A great shot from the New Zealand National Championships


The four first place getters in the FEI 3* 160km Endurance Champs.
These horses and riders are doing a lap of honor after the judging of the best condition awards. The grey in the foreground was the winning horse for the race and BC was awarded equally to that horse and # 9 behind it.

Kaye and Echo in the rain. All the matching Orange tack to match his Sport Orange Renegades.


Have just received a new shipment of boots and stuff.
Some new Gel Pads and some studded boots. Will try out the pads over the weekend and get som pics posted here. Haven't had anything to do with the Gel Pads as yet so will be very interesting

Laminitic pony

On Saturday I visited Wellington to see my son and talk hoof Boots
Here is a copy of an email from Sue. Her horse had laminitis late last year.
The Vets wanted to put it down as there was bad rotation of p3 ( coffen bone)
I talked her through trimming the pony and padding it as simple as possible.
Here is her email to me following that talk.

Hi Pete,
Thank you so much for your time on Thursday night.
I checked my trimming technique and are happy that it meets your guidelines.
On Friday I packed my mares' fore feet with cotton wool, some high density foam, a piece of drench container and wrapped the whole thing with duck tape. Yahoo I am soooo happy, literally within five minutes she was walking sound, I cant believe the difference.
Saturday morning I had a new pony, her whole demener has changed, she is smiling and happy, a 600% improvement. Her stride is long and even, she is landing heel first beautifully and there is no digital pulse, the improvement is so dramatic it bought tears to my eyes.
Sunday morning the packing had compressed completely and she was only 400% better, so I repacked and wrapped her hooves. With new packing she was back to the 600% if not more, she was trotting around her area completely sound and still no digital pulse, she certainly does not move like a sore pony any more. Thank you, thank you for your advise.
So now I wish to order some renegade boots for her (beats ducktape aye).
I think I may need to put some extra padding in the boots initially until her feet have completely healed and I am guessing that wont be a problem!!
Can you supply a pair of pads to do the job?
I was unable to get digital photos but have measured her freshly trimmed hoof and at the widest point she is 118mm or 4 5/8 inches.

Well on Saturday I just could not believe the difference.
After a quick trim I re fitted her Rennies and here is a pic of them.
Awesome.

Unfortunately I didn't get a pic of the hoofs without the boots but you will have to believe me when I say they are awesome.
Sue has done a great job here.

Location:Wellington

Legend at Paemarko

This post is just trying some new software so I can update from my iPad.
This should enable me to keep this blog more up to date
Let's see how this works.
This pic is of my horse Legend at the Paemarko Endurance ride in February this year. Since then he has done so much more. Developing into a great horse

Location:Piopio

Legend

Echo In Rennies

Note; This horse is Echo in Renegade Hoof Boots.

All hoofs off the ground and awesome heal first landings.

Ellie's Horse

Well let's see where this goes

This is the right size hoof boot for this horse. But my chances or getting it to stay on I think is very slim. His heals are so contracted. The boot shows it off so well.

I have taken off the shoes and given him a barefoot trim. Will go back to him in six weeks time and see how things have progressed.

I have been shoeing this horse for a couple of years now and although the owner ( Ellie ) tells me his hooves are better than they have ever been they are still not ok.

Conditions are also not ideal. The country here is just so wet.

Watch this space.

Kathy's Horse

When I arrived at this job I told the owner off ( Kathy )
I could not believe it when I saw this horse. A severe case of shear neglect ( sorry Kathy )
But this has to be said.

and still with his shoes on

Well off with all the crap underneath
Starting to look like it may have reasonable hoofs.

And
The first trim.
And believe it or not the horse trotted off like nothing had been done.
I warned Kathy to restrict his movements for a few days as oh boy have I changed a few things here.
Anyway she tells be he is now booting around the paddock like a two year old. His old self again.
I have just had an email telling me next time I am out there to fit him into Renegades. So watch this space. To be updated soon.

Fitting of Nutmeg's Boots

All trimmed and ready to go

After a couple of weeks of wet wet wet weather we finally got a day of sunshine. So took the opportunity to go and fit the Renegade Boots to Murray and Karen's horses. After cleaning out all the mud and a bit of wire brushing finally got something that looked clean.

First boot on

A matching pair

Then trotted him out and it was as if he had been born with them

From Shoes to Boots ( Nutmeg )

This is Nutmeg's off side front hoof before I took his shoes off. I have been shoeing him for a couple of years now and he has quite good feet. He goes well in shoes and no reason really to change anything. But the owners Murray and Karen were very interested to see the results by changing to Renegade boots. Having listened to me tell how successful my wife's horse has gone in Renegade boots over the last year of Endurance riding.

So off come the shoes and here is the same hoof after a quick trim. Murray will give him a light trim at three weeks and then I will go back at the six week mark and re trim and fit the boots

Hoof capsule fitted and now just waiting on the arrival of the boots. Nutmeg's size is a #2

Murray and Karen are going to use the

sport orange boots mainly because until they are confident that they wont lose them they will be easier to find. Their horses are mainly used as stock horses on extremely steep hill country. The only way they can do their stock work in winter is on horse back so this will be a great test. The tracks get so muddy that the 4X4 bike often cant get through.

During summer they use their horses for pure pleasure doing many trail rides with friends.

They plan to have two horses in boots this winter. Nutmeg and Frank. The rest will remain shod. All of their horses have very good feet so this will be very interesting.

Murray breaks in all of their horses and has always got at least one being broken at any time.

Check out the Renegade web site on my Links

Riding Lessons

On Thursday Terry came and gave me riding lessons on Echo. I was to have had them on Legend but unfortunately he was lame. I am not normally one to go for lessons but as Legend has only just been broken in I felt it was very important to try and get it right for the sake of the horse.

I am sure Terry found dealing with me quite hard but at least I didn't argue with him. ( his major dislike ) My wife took these pics and I have to say I look a lot better than I thought I would. I have only ever had lessons once before in my life.

I found riding Echo very useful as he has been doing this stuff already and knows what to do so long as I give him all the right aids.

My thanks to Terry. Next time it will be with Legend.

Before and After

Before and after photos of a badly broken hoof. You could take this hoof in both hands and the hoof would bend in your hands.
The horse was quite lame. After about a week he was running around like a two year old. I hate to say it but this was just a case of neglect

Shearing Time

One of our ewes loosing it's clothing.

Not very nice but something we have to do twice a year. These pic's are of Colin our shearer. I don't know how a shearer can do this all day. One sheep would kill me. Such hard work. Colin did about 350 on this day and tomorrow he will do the balance of the lambs.

Marvae Gai Legend

And this is the second of our new boys ( Legend ) We bought him from Taranaki as an unbroken 4 year old about 2 months ago now.

We took him straight to Ken's place to be broken in. Ken got him going and rode him doing stock work and riding him through swamp etc.
At the end of this time I went over there and put a set of shoes on him ready for a 3 day trek.
The trek leaving from our place had about 30 horses and did 10 hrs on the 1st day and another 10hrs on the 2nd day and a further 6hrs on the last day. Ridden by Ken and left at our place after the last day. He was very light on condition and got nick named on the trek
" Bony Em ".

After returning back here we have been feeding him up and these pic's are after being here two weeks. Just before I took these pic's I had taken him out for the 1st ride and I have to say I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo pleased with Ken's work. He is awesome. Hasn't put a hoof wrong. He has the best nature. I didn't ride him long. Just long enough to remind him what he is meant to be doing.

Sharm El Sheikh

This is Echo. ( Official reg name Sharm El Sheikh.)
Echo was born in Australia ( we'll try not to hold that against him ) and exported to new Zealand as a yearling. He was sold to a young girl who used him for pony club and show jumping. We bought him about a month ago as a 9 year old.

At this point he has only been riding in the arena and for short ( up to 1 hour ) rides down the road and up the back of the farm.
Until a week ago he has been on his own with the older horses in the paddock next to him so he has spent a lot of time hanging out over the fence. He has quite fallen in love with Hoki Poki but is not allowed in with them yet. He has a most wonderful tail.

Two New Horses

We have now two new horses. Both are pure bred Arabians. The grey is ( paddock name ) Echo and the bay is Legend. Both are Geldings and hopefully will be Endurance horses. I will write more about these two boys shortly

Tahi as a baby

To anyone who was watching what happened to Tahi I am sorry. It has been soooooooooo long since I have done any blogging. I will try to make it up.

I am also sorry to have to say we finally lost her. She was diagnosed as having Uvitis and the question was what caused that. We were managing her blindness quite well but after a while she also lost her hearing which led us to think she had a brain tumour. This became quite dangerous. Going into the paddock with a horse the could not see or hear. She almost kicked me twice, upended herself in the river, and ran into a power pole . So in the end the best thing to do was to have her put down. I am still struggling with the loss.

To end the blogs on Ta I have scanned a couple of old pictures of her as a baby with her mother Hoke Poki. Ta was something very special. On the morning she was born 16th December her mother came running up to the fence and calling out. Running back to Ta then back to the fence again. She took us to see her baby. She was born jet back with white socks and a white blaze. Quite different to the more recent pics. She was named Tahi because she was the 1st animal that we had anything to do with born after buying this property. From that day on she was always there, a real peoples horse.

Over the years we have done a lot together, Trekking, Endurance Riding ( up to 80km ) Ta never had the attitude of her mother so never made a great Endurance horse but she was still the best horse in the world to me.