Nasty bugs!

I had forgotten to mention in my previous post (the mold one, haha) about a lovely sore that Gus developed on his left side aka "girth line". The bugs have become horrendous out at the barn - partially due to all the rain AND the heat, and well since I wasn't able to make it out for days on end, his poor "arm pits" just became inundated with bug bites. Thankfully I only ended up dealing with one major bit and another smaller one... poor Gus.

Anyways, I took a photo. It's hard to make out, so I ended up circling the area that is all swollen. The original size of the sore/swelling was about a small baseball in size - probably closer to golf ball sized. As of today, it's just a small scab with minimal swelling. Scab is about an inch in length and half that in width.

With some good management aka lots of vaseline/Swat/anti-bug goop, Gus should heal up just fine. Gringo is dealing with the same thing (bugs) but they seem to prefer his sheath to anything else. Poor Gringo.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, but I was able to talk to J, the farrier today. After talking to him, he said he'd really prefer to NOT shoe Gus at this time - partially because he doesn't think his hooves can hold a shoe for any length of time. That works for me, I had just mentioned the whole shoe idea because of how chewed up his hooves were last time, after just a couple weeks.

So, for the time being, I've started up the Durasole again. So every ride/anti-ride/whenever Gus is in the barn, I"ll be applying that to his soles - all four. And I did end up reordering Gus's SmartHoof pellets. So, we'll do another couple months of that and see how things sit then.

And, the boots will be coming back out. Whenever Gus is working undersaddle outside, I'll start using the Cavallos or the Boa boots again. I just don't want to deal with any foot tenderness - which is what I think we were seeing at the beginning of my lesson this morning. Hopefully we're getting to the bottom of all these hoof issues... very frustrating.