This day was one, I'll not soon forget, because it showed me that finally Racer had turned that corner on Founder, and the bad days were now behind us.

Feb. 17, 2004

The farrier was out yesterday, to trim up Trav. While he was here, I asked him if he wanted to look at Racer and he said yes. We walked back to the barn, and just as we got to the fence, quite by coincidence a logging truck on the highway blew a tire, or backfired or something and Racer exploded out of the stall at a high gallop. His tail was up, his ears were up, his eyes were bright and he rushed past us and took off to the back pasture. I looked over at Clint who literally had his mouth open, and he goes "Well! I have seen all I need to see!"

I laughed with delight, and whistled to Race who came trotting up from the pasture to nuzzle my arm. Clint looked him all over and asked me what happened to the cresty neck? I told him that as of the 20th of last month, I had started treating Racer holistically, as well as giving him 3 tablespoons of magnesium powder in his mixture as I was told, it would help the crestiness (which is a real danger in foundered horses) Clint was absolutely amazed and went into the barn to see all my bottles and the concoction i make up to try and stop the progression of the founder. But you cannot dispute progress- and he told me that earlier last month my vet had called him and told him that he had no idea what to do with Racer because he was not a *typical* case of founder and kept crashing! So where the option was to keep him on conventional meds and major pain killers, I opted to do something differently and put him on holistic meds. I had to give him a list of what I was giving him and why- 

Doing a quiet happy dance in my chair. The plan now is to get him past his reaction of fear every time someone touches his feet because lately every time his feet are touched he knows he will get hurt. So I have a month to work with him and condition him to accepting the touch again and the plan is at the end of the month they will pull his shoes and do a roll-back on his toes and let him go barefoot again.

My thoughts on how to get him to let me handle his feet again (or anyone for that matter) is just to start off small, and to reward him for good behavior and not punish him for bad. I believe that a lot of the fear he shows is just mental, because he is so smart he has figured out that every time someone touches his feet- he gets hurt. I can't have him dancing around like a puppet I want him to stand quiet and know that it won't hurt anymore.......