Roo's hooves

Roo has been here just over 3 weeks and is already making some good changes to her hooves. This is already a foot with improving balance. 

Her lameness is mild and although her medio-lateral balance is changing quite significantly, she was already landing heel first which gives her a head-start. 

Here are her sole shots - she had fairly healthy frogs in shoes and had been sympathetically shod but these photos clearly demonstrate the difference in frog and sole engagement in a barefoot as opposed to shod horse.

Caudal hoof shots confirm the same, this time of the RF. She is also growing a hoof capsule at a different angle  - you can already feel it but it won't be visible to photo for a few more weeks.

As always, looks at the length of the hoof wall in the shod photo by comparison with today and looking at that you can also clearly see the distortion in the wall. That's something which should continue to get better over the next few weeks. 

NFU - Details of the Ombudsman's decision

I posted last week about the Ombudsman's decision against NFU and Catherine has generously given me the go-ahead to post the details of the decision here.


Basically, NFU had refused to allow Catherine's claim that rehab here should be covered under her policy. She was supported by her vet and previously NFU policy holders had been able to claim 50% of the cost of rehab.

However, in Catherine's case, and in a number of subsequent cases, NFU refused to meet the claim saying that rehab here no longer qualified under the terms of the policy, which seemed very unfair.

The Ombudsman process was appealed at the first instance by NFU and the subsequent appeal has taken 2 years but we at last have a final decision and the complaint against NFU has been upheld.

The decision turned on whether therapy by a "specialist" is limited only to vets and para-professionals or had a wider definition. The key paragraph of the decision reads:

"Navicular syndrome requires specific treatment to be carried out by an experienced professional and I do not consider that this is something which Miss Hodson could reasonably have been expected to perform herself.


Treatment carried out at Rockley Farm extends beyond simply exercising the horse on different surfaces as it requires expertise to assess the horse's initial condition and its subsequent state of health at each stage of the treatment, modifying that treatment if and when required...very few horse owners would have the necessary expertise or confidence to correctly identify and treat the medical issues involved...


I am satisfied that the treatment offered by Rockley Farm has proven efficacious results (while accepting that no treatment can guarantee 100% success) and does not represent some alternative therapy of dubious nature and quality that NFU...should not be obligated to provide cover for."

Fabulous news, massive thanks and congratulations to Catherine and I hope this will provide help to those of you struggling with NFU at the moment. Catherine is happy for me to share the wording of the decision in full with anyone who needs more info.

Rockley Rehab Reunion 2012

We've managed to finalise a date and a venue, so here are the details for the RRR 2012 - thanks for your patience, and its beginning to sound quite exciting :-)
Date: 22nd and 23rd September
Venue: Milton Keynes Eventing Centre: www.mkec.co.uk

Cost and logistics: To be finalised, but will be around £35 per horse per day which includes stabling, use of the indoor school, show jumps and XC course.

We will probably ask them to include a marquee and catering too, which will be around £15 per person and there is a camping field with loos and showers which we are welcome to use (I know you SO loved camping last year!).

It ticks the box for being a more central location than Rockley(!), just off the M1, post code MK19 7HQ - and it sounds like a great venue so I hope it will be even better than last year's RRR.

We have 50 spaces. They will be available to rehab horses and their owners first, but if we have extra spaces then we will open it to anyone with a barefoot horse who wants to come along.

As soon as we have final details on the cost (probably next week) you will be able to book a place via Lea - who has nobly volunteered to look after the admin (THANK YOU LEA!) - on deerhound68@hotmail.co.uk.  I will also put a post up here and resurrect the RRR Facebook page and post updates there too.

Although there will be lots of opportunities for jumping and schooling, the best part of the RRR last year was the chance for us all to get together and share experiences, highs and lows so if happy hacking is more your style you will be just as welcome - if its anything like last year there will be cake and wine for all :-)

For me it was also wonderful to catch up with all the horses who had lived at Rockley for a short time and whom I hadn't seen for months or even years  (it was nice to see their owners too, of course!) so I hope lots of you can make it.

NFU - Ombudsman's decision

As some of you know, a few owners have had problems with their equine insurance with NFU, with some claims for rehabilitation here being refused or delayed.

Many policies include cover for "alternative therapies" and in most cases, provided your vet supports a horse coming here (and we can't take them without vet consent anyway!) then part of the costs of rehabilitation can be reclaimed.

However, there has been a long-running complaint in with the Insurance Ombudsman against NFU which was brought by Rose's owner, Catherine. Rose was here in 2010 and its taken nearly 2 years to get the final decision but at last its here - and its very good news!

The Ombudsman has upheld Catherine's complaint and decided that Rose's rehabilitation here should have been covered by the terms of her policy :-)

If any of you rehab owners need the key paragraph of the Ombudsman's decision, its on the Rockley Rehabs forum or you can email me for more info.

I'd like to say a massive thank you to Catherine, who has slogged on with this claim for the best part of 2 years, who has refused to give up and who has really blazed a trail for all the other owners who have sent, or want to send, their horses here.

Cautionary tales

This is a post which will be old hat to many of you, but as I haven't done a "celery" post for a while, and as I am hearing a lot about trims going wrong - as well as untrimmed horses going well - I thought I ought to post a couple of (true) cautionary tales.  I could have posted many more...

[For those of you who are new to "celery", there is an explanation and lots of additional info here. Please read this link if you haven't already done so!].

The tale of the trimmer who didn't listen

Once upon a time there lived a good horse who had been working barefoot a long time. The good horse was sold to a new home where she lived with a very conscientious owner who knew that all horses' feet need a lot of care and attention, whether shod or barefoot. The owner carefully monitored her horse's diet, exercised her regularly and did her best to ensure that the horse had all she needed to keep her hooves healthy. 

After a few weeks, the owner - who was very conscientious - booked a trimmer to come and see her good horse. The trimmer took great care to watch the horse move and took photos of her feet. After the trim, the horse was a bit footy and the owner asked me whether this was ok. 

I said, not really, but talk to the trimmer and tell him about this. Next time, perhaps he will either trim differently or he may decide (since the horse is in regular work) that she doesn't need trimming at all.  

The owner was unhappy that her horse had been footy but, as she was very conscientious, she booked the trimmer to return in a few weeks. After the next trim, the horse was again footy. 

The owner asked me whether her good horse was footy because she was not exercising the horse correctly. I said, not really, because when you exercised the horse the day before she was fine, wasn't she? She said yes, she was fine the day before the trim, but footy the day after, just like last time. Well then, I said...

To be continued...

The tale of the princess and the 2 trimmers

This is the tale of 2 trimmers, both of whom lived in a land far, far away. There came to this land a princess with a beautiful horse - who was barefoot, naturally. This horse had overcome hoof problems early on in her life and had gone on to great things, amazing everyone with her high performance hooves. The only strange thing about the beautiful horse was that her feet didn't look perfectly symmetrical. 

The princess - who was another very conscientious owner - wanted to do the best for her beautiful horse and of course she wanted the best care for her high performance hooves. So she called on a trimmer, who was very interested in the beautiful horse and carefully examined her high performance hooves. 

The trimmer asked all about the problems the horse had overcome and noticed that her feet were not symmetrical. This bothered the trimmer and she told the princess that she wanted to re-balance the horse's feet. 

The princess, mindful of the problems her beautiful horse had overcome, and mindful of how well she galloped on her high performance hooves, said to the trimmer, no, you may not re-balance those feet.

At this, the trimmer grew angry and said, woe betide you if you don't let me trim as I wish - leaving those feet as they are will bring nothing but trouble. 

The princess was brave and knew she should listen to her horse instead of the trimmer so she sent the first trimmer away. But still she wanted the best for her beautiful horse and the best care for her high performance hooves. So then she called on the second trimmer. 

The second trimmer was also very interested in the beautiful horse and he also carefully examined her high performance hooves. He too asked about the problems the horse had overcome and he too noticed that her feet were not symmetrical. 

But then he looked further. He looked at the whole horse and he saw that the beautiful horse's limbs required asymmetric hooves in order to load evenly, and that in fact  - far from needing to be "re-balanced" they were already perfectly balanced for the limbs above. He understood that this was how the beautiful horse had overcome her earlier problems and that this was why she galloped so well on those high performance hooves. 

Of course, the second trimmer had no need to "rebalance" the feet; instead he looked again at the whole horse and talked wisely with the princess about how best to care for those high performance hooves. 

And they all lived happily ever after, even the first trimmer, who finally realised how important it was to look at balance from the horse's point of view. 

OK - I made up the last bit...

The changing feet of Bailey G

Bailey G went home yesterday and its time for his "recap" post. Bailey arrived in the middle of February wearing bar shoes and with a diagnosis of pedal osteitis and navicular bone damage. On a hard surface he was 2/10 lame LF and 3/10 lame RF.

The photos throughout show his RF. Above in February, and below today. The most interesting aspects from this angle are the much healthier hoof capsule growing down in the lower shot and the fact that he has more depth to the back of his foot and a less under-run heel today.

The caudal shot shows the contracted heels and digital cushion and the weak frog typical of a hoof in bar shoes. You can also see from this angle that the medio-lateral balance is off - the hoof wall is collapsing on the medial (right-hand) side and is overly long on the opposite side.  

Contrasting the same hoof today, there are improvements in frog, digital cushion and hoof walls. 

Nevertheless this is still a foot with a relatively weak frog. its much better than it was but still needs to "beef up" even more. The medial side of his foot is also improving but still has a way to go. Bailey will need consistent work in order to maintain and improve his overall hoof health and strength. 

Here is the bar shoe at day one and a few days after his shoes came off, below. 

Out of the shoe, you can see that the heels are under-run and the frog weak. Over the subsequent photos, its interesting to look not only at how the frog develops and the toe shortens, but also at how the heels migrate back to be much more supportive and less under-run. 

Compare the heel position in these photos - more stable and in a much healthier position by the time of the lower photo. His foot is a more balanced shape too, although there is still some separation at the lateral side as his foot shifts towards better medio-lateral balance. 

Bailey's hoof pics caused some chuntering on the internet about trimming, and what they apparently required by way of human intervention. The answer of course is that they didn't require trimming - and its certainly not trimming which moved those heels back to a better position or improved his frogs and digital cushion. I have trimmed him, but only to roll the lateral hoof wall, and only on his last day so he went home tidy!

A couple of quick stills finally to give an idea of his stride length - not as dramatically extended as Dom's was, but a slight improvement even though he has not yet got the most robust hooves in the world. 

Happy anniversaries, Dexter!

This time last year saw the arrival  - or more accurately the return - of Dexter. In fact its not just a first  anniversary for him but also a fourth anniversary.

He is a TB eventer who first graced the yard as a rehab horse in 2008 and June 2008 - almost exactly 4 years ago - saw him leaving Rockley to go back to Tavistock.

These photos were taken then, shortly before he went home, when Kelly jumped him for the first time after his rehab (we didn't tell her Mum til later!).  Not bad, we thought, for a horse who'd had a DDFT injury and had been given only a 5% chance by his vets of returning to ridden work.

In fact, Dexter's vet was fantastically supportive and so interested in his recovery that he set up the meeting with Prof. Peter Clegg which inaugurated Project Dexter - the research project which now maps every rehab horse who comes here.

Dexter and Kelly spent the next 3 years competing in showjumping, dressage and XC until Kelly's new job with BA meant she had to go flying round the world and leave Dexter in Devon. 

So last May bank holiday Dexter came back to Rockley as a permanent member of the team - and that of course meant that he became a hunter. This photo was taken on his first day and he discovered pretty quickly that he absolutely loved it!

Dex only hunted lightly through the winter because the weather was atrocious and the ground bottomless - both of which he hates - but he nevertheless completed about 20 days (I think!), including the Christmas Eve meet and the last day of the season, when he was on terrific form.

Dex has also demonstrated his puzzling hooves on the blog - the extraordinary shape isn't due to him being a rehab horse but a compensation for a shoulder injury which happened when he was jumping XC 18 months ago; as you can see it doesn't hold him back - quite the reverse.

Since hunting finished he has been working hard taking out rehab horses, as well as catching up with Kelly - he is a horse who needs to work regularly in order to maintain the strength of his caudal hoof and that means lots of roadwork, which is critical for him.

Most recently, as an eventing schoolmaster who has been there, done that and got the t-shirt Dex has become Andy's first choice for jumping XC. So far they have gone clear round the Treborough mini course and popped our jumps at home but with both Kelly and Andy queueing up to take him XC I think he will have a busy summer - I am sure there will be more photos of Dexter soon!