Christmas Crumpet
Well-Known Member
I saw a local farrier at a Christmas party and we started chatting about taking horses's feet as you do. His daughter's pony had got laminitis due to frosty ground and that sort of started the conversation.
I told him about how my horse's feet had improved a lot since having his shoes off last summer for 10 weeks and that I was intending to do it again but for longer this summer. I said I had been quite worried about the pulses he had in his feet at times and the panic I had over laminitis. Farrier said quite bluntly that pulses occur due to any kind of inflammation or trauma to feet not necessarily laminitis and that my horse hadn't had his shoes off for years so obviously his feet were going to be a bit sore when his shoes came off coupled with the hard summer ground. He said you cannot rely entirely on pulses to diagnose laminitis because sometimes horses will have pulses for other reasons i.e. newly deshod, charging out on hard ground, sore from stones etc. He thought you should take a view and look at the whole picture not just the feet. He also said that when you take the shoes off, the hoof moves in an entirely different way and actually stretches and contracts a lot more so if the hoof isn't entirely healthy then to start with there will be inflammation.
I think this sounds like quite a practical approach - and it does make total sense that pulses are not necessarily present because the horse has laminitis. For whatever reason you bring the horse in off the grass onto a deep bed and then the pulses go down because its like standing on a pillow for them. It might not be the bringing off the grass that eases the pulses because chances are it might not be metabolic. Obviously a horse with no foot pain at all will not have pulses but there are a few reasons for a horse to have raised pulses not just laminitis.
Just thought I'd share that. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat!!
I told him about how my horse's feet had improved a lot since having his shoes off last summer for 10 weeks and that I was intending to do it again but for longer this summer. I said I had been quite worried about the pulses he had in his feet at times and the panic I had over laminitis. Farrier said quite bluntly that pulses occur due to any kind of inflammation or trauma to feet not necessarily laminitis and that my horse hadn't had his shoes off for years so obviously his feet were going to be a bit sore when his shoes came off coupled with the hard summer ground. He said you cannot rely entirely on pulses to diagnose laminitis because sometimes horses will have pulses for other reasons i.e. newly deshod, charging out on hard ground, sore from stones etc. He thought you should take a view and look at the whole picture not just the feet. He also said that when you take the shoes off, the hoof moves in an entirely different way and actually stretches and contracts a lot more so if the hoof isn't entirely healthy then to start with there will be inflammation.
I think this sounds like quite a practical approach - and it does make total sense that pulses are not necessarily present because the horse has laminitis. For whatever reason you bring the horse in off the grass onto a deep bed and then the pulses go down because its like standing on a pillow for them. It might not be the bringing off the grass that eases the pulses because chances are it might not be metabolic. Obviously a horse with no foot pain at all will not have pulses but there are a few reasons for a horse to have raised pulses not just laminitis.
Just thought I'd share that. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat!!
