This pony was trimmed by Randy Billinger, the same great guy who gave Cody his life back.

Here the story in Randy’s words:

I was asked to stop by and look at this pony to see if I could do anything for him. The owner had rescued the pony from another location. She has hoof care knowledge (she is a practicing farrier) but admitted she did not know how to properly trim the back hooves. The pony is in his late 20's to 30 years old. Below are photos of the all his feet. As you can see, the fronts had some care, but the backs were severely neglected.

The front feet had some care but were overgrown. The toe was overgrown and had lamellar separation with a large area of lamellar wedge at the toe. You can see the divergent toe angle indicating separation. The heels were long and pulled forward. The pony is standing on rocks in the picture. I was concerned about him being on rocks, but he did not seem to mind standing there for pictures. When I was trimming him, he was standing in the grass beside the driveway.

These are the back feet. I had seen pictures of feet like this and have read case histories of the trimming of such feet. But when faced with the actual situation, it becomes more real. These feet were rock hard. I used my nippers to cut off small pieces at a time. In hindsight. I should have used a saw to just take most of the growth off in one step. My nippers took a beating working on these feet. The feet are disconnected to the cornet band and he is walking on the back of his heal bulbs. My first concern was to get the huge amount of overgrown toe material off and the try to get some heal back under him. I thought hopefully this would allow him to move better and be more comfortable. My goal was to get the back feet into a more normal position/shape and the owner would be able to take over hoof care since she is a farrier. The pony was kept in a good sized dry lot so he had a lot of area to roam and he was fed free choice hay. I watched him move after I trimmed him and he actually roamed around the dry lot well.

The front feet after the trim. I have lowered and backed up the heels. The heels are now back under him allowing for a more solid base to stand on. I removed much of the extended toe and removed a large amount of the lamellar wedge. The front feet are back to a more normal position and shape allowing him to distribute his standing weight more evenly across all parts of his front feet. I have applied a very prominent roll on his toes and you can see that the lower portion of his toes are lamellar wedge. He will be walking on the wedge until the new hoof wall grows down well connected. You can see in the photo that the hooves are still disconnected to at least half way up the hoof wall. One more thing I could have done is to rasp the lower portion of the outer hoof wall to remove some of the divergent toe angle, but I was planning to go back in two weeks to trim him again.

Here are the back feet after the trim. They still look horrible, but are better than when I started. I wanted to do more, but decided to stop here for several reasons. First, this little pony was not the best at standing for a farrier and had had enough. He was no longer wanting to stand and have people mess with his feet. Second, his angles have changed fairly drastically and I thought it best to allow the tendons some time to adjust since his feet had been in such unusual shape for so long. Third, we were losing daylight and since the pony was restless I decided it was time for all of us to take a break. It was to the point that I was not able to do much work on his foot when I picked it up before he would pull it back and the owner was struggling to hold him still so it was time to just spend a few minutes grooming this little guy and letting him relax. He had been through a lot in the last couple of hours.

I talked to the owner before I left and said that I would like to come back in two weeks to trim him again. I called several times to set up and appointment but never heard back from the owner. I do not know the status of this pony today.