About Griton (One Who Shouts)

Griton (gree-tone') was born in 2000 and is a BLM mustang gelding from the Stewart Creek HMA in Wyoming. He is about 15.1HH tall, looks like he has draft blood, and is a minimally expressed curly coated mustang. He is the only one of our mustangs we purchased rather than adopted. He is also the only one of our mustangs that has ever worn shoes.

The photo below was taken in March of 2005 right after we bought him and I wish I had been clairvoyant enough to have taken photos of his hooves then! At the time of this photo, his feet were quite contracted from shoes and a very bad case of thrush. His front feet had the shape of a three-leaf clover with points in the front and flares at the quarters.

Just three months after we bought him, Griton injured both stifles by kicking out in play and hanging his back legs over a fence. Many people suggested surgery and/or prolonged stall rest but we chose to give him a chance to rehabilitate himself.

Since the usual therapy for loose or sticking stifles is hill work, we knew he would get plenty of that on his own terms and as he was ready just by living here. To add another recommended therapy, we placed logs and ground poles across regularly used trails to encourage him to step high over the logs and further strengthen his supportive quadriceps muscles. The photo below shows him shortly after the injury and you can see his uncomfortable stance. In my research on treating him I discovered Howard Jesse's article 'The Hoof Point' and I began trimming his back feet to support his stifles. In the beginning, he could not bring his back feet behind him for rasping so I did all of the work with his feet forward on the stand and me practically standing on my head under him.

The next photo was taken in December of 2005, just six months after his injury and you can see what a transformed horse he is. He has gone from a horse with muscle tone so poor from lack of activity they felt mushy, to a horse with true buns of steel. Griton will probably always have some slippage in his stifles due to torn ligaments but you only see it now when he is standing still and very relaxed in his muscles. He is the most active 'player' of all of our horses and seldom stands still for long. It's clear his stifle injury will not hold him back in any way and I expect to begin riding him this summer.