Moses and The Perfect Horse
As usual, to see larger versions of the pictures, click on the small version.
To go directly to any of the segments, click below:
Moses, his wife Patricia and his brother Billy came to the Ranch on Friday, March 8. It was the first time
I've gotten to see Big Al get shod, so I was there with my camera.
I took pictures of Al, Cody, Dahlia and Zeph being attended to. Al
was first and presented no problems. I took a bunch of pictures of
the process because (a) it's Al and (b) it was interesting because it
was first.
After Al, everybody had something special: Cody has special gel (they
looked like silicon) shock absorbing implants around the frog of his foot,
it was Dahlia's second time getting shod, and Moses discovered an absess on
Zeph's foot. Ms L also had fancy shoes put on, to reduce the stress to her
ring-boned area, but the pictures came out even worse then usual, so I didn't
put them up. So. This page has pictures and stories of The Shoeing of Ali, followed by
The Shoeing of Cody, followed by The Shoeing of Dahlia, followed by
The Cleaning of Zeph.
The first thing you notice is that Moses comes prepared. His trailer has everything:
hammers, anvil, forge, coffee cup . . .
When I got there, Billy had pulled Al's shoes, and Moses was just getting started putting
them back on. First, he filed her down, then he clipped some edges and filed some more. He
then checked to see that his shoe nominees fit properly, then nailed them on. Notice that
Patricia is tool-passing, and you can see Billy in the background removing Cody's shoes, so
he'll be ready - this is a finely tuned operation!
I put in pictures of the process on Al's rear end to illustrate the use of that fixture
that supports her hoof while Moses works on it. If I understood properly, it's really
easy to unbalance small horses when you're holding their feet up. Using this little
brace not only frees up the farrier a little, it provides a more stable platform for the
horse - a good bargain all round.
Al was perfect and Moses was appreciative.
Cody was next in the barrel. The first step was to wake him up - was a casual character!
Billy checked to see that his feet were clean, etc, while Moses and Patricia set up for
the "operation". First, Moses got out the highly specialized farrier adhesive: Duct Tape!!
Then he split off sections of it and stuck them on Patricia for easy access. (No, he's
not holding her up by threatening her with a loaded roll of duct tape.)
After that, he nailed on the shoe. BUT, between the shoe and the hoof, he put a hoof
shaped piece of plastic, about 1 cm thick under the shoe, and just a mesh across the
interior of the shoe. You can sort of see this in rightmost picture in the top row. The
purpose of the mesh, as Patricia explained it, is to act like rebar when you pour concrete;
it gives the gel a matrix to adhere to. Moses then used
the duct tape stored on Patricia to create "dam" around the hoof/shoe, open on one end.
He then used what looked like an epoxy gun to shoot the goo into the dam, filling Cody's
entire hoof, well over the mesh, almost to the level of the bottom of the shoe. Moses
then covered the entire hoof with duct tape and let it sit for about 5 minutes.
When the tape was removed, the entire interior of Cody's hoof was filled with a soft, gel-like
substance (maybe silicone?). Now, when his feet hit the ground, instead of driving down onto
the frog like a piston, the amount of travel will be limited by the soft gel. Moses said
that he had used this technique on horses with laminitis and that they had been able to
get back to completely normal feet - here's hoping it works for Elvis, too.
Dahlia was next. She had been shod before, but only once and it was a couple of years
ago. As is her habit, she adjusted beautifully, only occasionally needing to see what
Billy and Moses were doing to her feet.
Zeph was next; although he didn't get shoes, he just got trimmed. While Moses was
trimming, he found an absess, cleaned it out and packed it with betadine soaked cotton.
As you can see, Zeph was undone by the experience.
