Feet Troubles

So I just talked to Liz, who went out to check Orion for me today after Saturday's disastrous lunging session.  (By the way, my hand still hurts - a lot.  Me being extremely accident prone has not been helping either.)  

It looks like his feet are going bad.  Decaying frogs, high heels.  Not much swelling in his legs anymore.  They weren't too bad on Saturday either.  I spent a while feeling them and comparing to see if there were differences since I'm not very good at finding little swellings.  When his fetlocks were big, that was different because you could actually see it.  Saturday was good though as far as his legs went.

Now, though, it looks like its his hooves I have to worry about.  I'm going to contact the farrier and talk to him about setting up some times to fix up his heels and cut back his toes a little more.  Can't have his feet screwing with his legs again.

As for his frogs...I'm going to have to look up some things to do for those because I've never heard of them decaying before.  If that makes me sound like a complete noob I apologize.  (Keep in mind he's my first horse.)  I know it's serious though.

Next time I'm out, I may start riding him at a walk for a little bit around the paddock and maybe one of the empty fields. :) Liz thinks he may be ready for just gentle short rides.

At any rate, his health and well being are what are most important to me, so getting his feet in shape are my priority now.  I've got to find a way to get up there more....

I will leave you with this picture, taken at the beginning of May when Chelsea and I were out at Linda's to work with Kit.....Chelsea caught Orion mid-graze.  He still had some of his winter coat.

This was before he belonged to me, but mainly I wanted to show you how drastically different his coat is this year......As soon as I get the new pics from this weekend from Chelsea, I'll post a couple so you can see him now....He's almost black!!  I legitimately almost didn't recognize him when I got there on Saturday - My first thought was literally "Did we get a new horse?"

Crazy...... lol