ABC affiliate KGO in San Francisco recently did a story on the rapid technological advances in hoof boot technology allowing horses to go barefoot part time if not full time.

View the story here (but ignore the beginning where they shoe using urethane pads):

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/drive_to_discover&id=6051896

What a Little Good Trimming Can Do

The horse in question, an 18 yo Appaloosa was retired from showing because of the non-specific diagnosis of caudal heel pain syndrome.  Xrays confirmed the presence of ‘changes’ that were attributed to his discomfort.  He was shod according to proper conventional veterinary standards for navicular, which did help to make him comfortable, but he still seemed stiff, definitely not agile, and, at the bottom of the pecking order would allow himself to be cornered and bullied rather than try and run away.

In examining his feet, there was nothing obvious or terrible about them that would be making him sore but the owner decided, with much trepidation, to give barefoot a try. As it turned out there was quite a bit of fine tuning to do on his feet and with each trim his gait and comfort level improved. In particular his toes were able to be shortened much more than they could be in wedge shoes even though short toes is the standard shoeing protocol for ‘easing breakover’.

Right Front Leg Lateral View

a.  With shoes                          b.  Shoes Just Removed            c.  First Trim

In the shoes with wedge pads, the toe length looks acceptable, but without it, the excess length is more apparent.  While a wedge does improve breakover, it comes at the cost of shifting the weight of the foot and leg pathologically onto the toe.  With one trim, the toe length is improved and the bulge in the hairline is relaxed and straighter.

d.  Growing out holes           e.  4 mos. later                     f.  7 mos. later 

As the trim progresses, the hairline bulge continues to improve, the toe continues to come back, the heel stands up a little, and the foot comes ‘under the leg’ in balance.  In the last photo, the hairline angle approaches the ideal as toe height improves, and the toe length is nice and short. The horse is standing comfortably with the cannon bone nicely vertical, with all his weight visibly placed onto that leg and into the heels.   

Note the difference between figs. c and f.  In the later photo, the heel has been brought back more underneath the boney column, providing a better base of support which is helpful in a navicular diagnosis (as in all cases since the balance is better).  The toe is shorter in lenght but has more depth from coronary band to ground, which improves comfort.  In general the whole shape of the foot is much improved, without having made any drastic changes. 

Excess horn can look like caudal heel pain

 FIRST TRIM - The sole shows the evidence of why the foot was sore and what can masquerade as unspecific foot or heel pain, but is simply unrecognized excess horn. This view shows the foot in mid-trim with the left side already done and the ridght side just started. The heels have been brought back to the widest part of the frog and lowered to be level with the frog. This alone will help the frog to get healthier as it becomes weightbearing.   The right side of the foot is completely ‘flat’ - straight across, not reflecting the underlying shape of the coffin bone which is vaulted.  This has been corrected on the left side, including shortening the collateral groove (purple arrows).  The red arrows indicate either excess bar or sole which is causing pain on weightbearing.

a.  2nd trim                                      b. 7 mos. later        

The early trim shows spots of small abscesses, from where the excess sole was impginging on the sole corium. The toe shows a good deal of separation still leftover from being shod.  Within 7 months, the hoof has become rounder (or the toe is shorter), the frog is healthier in appearance with the heels level with it, and the separation at the toe is almost completely gone.  The bar is now straight, not curving, and the depth of the bars was experimented with over the course of the past trims in order to find what was most comfortable for this horse. He shows immediate improvement in his comfort level with shorter bars. 

5 yo TB/QH x, At His First Ever Jumper Show

For Sale - Contact

Lovely Morgan Mare Rescued and Now Needs a Show/Lesson Home

Need to re-home a lovely Morgan mare that was rescued on her way to the auction.  According to the vet, she is ~ 20 yo.  Liver chestnut, no papers, sturdily built, ~15.2hh, no major health issues. UTD on everything.    She supposedly has TMJ so doesn’t  eat very coarse hay, but otherwise it doesn’t affect her.  I feed her Triple Crown Senior Complete feed, and let her eat however much hay she likes.

Spry and sweet, she is great with kids.  We have had her on trails, jumped, and assessed by trainers.  Loads fine and is sound barefoot.   She is a top notch mover for English Hunter and would make a wonderful kid or adult beginner show horse. She has enough traing to show successfully.  She frames up, knows her stuff, and is easy to stop, turn, bend and accelerate in a snaffle.  Eager worker but not spirited.  No buck, bite, rear, or other issues. 

Right now she is gaining weight quickly and working her way back from skinny.  We are looking for a retired plug of a trail horse and she is just too great to waste.  Beautiful thick mane and tail.

Free to adopt with contract.  I cannot ship, but know a shipper who has very good prices for me.  We are located in Ridge, NY 11961.

Please contact me for further info and more pictures.  

 Christine   EquineLI@yahoo.com  516 220 8812

  Horse and rider right after a trim.

The mare is classified as a pony but is a QH, with large, horse-sized feet. She had fairly healthy feet to start with, with the exception of some minor flaring that was corrected over the course of the first two trims. This enabled her right lead canter to improve and helped with better lead changes.

     Slight Medial Flare                      Flare has been corrected

    Left                                                    Right                                        Left Sole

She and her owner/rider have had a very successful 2007 showing season,  winning Champion in Children’s Hunter Pony Division at the “Big E” Eastern Seaboard Exposition  in MA, a finalist (8th place) in Marshall & Sterling National Finals at HITS in Saugerties NY, and Reserve Champion at Gardnertown Farms in Newburgh NY. They are now (February 200 competing at HITS in Ocala, FL.

At the “Big E”                       In a Chronicle of the Horse ad congratulating M&S Finalists

                                               (upper right hand corner)

OR POOR HOOF FORM? 

The Morgan mare is believed to be about 15 yo.  She was found at auction in MA. Due to her severe lameness (grade5/5 at a the walk), no one wanted her and for several weeks she wasted in the auction pens.  She was shod, but according to the sellers it did not help, and even with Banamine she was completely lame on some days.  She was in danger of getting picked up by a slaughter-bound truck when by chance the current owner found her and purchased her for $400. 

(Click on thumbnails for larger views).

        Left Hind AP                            Left Hind Lateral

This horse clearly has a very advanced case of high, apparently articular, ringbone.  According to the veterinary diagnosis, it was the most severe case ever seen by that vet and the horse would never be sound for riding.

Left Hind

The ringbone is clearly visible even without radiographs and the mare frequently favored the Left Hind.

Moving on from what is visible on radiographs, the obvious confronts the viewer: the horse’s hoof form is terrible and overgrown, the result of neglect or ignorance. There is certainly more than enough cause here for lameness of some degree.

LH before, fig. 1                    LH before, fig. 2             LH after, fig. 3

The bars on the Left Hind are clearly overgrown to the point where they are actually above not only the level of the sole but the wall as well, meaning the bar would be the first structure to bear the horse’s weight, upon weightbearing rather than the walls and sole.  Since the foot is somewhat contracted and the wall and bar material are very hard (as is typical in Morgans), the bars are not folding over onto the sole, the effect for the horse being like stepping onto the dull edge of a knife with each step.  No wonder she refused to put any weight onto that foot.

Fig. 1 shows the edge of the too-long bar (red arrow) as well as the desired location of the bar (blue dashed line). Fig. 2 shows the bar grown all the way around the apex of the frog (red arrows), also a source for pain. Fig. 3 shows the bars lowered and removed from the sole.  After this trim the mare was much more willing to stand on this foot but was still lame on turns.

Having become more comfortable on the LH, she now exhibited more clearly lameness on the Right Front and is seen holding that foot behind her, a sign of pain.

Further investigation revealed deeply imbedded bar on the RF front, which when removed, produced immediate improved soundness.

Right Front

Before                                                       After

Before                                                      After

Update:  The mare has been under the new owner’s care for about six months now.   After her first few trims she was able to place weight on her feet and move comfortably, so she was started on trail rides of increasing duration, sometimes as much as 4 hours long.  After the very longest rides she would show some signs of discomfort in her hind legs, which presumably was the articular deposits being worn away from the hours of movement. (This will be confirmed in the coming months with new X-rays).   But evn this discomfort is no longer present. It is apparent that the obvious pain and inability to place weight on the Left Hind was orginating from the large overgrown bar seen from the underside on the lateral side of the foot, even though this was never observed in the lameness diagnosis.  The lameness was all attributed to the ringbone.  She requires no boots on every kind of footing in the park where she trail rides. 

4 yo Shetland Pony Mare

The pony had not been trimmed much until the time she foundered, and grazed on lush grass while under the care of the previous owner, resulting in a combination of probable metabolic and mechanical founder. Her X-rays and laminar wedge closeups appear in the posts below.

A tight regimen of frequent trimming as well as limited access to grass (using a muzzle) has been implemented, resulting in improved hoof form and a healthier body weight.  The trimming focused on lowering the heels and backing up the toes, realigning the coffin bone parallel to the toe wall, as well as bringing it closer to a ground parallel orientation. The parallel hoof wall/coffin bone is a primary factor in the prevention of founder.

BEFORE

Somewhat difficult to see in the grass, but this is where the corrective trimming started, with high heels and very long toes.  The red arrows at the toe show imminent coffin bone protrusion, along with a wide gulf  separation between its edge and the wall. The bar, (red arrow), level with the frog, is high.

1 mo.                                  3 mos.                                    6 mos.

As the hoof wall grows down, the separation (all the way around the edge of the hoof) diminishes, and the white line becomes healthy and tight, enabling it to suspend the coffin bone in the hoof capsule.

1 mo.                                                                                   6 mos.

By 6 months most of the hoof wall has grown down with less prominent rings. The remaining separation at the toe (red arrows) corresponds to the separation on the sole at the same time frame and will grow out in another month or so.

The following xrays depict radiographically the laminar wedge as well as the rotation characteristic of founder. They correspond to the photographs of the laminar wedge in the previous post.

The horse was diagnosed with rotation of 12 degrees. The space between the laminae at the top of the hoof (L1) is smaller than the space at the bottom (L2). These two measurements should be the same, or stated another way the wall of the Coffin Bone (red line) should be parallel to the hoof wall (metal marker seen in gray). When the space at the bottom is greater this indicates the laminae have given way and the bone has begun to rotate, or founder. The wide space at the bottom, L2, is now full of torn and dead laminae, inflammation and blood, and this is what becomes the laminar wedge.

The importance of correct laminar spacing (he calls it the Horn-Laminar zone) is discussed by Ric Redden here

Here is an umarked Xray of the same foot:

Click on thumbnail for larger image.

The Laminar Wedge

is the space in the front of the hoof at the toe, where stretched and torn laminae have caused the coffin bone to rotate away from the hoof wall.   The space between coffin bone and hoof wall has widened at the bottom, relative to the top, and has filled with wound secretion, blood and torn and dead laminae.

From the Front

The ’dead’ laminae are black.  

From the Top

From the side. The tip of the toe no longer contacts the ground.

(the photos are of both front feet, both of which foundered).

 The horse has relatively flat soles, so the buildup of excess sole was especially harmful and painful.

Right Front Foot

Before                                                                               After

Bruises were revealed underneath the excess sole immediately after it was trimmed away.

Left Front Foot

(click on thumbnail for larger image)

Before                                                   After

This foot had already developed abscesses underneath the excess sole, corresponding exactly to the outline of the sole ‘lumps’, visible in the small thumbnail to the left.