Calling all hoof gurus!

I think lami as well, it is possible to be worse in one foot than the other, and it can kind of 'come and go' a bit in the first stages - the trick is to spot it early and take action. With the shoes on his pasterns do look a little upright to me, so if there is lami present you can probably expect him to adopt the typical leaning back pose because his weight looks to be more on his toes which will be the bit hurting the most.

Can you feel any sponginess above the coronet of the front hooves and/or can you feel a strong pulse just below the inside of each fetlock (in the groove just above the heel)? One or other (hopefully not both) are also indications that lami is a more than likely diagnosis. If there is sponginess just above the coronet it could be that the pedal bone has already started to rotate.

Whilst I'm definitely not a hood guru either, in this case I'd err on the side of caution and get him off the grass, indoors and on the soaked hay/low sugar hi fibre diet straight away.

btw hoof testers can be pretty useless as a diagnostic tool - my farrier told me once that if you put them in the wrong place or press too hard or not enough you can make any horse appear sound/unsound.
 
Thanks 3oldponies, all very useful info which I'll be able feed back to owner tomorrow. I'm not sure about the sponginess but I will be sure to check when we go up. That's interesting about the hoof testers, I wasn't sure how reliable they would be but he was certainly more uncomfortable with them being used on his most lame leg.
 
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