Can your farrier make your horse pigoen toed?

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Holly7

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As the title really - can anyone comment?

IMO my horse is becoming PT'd. He has had back issues identified (KS & SI) but over the past three shoeings I have noticed one of his front feet become more PT'd.

He was straight when I bought him last year (and unshod).

Am getting rather worried now :-(

I am advised (by f) that its his SI as he still isn't coming through properly from behind (diagonal pair).
 
A poor farrier can totally ruin a horses feet but in this case I suspect he is correct that the horse is in some way compensating for what is going on higher up, he may have been straight 12 months ago when purchased but he had other issues that were unknown to you then and how the foot is now will to an extent reflect what happened about 9 months or so ago, the time it takes to grow a new foot.

You do not say what treatment or rehab you have done/ are doing but it may be that once the horse is built up and working correctly he straightens up, your other option is to go barefoot and see what he does without the shoes, your physio should also be able to give an opinion and advise on what you can do to help get him more even.
 
He had the surgery in Sept for the KS and has been injected twice for the SI.

He is still undergoing rehab. Only in the last ten days have I actually got back in the saddle with him (we had quite a few mental issues with tack to overcome).

We are only in walk and trot currently under saddle, but lunge work is w/t/c. Also we do pole work and raised pole work under lunge work.

He had an extremely severe case of KS for a just turned 4 yr old ! Was gutted when I found out, but knew he was trying to tell me something.

We are still under the physio and she is happy for the progress we have made and to continue with the work I have been doing.

Just seems weird to getting more obvious, but then maybe its getting more obvious as he isn't using that hind leg correctly. Vet doesn't want to inject him again, with him being so young.
 
I'm watching a friend's horse get more and more pigeon toed with each shoeing (definitely wasn't when friend bought him) so yes, I'd say it can be caused by poor farriery.
 
Back pain can make horses move with their elbow out this makes them look Pidgeon toed .
Get something long and straight and not too thick and try to work out where the deviation is coming from .
 
I blame poor shoeing for the whole host of problems my poor horse has had, I'd ensure your farrier is getting the foot balance spot on, KS horses are very sensitive to this being wrong. You could always get a decent equine podiatrist to have a look. I quite like the DAEP qualified ones.
 
If a horse has problems with its joints in will try to compensate by altering its foot placement and I suspect this is what your farrier means.
I see you use a physio. Can he/she offer you suggestions/exercises to make the problem better. With hind feet the farrier can offer lateral extensions, would he be able to do this with the front feet I wonder? This will 'encourage' the horse to alter his foot placement.

This is what I have done with my horse who had problems with his upper hock joint following ethanol fusion complications some four years on. The farrier has put lateral extensions on his one hind foot as he was placing it midline (under belly) when he walked. It took about two weeks but then I started noticing a distict difference in his placement and now he moves correctly.
 
He is shod because Vet insisted on it to help him just after the surgery as she said he was foot sore (he had a massive split in the heel of the opposite hind (thingy grove - cant think of the name). This appears to be healing well now.

Deviation on this thread - but still connected - can the surfaces we work our horses on have to do with it also? We have just had a new arena built and he stumbles more in this one than the old one (still have access to both, but does stumble in the old one - advised its because isn't working right still from behind). The old one had a fuzzy felt type surface (40x20) the new one has a wax type surface (60x20). Both are levelled regularly, but, with my thinking cap on, he has had to do endless lunge work in the old arena as part of his rehab, have only just started to ride in the old one and then progressed into riding in the new one (as it located in a different part of the yard).

Could it be surfaces have more impact on our horses than we think? Would it better to get him out hacking to get movement behind? Sorry for hijack -just other horses have issues and they have a different farrier to me. The only thing in common is those horses never hack out and are only ever exercised in the school (which I don't agree with but I wont go there!)

Just a thought . . . . . .
 
Holly7 said:
Could it be surfaces have more impact on our horses than we think? .
Click to expand...


Surfaces have a HUGE impact on the way a horse moves, and a poor surface can seriously hamper, tire or lame a horse very quickly. Example of poor surface, a sand surface that is never harrowed, that rides deep (remember running through deep sand as a kid?)

Or a surface that does not have adequate drainage. Going from a firm to a soft footing is going to cause inconsistency in the surface, and will inflict a strained tendon more readily than a surface that is of poor quality but has a consistent footing.

Here is a fabby article http://www.thehorse.com/articles/10178/footing-and-horse-performance
 
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