Donkey Gets A New Beginning After Being

So this is the wonderful Colleen and Richard who were brought her all the way up to us. Took her several hours in a trailer by herself. You're stepping on the road girlfriend. She needs a hoof trim so this is kind of common for us to get donkeys who haven't had some regular hoof care. It's easily something that happens. And so that's why she's here so that we can get her that care. Well here we'll put a little collar on her. You're pretty in pink. You're gonna be pretty in pink a little girl. Pretty in pink. So now everybody knows she's a girl and that she's a Jenny actually. Okay and fairy will be here in a few days and Dennis will be here in a few days. Okay girl. So she's mostly been living with other with livestock like cows and sheep and things. So she hasn't really been living with donkeys for a few years. So this is going to be a little different for her but there's a lot of donkeys ready to meet her. Hooves are really long. It's a little hard for her to walk. It's a long long long ride. A little difficult to be in a trailer standing keeping your balance when your hooves are long but we'll get that fixed in short time. You think she ate a little bit in the trailer? Do you think we should? Yeah she did eat a little. She had a hay bag but she didn't eat over the pass or anything. So these guys have all had their dinner but we may have to put some more hay out. Welcome to Long Hoops Missy. Yeah you can see her when she gets in Blissy. This is sometimes what we're called upon to do when owners find themselves in an emergency with their families and their finances and then they call us and they ask us if we can make room at Long Hoops for one of their pets. This is new girl. They have to see her and smell her and check her out. So this is a paddock of mostly jennies. There's one fellow here and that's this guy right here. Gilly. He likes the jennies and she's safe. It's starting to cool off. It'll be a nice cool evening out here for him. Go say hello Bliss. Go check her out. Tell her she's safe here now. Hi Gilly. She's checking out. There's a lot of donkeys here she says. Wow. I haven't been a place with so many donkeys. What is that? That's a brush. That's a scratcher brush. Yeah there's a couple waders. This is kind of typical of unfortunately what rescues like Long Hoops see far too frequently and that is a donkey who has not been given good hoof care for a very long time and this is the kind of condition that renders these animals not only crippled but can be fatal. This donkey has managed to survive despite this hoof neglect. You never quite know the exact reason why the donkey's hooves are allowed to be neglected whether it's financial or just disregard lack of concern for the animal but again it happens far too often to too many donkeys. So today we're going to start the process of trying to remove her excess hoof to try to put her hooves at a better angle and length to get her some comfort and the next step will then be to have the professional farrier come out and really clean her up and trim her up so she's at her top comfort level. There we go. All right so she does know how to pick up her hooves so what we want to do we want to just see if we can get some of this. Her hooves are so long that they folded underneath. All of this is length so just to be clear this is not a deformity in that donkey. This is not a medical illness of the donkey that is caused by some disease process she's got. This is totally purely hoof neglect. In other words failing to get her hooves trimmed in captivity on a regular basis. You're doing good. You're doing good. We'll give her a little break. We'll give her a little break. A little break because it's kind of uncomfortable to shift her weight from one bad hoof to another bad hoof. She has to have a break. There we go. Nice work. Sometimes when the hooves are really really long you have to use a saw. We elected not to use a saw today because the vibration and noise can be frightening and we decided that if she would cooperate this way we could probably use a half pound right there. Okay good job. You did a good job. The backs grow slower than the front so when you see really long hooves it's usually on the front not always but it's usually on the front and that's because the majority of the body weight is on the rear not the front so that's why the rear wear down a little better. Good job. Good job girlfriend. We can just get this yeah we can just get the length that'll in and of itself will make her more comfortable. So the longer a hoof this material has has been there the harder it gets. It gets like it gets like tile like if you've ever seen a ceramic tile floor and had to cut it that's how hard this is. Good job. Good job my dear. Let's try this bigger one. I can't get enough We're using all of the hand and shoulder power we've got. That's how hard this is to cut. I didn't take a full cut. Nice. Good job. Good job girlfriend. You're doing it. Okay we'll give her a break. That was giving her a little break and now we're gonna see if we can get a little bit off right here. Good job. So the hoof is kind of like our finger in our fingernail. It's got part of it that's supposed to be live and grow and it's got part of it that's calloused like the white part of our fingernails but the hoof is supposed to make contact with the ground and when it makes full contact with the ground it pumps the blood up from the hoof to the heart and it gets oxygenated again and back down. So what happened in this poor donkey situation is the hoof grew over the bottom of the hoof and so it wasn't getting that circulation. Nice. Okay. You haven't had your hooves picked up for more than a year, year and a half. The idea of standing on three and balancing is a little tough so that's why we're giving her some breaks. Good job. Good job girl. That's probably enough on this side. Let's go to the other side. Oh whoa sorry. Stay stay with me. Stay with me girl. It's nice. It's gonna help. Very nice. A little bit off the edge there. This is just the first first trim so she's like I said in about three days she'll have the professional barriers will come and take a lot more off and really clean her up and she'll get the angle and the length just right and the effect of that will be her front shoulders will be more comfortable, her hips will be more comfortable, everything will stand a little straighter and square. We've taken some off. We're not going for perfection today. We're leaving the professional barefoot trimmer to do that. What we're doing is we're trying to just improve her comfort just for a couple of days to get started on it get some circulation going on that hoof and then the barefoot trimmer can really see how she lands and do the fine work. Same situation on this side. The hoof is grown and folded over and you think well what happens in the wild? Does it happen like this in the wild? No it doesn't because in the wild these animals are walking about 10 miles a day and they're walking over really rough terrain. It's when we have them in captivity and they're in soft corrals or they're in fields that have got all muddy and wet that the surface isn't hard enough to file this down and so then it grows and if it keeps growing then it just folds over. Yeah so this will get her some contact with the ground so that when the professional comes they can see where the real... we could cut that. Get those smaller ones. Yeah what do you think? Does it feel better? Do you have any more cookies?