Emma

Be prepared for these photos. This is the worst case of hoof neglect we have ever seen. Emma is a donkey who was surrendered to LCR due to the severity of her feet and extremely underweight. She is a medium sized donkey and as sweet as can be. Emma just loves attention so we cannot understand how she got into this bad of shape.

Emma’s owners claimed they had purchased a farm and Emma was there when they moved in. When she was taken to auction they were told they could not put her through the sale.
Her hooves were so horribly overgrown that legally they could not allow her to be sold in that condition.
Lori happened to be at the auction that day. She was asked to come take a look at Emma and see if she may be interested in taking her. The other option was euthanasia so of course she said yes, we’ll take her and see what we can do.
Grossly overgrown hooves can result in a condition sometimes referred to as “elf feet” due to the forward and upward curling of the hoof resulting in what looks like elf shoes. It takes years to reach this condition, but that is the “normal” pattern of growth in neglected hooves.
Emma’s hooves grew sideways, curling under and to the inside. X-rays revealed deformed bones and joints, especially in the right front ankle. The bones had started calcifying and fusing in this position and she was basically walking on a malformed ankle joint. We had never seen such a severe case and were afraid there may not be much we could do for her except offer some TLC before the inevitable decision would be made.

On May 8th, she was scheduled for an appointment with Dr. Randy Bimes of Quakertown Vet, www.quakertownveterinaryclinic.com,  and Barry our farrier, to have her hooves trimmed with the help of x-rays.  They were all in bad shape, but the right front had us the most concerned.
We are all so impressed with Emma’s stoic trusting nature, she’s a love bug, friendly, sucking up the attention, scratching, and hugs. A real trooper as Barry says. She stood just as still as you please for her x-rays and waited patiently with us while they were developed. Everyone crowded around for a look when Dr. Bimes brought them back to the surgery to have a look. We were shocked at the positioning of her bones and joints, but thought we had three good savable legs under her and would try for the fourth. We were going for it. Once Emma was under, Barry went quickly to work, first taking care of the three that were not as badly damaged, checking the x-rays to be sure of where he was on the hoof in relation to bones, joints, cartilage, tendons, and balance. It was something different for him to work sideways on a hoof, and even more so having to rely on an x-ray to see where and how much he would be able to trim.  When Emma came out of anesthesia she was a bit wobbly. It was hard to tell if she was still groggy or thrown off balance from her trims. It had been years since she had even been this close to “normal“ and she had a long way to go.

Barry has been doing regular work to Emma’s feet, sometimes trimming off small pieces, sometimes just a few swipes of the rasp to even her out and keep her growing in the right direction while changing the position of her hooves, joints, and tendons. This is going to be a long process and must be done very gradually. Severe drastic changes would cause severe pain, risk fracturing the bones, and risk tearing tendons and ligaments. At this point we see improvement and are very optimistic that, with Barry’s faithful service, we can eventually bring Emma’s feet close to normal.

     Emma's feet before                Emma's feet about 3 months later

Emma has been placed in a very loving home and is still being cared for by our farrier, Barry Scarborough.