Saturday, March 30, 2019

Today Ginger got to go into the arena, along with her colt Ian, aka Bookbinder, and Reggie, the orphan from our wonderful show mare Born A Lopin Machine.  The story about Ginger has been told  and so many of you have followed her journey through her surgery.  She had her first shoeing since the surgery, one month ago.  She had her digital flexor tendon surgically severed to allow her coffin bone to rotate back to a proper angle.  Yesterday, our vet and farrier were at the barn together, along with one of our farm hands, Natalie, and I was there to watch.  Ginger's feet were x-rayed to make sure that the bones were in proper alignment and they were.  This was great news!  Ginger has been on 30 days of stall rest along with her colt Ian.  They have both been unbelievably tolerant and good about the confinement, but they were anxious to get out of the stall.  Before that could happen, Ginger had to be reshod.  Shoeing Ginger with this special shoe and wedge takes a long time, extraordinary skill and a lot of patience.  Our farrier, Clinton Smith, who is remarkable, was very patient with her and took almost two hours to do her feet.  The shoeing involves a special 10 degree wedge and shoe that has to be glued on around a special padding material.  The shoes are just glued on in the back, near the heel, and then a layer of glue is layered around the perimeter.  Ginger's toe is cut back to begin the process of reshaping her hoof capsule.  This is a complicated procedure.


When the shoeing was completed, the foot had to be wrapped in a food wrap type of material to allow the glue to set.  After the glue had set up, we were able to handwalk her in the arena.  This allowed her and her foal to go out into the arena.  We took advantage of this to allow Ginger, her foal and Ian and Reggie to get to know one another.  Reggie is the orphan that is two months old.  The hope is that he and Ian will get to know one another, play and become horses together and maybe, Ginger will take him on as her own.  The photo at the top of this post gives us hope!  I've said this before, Ginger is very good minded, without any meanness in her bones.  She is kind and if anything, she has become even better minded throughout this ordeal.  There are quite a few months to go to say we are completely out of the woods but today was very heartwarming.

After I brought in Reggie to his stall, Natalie let Ginger roll, which she loves to do but hasn't been able to do for 30 days.

This was just icing on the cake!

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