week too. It has a component for arthritis, a component for tendon repair and a digestion component. She's only been on it a couple of days so it's too early to tell its effect yet. I also have some more 10:10 Joint Support in the post for her - she definitely improves when she's on therapeutic levels of Glucosamine and MSM and deteriorates when she's not on it.