Lucy has horrible feet, she is what they call a sinker. That means her coffin bone is sitting right on the sole & the sole is sitting right on the ground. She gets trimmed about every 5-6 weeks, & Courtney has to use a dremel tool to clean up the weird growth on the front of her hooves.
This morning I noticed a lot of flies on her foot. When I checked it out I noticed a large piece on the front has completely come loose, & is only being held on by the coronet band. The coronet is where the hoof grows out from, & hers has been damaged. It's like if you injure the back part of your fingernail, so bad, that the nail grows in weird.
I tried to cut it off with my hoof nippers, but it's obviously sore & she didn't want me to do it. As many flies as there were I assume the hoof material is missing underneath the piece & the foot is open like an open wound or sore. I sprayed hydrogen peroxide behind the piece to make sure there weren't any maggots or anything like that. Nothing came out & believe me maggots will try to run if you spray them with hydrogen peroxide.
So I took pictures, covered it with Alu-shield to keep the flies at bay & sent an e-mail to the Equine Center up in Gilbert. If they say any vet can handle it, we'll have it worked on locally. But I want to make sure as little damage is done to her foot as possible. I just hope the piece doesn't get caught on something before we can get it cut off. I'll call them in the morning after they have a chance to look at the pictures & see what they say.
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