I'm only as good as your pictures, so these lines are tentative.
It looks like they are doing well. Three weeks after first trim? When you first start, you are in a tighter trimming box with the pathology and its good to see the conservative approach at this time.
The main issues are flare and flare forward. Otherwise, all the parts and pieces seem to be pretty closely in place and not pulled out of whack.
Flare is the skirted width around the hoof wall. Torque on the hoof causes the wall to be pulled out away from the sole. When the hoof breaks over the wall, the outside edge of that skirted flare contacts, bends outward and pulls some more. It is the same as bending your fingernail back and then walking on it. Flares hurt and you get immediate relief when you bevel and disengage them. Flares have a habit, when released to slump down the wall and bulge at the ground line, so keeping this bevel maintained is important, or else the pull is right back on. With this in mind, this hoof has arrived at this point and needs to have the bevel working again. When you just start, the trim appts. should be 3-4 weeks apart in order to maintain this bevel. There is still a lot of flare all around this hoof, needs to be tightened up, you can't see a bevel relieving the wall anymore. This bevel is a 90 degree, where I do 45's. It brings the breakover back and relieves more and when the horse breaks over a 45, when he pushes off, he's ON that bevel, pushing the toe back with every step. The 90 leaves the breakover way out there and thins the wall at the toe, removing protection and not promoting. Make sense? This is merely a difference in trimming style. A bevel all the way around will relieve the flare and keeping it maintained addresses the flare forward. Flare forward doesn't happen overnight and can't be fixed overnight, so maintaining the bevel at the toe is key, along with patience on your sleeve.
This is flare:
This is flare forward:
In order to get the coronary band to the angle shown, the wall needs to be down even with live sole next trim. Looks like you have the concavity to do that, but I don't have hoof in hand either. The white lines are balance. The fact that you have boots, gives me confidence. Getting that coronary band balanced means that P3 is now ground parallel. No matter what length the hoof is left at, this should be achieved, couldn't last trim, hopefully this trim. I can tell that the heels have been lowered and brought back in order to get the back of the foot in order. If you had thrushy/atrophied frogs, you wouldn't even be able to do that. Once the heels have gotten their ducks in order, then you bevel the toe. Doing this brings the weight back on the heels for that heel first landing and they had better be ready to take it, otherwise, sensitivity will have the horse avoiding, going back to a toe first landing.....and defeated. You have a good trimmer with patience and is listening to the hoof.
Now these are real tentative lines. When you look at my lines, a lot of them are straight, but they should be. That is the shape they should be. FORM IS FUNCTION. Just like the shape of the 45 bevel working with every step, the old coronary band is showing that its shoved up. On both feet, the jam up is at the quarters. You can see the stress lines on the wall following suit.
I will venture to say that your horse is left handed. The left foot is lower, more splatted than the right, as he weights it more. The red lines going up the fetlock are where they will be when balanced....less sag/straighter delivery.
This one, I put lines on to show you the depth in the hoof. All that is colored in white is bar and is also showing the lumps on height on bar that is facing the ground. The rest is sole. The lines also show how high the bars are, coming up from the bottom of the groove.
The lumps on the bar tops are pinch points of jam with the ground. The height of the bar shows that when those pinch points make contact, the jam goes right down the bar height and into the corium. Not all goes straight up into the hoof, however. It splats outward as well, pushing/flaring the right side outwards. If you were to take the wall down even with live sole, it would bring him down on those bars and jam worse, so they must be addressed.
Same picture, more lines. The bar ramps merge from the sole and ramp straight up to the heel platforms and should run parallel with the frog. These should be established right away. What is in front of the ramps, needs to slivered off gradually, so the jammed corium can heal while the pressure comes off. There are many things that overgrown bars can do, but here, there are only two issues to explain. The height of the bar is one issue, and splatting over the sole is another. The white arrows show how much the bars have been pushed outward and need to come down. Think of that high bar wall as a solid retaining wall. The push has migrated it outward and from bottom to top of it, has pushed the sole away with it and flared the outside wall. It is replacing where the sole should be and behind the bar wall, its leaving dead space where the ramp should be.
What is causing this? A medial/lateral imbalance of inside higher than outside. The horse is forced to land on the lateral (outside) of the hoof and splats bar/white line/hoof wall on out. He's walking on the outside edge of his foot and breaking over to the inside of 12 o'clock. (wider/splatted hoof wall from 10-12 o'clock) Do you feel the curl towards being pidgeon toed? The area on the outside wider than the inside?
The two outside areas of white are not the bar wall, but have been splatted over the sole like a blanket, also jamming into the sole, thinning and bruising it. They also need to come down in slivers as well, starting by just relieving the bumps on them.
The red cupped lines show the shape of concavity. Imagine looking into a cereal bowl and you can see beautiful concavity happening at the toe, but the rest is filled in by excess bar. The development is nicely there in spite of it.
Coming in from the outside, the black should be gone, rasped from the top. The existing brown is the hoof print. The first red line is the leading edge of the bevel, so everything outside of that line should be beveled from there on out. The next red line is the edge of sole, which is the boss. Now you have a front hoof that looks like a front hoof in shape, instead of a hind.
Its a good first trim, glad you have boots, hope to get the flare and bars disengaged next time and next time is now. There is also a possibility that you won't need the boots on the hinds too much longer either. But again, I"m looking a photos and not with hoof in hand. These are good feet that I feel are going to fly through transition. Nice frog and decent development in the back of the hoof already. That's everything.
Only use the hoof polish when you absolutely have to and get it off completely right away. Whether its polish, or something else, it will suffocate the hoof's natural ability to breathe and take up or remove moisture at will.
I wouldn't show these pics to the trimmer as somebody else's opinion. They are doing fine without comments from the peanut gallery. This is just for you, so you can see and understand what you are looking at.
It's nice to see a hoof that is about to fly and a lot of things you don't have to think about. Hope this helps....
