My horses feet are falling apart!

Well I appreciate all the voices of ‘reason’ out there but I ask you are you horses getting professional hoof care? Obviously they must be if you can continue to work them as usual until they get sick!
I noticed on the television footage of Centennial Park Stables last night that all the horses and ponies, about to go out for a ride in Sydney’s lovely Centennial Park, were nicely shod or trimmed!!!
All the race horses must be getting appropriate hoof care if their only worry is ‘how soon’ they can be racing again.
It’s all very well for people with access to these services to preach & tell us we should be patient but the truth of the matter is where I live I can’t get a farrier. I’m told they are not allowed to work.
I can ‘tidy up’ the edges of my horse’s feet with a rasp but I can’t give them the professional care that they need. As a result their feet are now starting to ‘fall apart’. They are all ‘lame’ to some degree and unable to be ridden for exercise and don’t even run around the paddock. As a result of this they are putting on weight. This, as we all know has its own consequences.
My aged, retired show mare already has laminitis and we are considering that we will have to euthanase her if we can’t get proper hoof care for her soon.
My yearling has OCD problems with some pedal bone involvement – without proper hoof care now she is unlikely to be a sound riding horse in the future.
My current riding horse has never coped well without shoes not even when a youngster. I had to ‘pull’ his shoes off myself 2 weeks ago and have been unable to ride him since.
The soundest horse we have here (who also happens to be sold, waiting to go to Victoria when it is all over) is 3 years old & never been shod. She has excellent feet and has always been sound without shoes even to ride up the road but without proper hoof care she too, is ‘sore’ like the rest.
If I have a sound horse to ride or show at the end of this it will be a miracle.

All of these problems already and the EI still probably a week or 2 from getting here. And it will, make no mistake. It is about 15kms away in a straight westerly direction. It will ‘blow’ right down the valley to us going from horse to horse til it get’s here.
I am prepared. I have consulted with my vet (who is 60kms away) and already have every drug imaginable in the cupboard and fridge in readiness. But why should I or any other horse owner have to go through this???
I wouldn’t mind the 6 month standstill so much if it hadn’t turned into so much work. If I could just turn my horses out and ‘enjoy’ the break it would be fine. But I am afraid to compromise their health in any way with this ‘thing’ hanging over us. So they are still fed, rugged and ‘locked’ away from the grass for much of the day to prevent ‘founder’.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have it easy compared with some in our area. I don’t make my living from my horses and I don’t have a job that I have to juggle with caring for them.
There are people out there really, really suffering. I cry when I read some of the stories on the web forums and I already see the suffering of local ‘horse dependant’ businesses in our area.
Like everyone else I am sick of seeing the disparity in the treatment being given to horse owners. This ongoing preferential treatment of the Racing Industry is very demoralising for everyone else in the horse industry.
Like many others I have emailed certain TV programs in the hope that they might show the ‘other’ side of the EI outbreak but to no avail.
Does anyone else out there think that maybe the media have been ‘gagged’ on this issue? That maybe they are only allowed to talk about the race horses because if the general public found out about the ‘government’ forced neglect of animals going on out there, there would be public outrage?
In the end, at this moment in time, I just want a farrier.
I have already got to the point of impotent rage and frustration at the inequity of the whole situation. All I can do is take things one day at a time and hope that somehow in the near future the natural balance of order will return to our lives.
However the biggest lesson that I have learned form this whole ordeal, which is a long way from being over, is how much control the government has over our lives!!

Is Australia really a ‘free country’ or is that just an illusion we live under. What if this was a human epidemic? Would there be the same inequity in the treatment given and supply of vaccines to the human population? I wonder………….

KC

Wallabadah NSW