On Sunday Filly had a visit from Mel Isaac who works closely with Nic Barker and so knows the method Nic uses to rehabilitate horses with navicular. Unfortunately I could not be there as I was at an aikido training camp in Sweden, so my wife, Ritchie, was there instead of me.
I had been a bit nervous about this visit as it really was an assessment to see if all our hard work was bearing fruit. I've been walking her every day I have off for many weeks now to ensure her feet got enough natural wear and stimulation to help them heal themselves. I was a very nervous "daddy" on Sunday dreading to hear the result.
I needn't have been :) . Mel did not even feel it necessary to trim Fillys' feet. So that is around 3 months now with nothing but a very light rasping when I have not been able to walk her enough due to work.
Mel thought that her big issue now was to build up muscle on her right side so the emphasis should switch from walking her out to more work in the menage. In particular we need to work on her straightness on a circle on the right rein. We can do this by using lots of three track / four track work and also by varying the tightness of the circle she maintains. In effect I can now go back to more playing online and less walking out on the roads. She'll still get her walks of course to ensure she encounters a variety of surfaces to "massage" her feet.
So in general I can now see a light at the end of the tunnel and can actually realistically hope that one day in the not too distant future we can ride again.
When I get time I'll post about the aikido camp. We trained with a Japanese master could Endo. There was so much that relates to horsemanship in there I'm still assimilating it all. Here is a link to his wikipedia page which should give you a flavour of what I mean Endo wiki entry
I had been a bit nervous about this visit as it really was an assessment to see if all our hard work was bearing fruit. I've been walking her every day I have off for many weeks now to ensure her feet got enough natural wear and stimulation to help them heal themselves. I was a very nervous "daddy" on Sunday dreading to hear the result.
I needn't have been :) . Mel did not even feel it necessary to trim Fillys' feet. So that is around 3 months now with nothing but a very light rasping when I have not been able to walk her enough due to work.
Mel thought that her big issue now was to build up muscle on her right side so the emphasis should switch from walking her out to more work in the menage. In particular we need to work on her straightness on a circle on the right rein. We can do this by using lots of three track / four track work and also by varying the tightness of the circle she maintains. In effect I can now go back to more playing online and less walking out on the roads. She'll still get her walks of course to ensure she encounters a variety of surfaces to "massage" her feet.
So in general I can now see a light at the end of the tunnel and can actually realistically hope that one day in the not too distant future we can ride again.
When I get time I'll post about the aikido camp. We trained with a Japanese master could Endo. There was so much that relates to horsemanship in there I'm still assimilating it all. Here is a link to his wikipedia page which should give you a flavour of what I mean Endo wiki entry
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