Thursday, September 20, 2007

Annoyed with myself

I am home sick today. I was supposed to see music therapy clients and instead I have been visiting the porcelain God on a regular basis. I think maybe I'm done, but I feel weak and tired. I do NOT want to go out of town, and I'm really happy that I"m only going as far as Cat's friend, Susan's tonight. She will be here in a bit and we're going to load her truck and then go pick up my horses...well, Jackie's horses, for the Bigfoot Boogie. It will be Jena's and Maggie's first ride. They are very excited. I'm going to ride Skipper, Jackie's foxtrotter. Maggie is going to ride Brody, one of her Quarter Horses. I had toyed with taking Freeley, but he's still on antibiotic and therefore not legal to compete...besides, he still has the cut on his leg.

I'm really angry with myself today. I got talked into shoeing Freeley's front feet. He has some rotation and per the vet, he recommended shoeing him to get it healed. HE thinks it won't be long term, but that I should give it a chance to get better. I wasn't going to shoe b/c I don't like shoes. Today the farrier came and I guess he and Jackie got to talking and they called me and said they thought he needed shoes. Here I am home sick and I just didn't have the energy to argue. I let them shoe him. Now I'm just sick that I let them talk me into doing something I don't really agree with. But it's done. I'll see if he's anymore comfortable this way, but I just can't see that I've made the right choice and I'm irritated with myself.

I get tripped up b/c I know people who shoe and don't shoe and they all have valid points. I think that it might help him to wear shoes, but I don't want to be thought of us unenlightened. I get that shoeing long term is bad for the horses. I get that barefoot is best. But sometimes I'm not sure that barefoot is best. But I can't KNOW for sure. I only have the vet telling me what to do on one end and the barefoot advocates telling me what to do on the other end. I end up confused and stressed out in the middle.

2 comments:

enduranceridestuff.com said...

Hi Alice - you may want to give using pads in boots a try. See this article by Pete Ramey: http://hoofrehab.com/bootarticle.htm Good luck

Alice Perryman said...

I had planned to do this with him, but I wasn't sure I wanted to leave him in the field 24/7 with boots/gaitors on. He lives on really rocky ground. The shoes are on and I'll see how he does. It's not forever.

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