I wish I had ten dollars for every time I heard someone say “It’s been a bad time for foot abscesses.” And when I question them, they’re getting them cut out and/or giving the horse antibiotics to treat them.
Well here’s what’s really happening folks – it’s the same flaming foot abscess!
An abscess is the body’s way of expelling something that shouldn’t be there. So when we prematurely cut into the foot to release the pressure, or even worse when we treat it with antibiotics and the body doesn’t get the chance to complete its job of loosening up whatever that thing is, so that it gets expelled with the pus – then of course it has to go through the whole process again later.
So instead of one foot abscess, our poor horse has to go through the same abscess multiple times. Yeah I know… I wished I’d known that earlier too.
I went looking for some foot abscess photos on the internet and holy snappin’ turtles I saw some horrors actually caused by well meaning people! I’ve noticed that we humans are, god bless us, far too prone to wanting to interfere with things that don’t need our interference. Leaving a foot abscess alone is most often the best treatment.
Having said that – if we must – there are a few things we can do to help speed up what can be a painful experience:
- Putting our reiki hands on to accelerate healing – that simple and powerful healing modality is one of the things you can learn how to do here.
- Keeping the foot wet can make it a bit easier on our horse – so the abscess finds its way out more easily than with a super tough dry hoof. I just make sure they have some long dewy grass to walk around in.
- You can also poultice it with something like Animalintex or even some of the home made poultices and encourage it to ripen. Use your pendulum to find out which part of the foot to poultice though, because if the abscess is trying to come out of the coronet band and you’re poulticing the underneath of the foot, you could be drawing it away from its natural path and prolonging the pain of it. And keep in mind, there’s probably more horses injured by tripping over a poultice dressing coming off, than were ever injured by the perfectly natural process of even a painful foot abscess.
- And the one thing I would almost never do, is lock a horse up. Generally speaking, the more movement they get, the better circulation they’ll have and the faster they’ll get over it – and they’ll be reducing the amount of pain they’re in, by limping.
You may have noticed the tone in this article is very blase. That’s easy from this end of 20 years of deep connection and listening to my horses. It’s sooo much easier to be casual when you can communicate with them. You too can communicate with your horse this casually.
Come in to the comments section below the article here, tell me your feet abscess stories and I’ll share a couple of my funny ones of pre listening to horses.
My job
About 20 years ago, my horse Bobby told me it was my job to connect horses and people and then – even if they never did anything else with us – the horse would have a voice. I do these blogs so that the people who are drawn to them can have that lovely opportunity to connect on a deeper level with their horse and experience the peacefulness and joy that can bring.
The free video lesson The Key to the Kingdom of Horses is a good place to start. From there, you’ll get some really good free lessons and inspiring stories of the kind of things that can happen when a conversation with our horse becomes sweet and natural two way affair and you’ll have opportunities to take it further if you want to.
Todays Photos: Above – Bobby cantering down the paddock the day he was retired at 28 years old – retired from riding not teaching. He was the Master Teacher all the way to the day and even the hour of his death. Hang around here and you’ll hear lots of stories abut this incredibly special horse.
The top photo is him being trimmed, not long before he died. All my horses are comfortable enough now to be trimmed at liberty and we’ll do one of our monthly Anti-Struggling Seminars on how you can get a horse this good with their feet too. If you’ve had The Key to the Kingdom of Horses video, you’ll get an email about that when it comes up – if not, register for it now! 🙂
Hi Jenny, It seems that the email box is missing from the bottom of the page for Keys to the Kingdom of the Horse. I was going to watch it again but no cigar 🙂 Cheers Sue
Whenever there’s a problem, it’s usually fixed by cleaning out your cookies and tracking on your internet browser. However, I just found another solution. <3 Whenever you can’t see the sign up form, click on the tiny shield in front of the www in the search engine web address above. On the drop down box, click on “disable for this site” and you’ll be able to see the forms. Picture Jenny with an eye roll saying “the internet…” In the mean time, I have send you the link to the video manually. <3
Bonnie had four abscesses in three feet after the prolonged rains and muddy paddocks at night. The choice for me was: give her cattle company for a good night’s sleep and mud or keep her alone and drier.
I did use nappies, epsom salt and tree trea solution soaker using the inner car tyre tube as a boot and duct taped it. She walked around fine near the house where I could keep an eye on her. After a few days I put a boot on the foot during the day to encourage movement. Now I use Stockholm tar once a week and apple cider vinegar/tea trea oil alternating with bug buster daily. So far so good but I couldn’t ride her for months…. even my drier paddocks have muddy places and I can’t stop her from going there …. paddock management is crucial, but there’s only so much my two hands can do.
I wonder what would happen Karin, if you used the philosophy / approach that that you learned in the Paradox of Healing clinic and applied it to circumstances like these? Your own experience of the healing energy was spectacular.