Whilst searching for another tiny pony to assist in parties I happened upon Kandi who I thought would make a lovely brood mare as she is very pretty, nicely put together and is well bred, being a pink papered Oldenburgh horse imported from the continent.(Her sire/father is the well know horse K1 who has competed at top level in dressage and her mother a state premium mare).
She'd not been in work for a number of months, so we weren't able to ride her when we went over to see her near Derby. The young lady lunged her for us to see and she was VERY lame, which was explained away by one shoe coming off recently (she only had 3 shoes on when we saw her!). Her breeding and overall pleasure to the eye held my attention and I decided to buy her, subject to 'having her vetted' ie the vet gives the horse a general check to make sure there's nothing drastically wrong.
The owner put new shoes on Kandi and we gave her a few days to settle into them, as sometimes they're a little 'foot sore' after having new shoes.
The vet then arrived but couldn't complete the vetting as Kandi was still lame. She confirmed that she had one slightly boxy foot but that just like humans, horses manage and even compete with all sorts of weird bodies and that she wasn't overly concerned.
As my main purpose of buying her was as a brood mare it wasn't so much of an issue about the lameness and in my mind I thought that I'd give her a bit of time hoping that the lameness was linked to the missing shoe and she'd be right as rain in a few weeks.
Well! She arrived and immediately lost the same shoe (on the boxy foot) again as a chunk of hoof had fallen away where the nails needed to be! So I left her for a few more weeks, let the hoof grow and then had new front shoes put on.
Each week I've lunged her in the school just for 5 or 10 minutes to see if the lameness was going. Sometimes she was noticeably lame, sometimes she wasn't-very peculiar. However, since the front shoes have gone on she is markedly improved and seems to be improving each week.
With time marching on I need to know what is causing the lameness, if it can be rectified, if it is something that could be passed on to a foal and if she can be ridden, will it affect her in any way. She was bought principally to be a brood mare but it's not responsible to breed from a mare known to be carrying a genetic problem. If she is to have a foal she needs to go to the stud around May time so I need to know what my options are to make a decision about breeding from her.
When Kandi arrived I was a little concerned-she'd obviously not had a lot of attention-she kicked out when I brushed down her legs and she was VERY stressed when we first put her in the stable-initially I thought I'd bought a stress-head-not good!
Fortunately she's settled down really well. She's pretty laid back and is quite happy to take direction and confidence from me. She has a lovely temperament-always keen to say hello and is very amenable-she goes in the sand arena and does what I say even when she's lame.
I really like this attidude and it's made me want to ride her now. She has lovely paces, is very pretty and I think she'd do very well in the dressage arena-I'd LOVE to have a horse capable of competeing higher up the ladder than I've done so far and I LOVE training them. So exciting!
So the current plan is to do some investigative work on her boxy foot/leg to establish WHERE the problem is in the leg and WHAT the problem is. This will be done by the vet nerve blocking different bits of the leg to see which solves the lameness. Then they'll do some x-rays. They'll then tell me what the prognosis is.
As she's SO much better-hardly lame at all we're hoping that some corrective shoeing will resolve the lameness-we think that part of it might be psychological as she's probably been struggling with it for months and months.
If all goes well I just have to hope that I can ride her-but at at least 16 hands she's bigger than my old horse and whilst not a cart horse, is a chunkier stamp of a horse and I'm shall we say not particularly tall! I just hope she knows I'm on top and can feel my legs!
Anyway, we're hoping to book her into the vets in early Feb so watch this space!
