just kidding!

Okie dokie guys! Last we heard of our intrepid hero Charlie, he was down and out with another seemingly mega abscess that was certainly going to be the death of him! 

He told his new barn manager in No Uncertain Terms that He was Dying, and that she needed to Start Digging The Hole now, bc it was going to take a Long Time, bc it had to be a Big Hole. 

charles, my precious unicorn <3 <3 <3

So naturally she called me advising to get a farrier out asap, to which I replied that mine would be out in a couple days, and she said, No, Get One Today. Which I did, and you all heard the sad song about how Charlie couldn't even get out of his stall to have the shoe pulled, and was Very Miserable.

I then spent the next few hours driving around town trying to secure protective booting for the tragic critter, and we left off hoping for the best but fearing yet another long slog of recovery. 

charlie's barn had an early halloween party! we had a ratatouille mouse / chef combo, a psychadelic hippy, some airwomen and their trusty plane, a scary jester, a cowgirl, little red riding hood, Woody, and a sparkly princess (who had to go back to his stall early, so represented just by his bridle LOL).
charlie only participated briefly bc he's kinda too much of a pill for parade and game type activities lol (tho he stuck around long enough to give a pony ride <3 <3). twas very fun tho. i esp appreciate my expression of cackling my face off (in the jeans) bc those two innocent looking chestnuts managed to stop mauling me for treats me just long enough for this photo

WELL. Charlie would like to set the record straight, haha. He would like to say, "Just Kidding, Guys! I'm Totally Fine! Please put me back out with my friends again!"

Bc... Literally the day after he had the shoe pulled, he was walking like a completely normal animal in his cloud boot. Whew! And by Day 3, he was back out in his paddock for normal turnout -- still in said boot.

reason #847 i'm grateful for charlie's move: this barn setup suits his physical limitations much better
(both pics are to the same scale)

This is another big win from moving barns too -- he could have never made it back to full turnout so quickly at the last place (red lines above), it was just so big and spread out. And the barnyard paddocks (yellow lines) were so heavily trafficked that they had a lot of deep mud -- making turnout, even in a boot, problematic. 

The new barn (right side in the pic above) is organized so much more centrally (and so meticulously managed that the mud is kept to a minimum even after a week straight of rain!) that it's much easier for Charlie to stick to his normal turnout routine (blue lines) even when he's a bit compromised. 

animalintex poultice pad strips, sponge cotton guaze (for packing out the heel bulbs), vet wrap, duck tape, iodine.... the works!

This is, as you might imagine, a huge relief for me. And for Charlie. He likes his routines, as all horses do. I've still been out daily to check the wrap -- since I'm not keen on the idea of putting a bare hoof in the cloud boot in case it rubs -- esp the heel bulbs. Tho Jessica had a great idea of also using a tube sock for protection -- something I'll keep in mind!

the defect is pretty much all along the inside wall of the hoof

I've mostly used vet wrap or brown cling gauze with strategically placed strips of duck tape to reduce friction in sliding the boot on and off. Plus a lot of cotton padding around the heel bulbs. We used animalintex poultice pads the first couple days to promote drainage, but there really wasn't much so we quickly transitioned to a 'dry' wrap.

wrapped + booted! spy the sponge cotton pillow?

It still obvi gets kinda damp out in the field, which also isn't totally ideal... But the horse is so comfortable in the boot! He wore it for about a week straight with minimal issues, and has been observed trotting cantering and even galloping around (on the halloween party night bc... #pill). 

i was a little tentative about tightening up the velcro at first, but have since gone a bit farther now that he's wearing this boot in turnout

Tho he's since transitioned to getting a day or two turned out with a bare hoof, just to let everything dry out. Farrier is coming this week for our originally scheduled appt anyway, so I figured we'll just hold on for that and see if the abscess hoof is ready for a shoe too. And if we have to go back to wearing the cloud boot after being barefoot for a couple days, nbd.  

lol my boots look like this so charlie's can look like that, i guess!

It's still not totally clear what caused the abscess, tho I'm starting to think more and more that it might have been the Hanton shoes. Not that anything was wrong with them, or the way they were set on him -- to be clear. But we had all that rain and his feet are growing like crazy and I wonder if maybe there was just a funny pressure point created somewhere. 

literally the first day after farrier pulled the shoe and opened the abscess. yes that's him standing almost full weight on the stricken hoof (in cloud boot). yay!

Bc the abscess seemed to have centered right where the tab was, but really wasn't nearly as expansive and deep as I thought it would be based on the size of the defect. There was also barely any drainage at all after two days of soaking and poultice pads. 

legit sent this clip to my vet bc this horse is such a rollercoaster lol....
we released him back to turnout a day later

Obvi I could be wrong, and don't want to scare anybody away from that style of shoe bc I've definitely seen them be successful for a few different horses. And obvi Charlie's other hoof seems totally fine. So maybe I'm way off base or it was just a fluke or whatever. 

as much as i love this view, he's wayyyy happier grazing his own self out in the field lol

Regardless, we already expected the glue-ons to be a temporary stop-gap solution to give Charlie time to regrow some hoof before swapping back to traditional shoes next cycle anyway. So unless his farrier has any other thoughts, that's what we'll do later this week.

unrelated: charlie has the fuzziest most giantest donkey ears <3 <3

So after all that frantic panic when Charlie went full blown DEFCON 1 last week... Well. Everything is more or less back to normal and I get to spare you months of angsty updates on recovery. You're welcome lol.