Lou Dillon has a long overreach, which means that his hind legs will stretch so far under him when he moves that his hooves on his hind legs can sometimes clip (injure) his front legs. This is relatively common in Thoroughbreds, and one of the reasons why we always put bell boots on him when we work him in the arena- the bell boot helps protect the front hooves so he doesn’t hurt them.
This past week, however, we think Lou Dillon was running around in his stall (he doesn’t wear bell boots in his stall), and noticed he had a large cut along the bulb of his left front foot. We wrapped it and put a boot on it to protect the entire area.
Unfortunately, a few days later Lou Dillon tore off the very expensive boot, destroying it, and cut the same part of his leg again. We wrapped the wound again, but this time just put a bell boot over the bandage, rather than risk him destroying another boot, and hurting himself even worse.
Thankfully, this seems to have worked, and when we changed the bandage again today (Sunday 3-28-21), we saw that the wound was healing nicely. We will keep changing out the bandage until he is healed, and we will plan to keep his bell boots on even when he’s in the stall, so he doesn’t hurt himself again.
On the plus side, Lou Dillon has been very good about standing still while we wrapped his leg, and while we haven’t worked him since he injured his foot, he still enjoys being turned out everyday, so the wound doesn’t seem to bother him. We are hoping he’ll be completely healed in the next few weeks!
