club foot

If the price was right and he could do what I wanted then yes I would. I had a tb with one very boxy foot and he never had a days lameness and I had him 20 years. Obviously if you wanted to show or do higher level eventing then its a risk.
 
My mare has a hind club foot, happened after she was attacked by YO dog when she was eight. She is nineteen now and has DJD, worse in that hind and both fronts are stiff but the other hind is fine. She is nineteen now and just started on a bute a day to keep her happy.
It didn't cause any trouble while she was younger and we competed in dressage regularly. Be aware tho the un natural angle of the leg can cause extra wear to the joints so shortening working life.
We hack gently now to keep her moving and we enjoy it being together relaxing,(actually she's not that relaxing to ride sometimes but having four kids it's nice to get away) I wouldn't buy a horse with such a problem but have adapted to it.
 
personally I would not. far too many horses out there with good conformation -which can break down - why buy a horse who has an inbuilt fail.
also so there are degrees of clubbed footedness. One on this yard really should never have been left as a foal. His foot was so clubbed it was deformed and was getting worse as it foreshortened the tendon tipping it further and further onto the toes. The toes were worn badly, the heels just kept on growing continuing to push it onto the toes. the farrier wanted x rays, the owner just wanted shoes on. farrier refused to shoe it any more until he saw xrays as in his opinion something serious was going on. i was seriously worried as the tendon was so solid it was likely to snap especially as the horse was seriously obese. The owner just wanted shoes on! She went to a bad farrier, he kept shoes on, but the horse moved further and further onto his toe. The vet said not to ride or shoe, and retire him on grass. but the owner simply moved yards, changed farriers and vets, horse is now dead, snapped tendon! He was an extreme example.

I have known others with a club foot that have not been too bad, however they have only ever been used at low levels for hacking or low level SJ. it really alldepends on wether it is a probper club
 
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I think it depends on how clubbed the foot is. I had a horse that was mild but noticeably clubbed in front, and he never had a days lameness from that. He jumped 1.40 m tracks until he was 17 and now still sound is showing the ropes to a younger person. So I think difficult to say without seeing how bad it is.
 
It would really depend how the club foot came about.

If born with it then definately no.

If the result of dealing with a prolonged foot infection - the other foot being rather spread then I'd have farrier look and go by his decision.
 
My friend bought one who as a result of the (well respected) farrier's attempts to correct the issue, ended up with navicular etc etc.

After all the traditional treatments failed, the owner finally listened to me and went barefoot.

The horse has been sound and competeing since then.

You can see the pictures of how the foot corrected ITSELF here.

http://www.progressivehorse.co.uk/html/shoko.html

I am often astounded how lovely his feet look now!

So - yes, I would if the horse was otherwise perfect and I intended to keep it barefoot;)
 
It's a classic example of how well meaning professionals can make things worse where it is often much better to let the feet sort themselves out.
 
my sisters horse's left fore is a club foot. He has very deep, upright feet naturally so his front are not too obviously not a pair. He's never had a problem with his feet per se. He has side bone in his fronts, and spavin in both hocks so has had intermittent unsoundness, but he's 17 now and has always been an active happy horse.

He's competed up to 1m20 BSJA, he's evented up to pre-novice level. He's very capable of a stunning dressage test, but takes to showing off to make the judge laugh as he dis-likes it (weeing next to the judges car is his favourite, but other stunts include bucking down the centre line, waving his head about so his tongue slaps him in the face then having a tantrum about that, stopping for a full on hind leg/ear scratch at X and ignoring my sisters attempts to move him).

With correct management there's no reason for mild cases to not enjoy a perfectly normal life.
 
Well Kali's right fore is extremely upright and boxy (actually he has pretty boxy feet all round) and has been described as mildly clubbed. He sailed through a five-stage vetting (!!) but you can hear the different cadence to his walk on hard ground (clip, clop, clip, thunk). He is, however, perfectly sound and able to jump, work on the flat, go across country and hunt with no problems/lameness. The one issue we do have is that that foot tends to get thrushy if I don't keep on top of hoof hygiene. We've opted not to alter the shape of his foot too radically as he has adapted his way of going to compensate and we feel that we could actually cause injury/problems if we interfere too much - all my farrier does is try his best to make sure his two front feet are individually balanced rather than worrying too much about whether they're a pair.

Being a numpty novice buyer, I did not know he had a mild club . . . but as he's very largely a leisure horse, it probably wouldn't have made much difference. Farrier feels that, being a homebred continental horse (he's Polish) he probably didn't get the necessary shoeing/foot trimming as a baby/youngster.

P
 
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