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Shoes mask weaknesses, barefoot highlights strengths

Thursday 4 December 2008

George grows wings........

Sorry no pictures today. George went to the vets to have his dodgy feet x-rayed. He has had trailer trauma in the past and at some stage rather rough handling, so is not keen on the wheels. We have been practising for a while, letting him get familiar with the trailer, leading his girl friends through etc.

Until Monday the training was not moving along terribly quickly. We found he would rather starve than step into the trailer for food/water/hay. We also found that his passion for his girlfriends doesn't extend to following their cute little behinds through the trailer.

Then out of the blue on Monday he takes a deep breath and steps in - and at the exact same moment a lorry goes past and lets off its air brakes, not once but about a dozen times. So of course he backs out in a blind panic and all his fears about trailers eating horses are confirmed.

So as the visit to the vet couldn't be delayed any longer we decided to have him sedated. We had tried Sedalin, but it doesn't have any impact on him. The vet found that he had to max out the dose on the injectable stuff too.

Anyway, drugged to the eyeballs and one hoof at a time we got him loaded. Previous training had shown that no partition was best for George, so he travelled cross tied.

We repeated the process for the trip home and I drove very slowly. So slowly that the mug which I hadn't realised was on the running board of the trailer stayed there without falling off for the whole 45 minute journey. I'll take it back to the vets the next time we visit.

2 comments:

dp said...

Our vet travels with her x-ray rig. Is that not common there?

Lucy Priory said...

Portable x-ray some vets have. But our vets has a variety of surfaces they like to use for lameness work ups including a cambered brick circle which really tests out the front end.

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