March 8th, 2010

Huey-
I've been able to work with Huey about 2-3x/week now and he continues to improve with the handling of his feet- at first I could hardly pick up his front left foot and couldnt at all pick up his back feet- with some massageing and insistence to walk with me , he has quickly developed some trust and today I was able to fairly easily pick up his right front and both back feet long enough to put in a dose of 'dry cow' and thrush off treatment and finished by covering the mix with bag balm to help seal it in. The dry cow is a treatment used to treat cows that have an infection in their udder/teats, but it is also well-recommended by equine vets in the treatment of thrush. The thrush off is a great new product that is able to kill just the thrush and not harm the surrounding live healthy tissue of the frog. Bag balm is great to protect the feet from further moisture and also has an antiseptic in it. I am still not having much luck picking up his front right foot and this is b/c it is too painful to stand on his left foot to accomplish this- my only hope is to get him healthier in his other feet that it will not be so painful to allow me to pick out andtreat that right front- however will help from another person this can be done now.

He is eager to walk and it may seem very painful for him but it is the best thing for him to get the healing from increased circulation- this is why it would be great for any qualified volunteers to go ahead and throw a halter on him and lead rope and march him up and down the breezeway for 1/2 day. It is ok that his muscles may quiver a bit and they will- they have been locked up and stiffened from lack of use/flexibility. He gets a bit winded , but must be asked to push through it in order to get in shape- plenty of breaks are fine. After our exercise time today I noticed he quickly settled down in the mud for an exhausted nap.

My thoughts for his near future- continue the daily exercise and I can tend to picking his feet as that task is still a bit difficult and he may accidently kick out or step on a hand so I would caution against most people trying to do this with him now- also he may not be so trusting and I don't want to break the trust I ahve built with him so far by having him have a bad experience with someone trying to pcik his feet and something goes wrong, he gets a bit too strong to handle.

It will take Huey a full year to grow his new hoof wall at the correct angle- so for now we only need to nurture his muscles and tendons back into shape and get him compfortable with treating his feet often.

Tom- Tom's lymphedema to me has improved= this is why I think so- I can tell the swelling in his upper leg and lower ankle has definately gone down from when I first worked with him . The most encouraging thing is that the open wounds are beginning to completely scab over- which show me that he no longer needs the open wound to drain some of the lymphatic build up and his body is able to process it internally and excrete it through his urine. The herbs I am giving him are from Silver Lining and he gets the lymphatic support and some liver and kideney support as well as bio-sponge- an internal natural clay that absorbs toxins internally and gently. The idea is to support his liver/kidneys which needs to be strong to process all the excess fluid and excrete it thru urine-
He is currently out of shape and needs the exercise to build both strength and most importantly to circulate and pump all the fluid thru his body and excrete it. So the name of the game for Tom is EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE. I will work on the supplements to build up his liver/kidneys and also a blood cleaner herbal supplement to finally rid his body of the toxic build up- but none of this will happen without some consistent exercise- even 1/2 walking up and donw the breezeway or - like I did today- just pushing him along in the paddock from behind tapping him on the bum with a lead line - he thinks its a game! I had to make sure to not rile up the herd and kept it at a walk. He also showed me all the places along the fence where there was no ribbon- so I moved the ribbons to the empty spot to emphasize even boundaries.
The wrap is a great idea and serves to automaticalyy massage him with every step- the goal is to get his lymphatics strong enough to do the work on his own- so a mixture of both approaches should do the job.