Horse lameness - Hooves unbalanced

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MagicMelon

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After x-rays and nerve blocks on Monday, vet says its not navicular that I thought was causing my new horse to be intermitently lame on his front left. He believes its because his hooves haven't been trimmed and shod correctly in the past (previous to me taking him on 1 month ago) so he is very unbalanced in front. His legs basically look squint when you look at them from the front, his pedal bone in the x-rays isn't even straight as a result. Vet strongly believes this is the reason for his lameness. My farrier came last week and said exactly the same about him being badly unbalanced and that he wanted to slowly bring him into balance over the course of a few months as the horse is 13 and his limbs will have been used to this for some time so we both agreed that trimming too much could cripple him!

Vet thinks farrier should have taken a lot more off - I dont agree for the reason above. He thinks he should also be in eggbars. Farrier thinks he's best in normal shoes. I personally would like to try taking the shoes off completely to get the blood circulation going and get the farrier to trim him slowly back into balance. For the record, he arrived in eggbars (was lame) and is currently in normal shoes although the vet took off both his shoes to do the x-rays and so he's shoeless in front right now (until farrier comes on Mon and hopefully takes off his backs if he's happy to). He seems to be able to cope ok with no shoes so far.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience of this? I'd like to know if I'm doing the right thing here!
 
Yep, exactly the same with a horse of mine and as a result pedal bone rotation (toes up).

Farrier shod with the x-rays in front of him - egg bar's and gel pads. Horse instantly improved. I would be cautious of taking shoes off - but don't know enough about it to give you sound reasons as to why not.

Does he have flat, thin soles?
 
He doesn't need a farrier to tell him what balance he needs. If you take off his shoes he will balance them for himself. Do roadwork to match the wear rate and within weeks he will have begun to create the foot he needs. I'm part way through with my second rehab who will not stay sound in shoes and he is busy making feet that match the fact that his legs aren't actually symmetrical.

If you need inspiration to go down this route, take a look at the Rockleyfarm blog and you will see plenty of horses who know exactly what foot they need if only someone would leave them alone to be allowed to grow it. The result may not be pretty, but who cares if they are sound?
 
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amymay I thought the MM mean that the pedal bone was squint when looking from the side whereas you seem to be describing reverse rotation?

MM iirc you take the shoes off your other horse out of season too, if current one is comfy enough I don't see that time out of shoes is going to do him any harm :)
 
Agree with cptrayes; if the horse can be worked sufficiently without shoes then he will most likely restore correct balance himself. It's what I'd do if I were in your position :)
 
cptrayes said:
He doesn't need a farrier to tell him what balance he needs. If you take off his shoes he will balance them for himself. Do roadwork to match the wear rate and within weeks he will have begun to create the foot he needs. I'm part way through with my second rehab who will not stay sound in shoes and he is busy making feet that match the fact that his legs aren't actually symmetrical.

If you need inspiration to go down this route, take a look at the Rockleyfarm blog and you will see plenty of horses who know exactly what foot they need if only someone would leave them alone to be allowed to grow it. The result may not be pretty, but who cares if they are sound?
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Sorry to hijack MM but I am interested in this post. My new mare came unshod (and out of work) and I'd rather not put shoes on. I think her feet look ok, there are a few chips as you would expect from being out of work and now in work. She is completely sound on all surfaces including stones. So I was just going to do what you suggest here cypatrayes. However the chiro said to me her feet need trimmed as they are ragged and have flares. Now I am in a quandary. My other one was similar and is now self trimming. Am I on the road to ruin or will I stick to my guns.

Hope yours comes sound MM.
 
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FfionWinnie said:
Sorry to hijack MM but I am interested in this post. My new mare came unshod (and out of work) and I'd rather not put shoes on. I think her feet look, there are a few chips as you would expect from being out of work and now in work. She is completely sound on all surfaces including stones. So I was just going to do what you suggest here cypatrayes. However the chiro said to me her feet need trimmed as they are ragged and have flares. Now I am in a quandary. My other one was similar and is now self trimming. Am I on the road to ruin or will I stick to my guns.

Hope yours comes sound MM.
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Not all flares are bad. Some flares are structural and the horse creates them to balance its leg. Look at the underside of the foot. If it looks pretty much symmetrical (imagine a line down the middle of the frog) then the flare is structural and on a sound horse, you remove it at your peril. Your chiro has no idea what she is talking about unless she has trained as a trimmer or a farrier with plenty barefoot experience.

We try too hard to tell horses what feet they must have. They know what feet they need if only we would feed them right, exercise them right and leave them to it.
 
Had the same issue with one of ours. Years of slightly squint trimming and shoeing led to lameness and a host of associated back problems. New farrier made an excellent job of getting them v v slowly better, but in the end she was always not quite right a week of two after her last shoes. We took her shoes off as rather a last resort tbh. It took a long time for her to wear the balance she wanted as we didn't have a conformable abrasive surface for her to move over. Any trimming made her lame too (no matter how well thought out or carefully done by above mentioned farrier). If we had the freedom to I would have chucked down as much pea gravel as I could afford and leave her to move over it for a few weeks and then slowly bring her back into work. I think we would have progressed alot faster! As it was (livery yard) we booted and led in hand/rode over comfy surfaces etc and increased this as she improved. Basically as much variation in work as surfaces as her comfort level would allow. We have left her barefoot as there's no reason to put the shoes back on really. Over 1 yr now since last farrier visit and happily self trimming - she is on the form of her life, thank god! We needed to mineral balance her diet as her feet were v weak, flat and thin soled. She is just one of those who needs the extra help of everything being just so.
 
So while on the subject I am curious - if the horse is left to self balance what happens when the farrier/trimmer visits again is it possible that the feet could be trimmed out of balance again so that they look symetrical, what should a farrier be looking for to maintain what the horse has achieved by itself. I just think it must be hard to do as the difference could be millimetres
 
Daisy2 said:
So while on the subject I am curious - if the horse is left to self balance what happens when the farrier/trimmer visits again is it possible that the feet could be trimmed out of balance again so that they look symetrical, what should a farrier be looking for to maintain what the horse has achieved by itself. I just think it must be hard to do as the difference could be millimetres
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Symmetrical doesn't mean balanced, balance is v hard to identify and so trim, esp without scan/x rays etc. Like you say, a mm or two is enough to cause an imbalance, then imagine how much that puts the horse out of balance at the fetlock, knee, shoulder etc. Unless the horse is a fairly straightforward type conformationally, then I reckon it must be enormously difficult to know what signs to follow the horse on and what aspects to ignore and trim against (if that makes any sense!). For our girl it would have been v difficult for the farrier to ever manage to trim her perfectly as it wasn't that she was growing too much wall on one side, it was more that her short side was growing more slowly and needed the stimulation to kick the growth rate up.
 
cptrayes said:
Not all flares are bad. Some flares are structural and the horse creates them to balance its leg. Look at the underside of the foot. If it looks pretty much symmetrical (imagine a line down the middle of the frog) then the flare is structural and on a sound horse, you remove it at your peril. Your chiro has no idea what she is talking about unless she has trained as a trimmer or a farrier with plenty barefoot experience.

We try too hard to tell horses what feet they must have. They know what feet they need if only we would feed them right, exercise them right and leave them to it.
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Thanks. I will have a good look tomorrow and maybe post some pics.
 
Daisy2 said:
So while on the subject I am curious - if the horse is left to self balance what happens when the farrier/trimmer visits again is it possible that the feet could be trimmed out of balance again so that they look symetrical, what should a farrier be looking for to maintain what the horse has achieved by itself. I just think it must be hard to do as the difference could be millimetres
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This is why the perfect situation is to work the horse on tarmac to match the growth rate with the wear, and then the horse will never need trimming. It's a situation that a lot of people can't achieve because of their own circumstances, in which case all you can do is find a trimmer who can "read" sole and trim to that and hope.

What is certain is that farriers and trimmers can be too quick to remove flare, in the assumption that all flare is wrong, when sometimes it is structural. If the horse is consistently sound and consistently has flare and the diet is correct, and the horse is less happy if the flare is removed, then those flares are structural and should be left alone.
 
ThePony said:
Symmetrical doesn't mean balanced
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I agree with you if we are talking about symmetry of the hoof looking at the front. But horse after horse on the Rockley blog would suggest that the front feet, looking at the sole, should normally be symmetrical, even if they look woefully asymmetric from a front on view.
 
FfionWinnie said:
Sorry to hijack MM but I am interested in this post. My new mare came unshod (and out of work) and I'd rather not put shoes on. I think her feet look ok, there are a few chips as you would expect from being out of work and now in work. She is completely sound on all surfaces including stones. So I was just going to do what you suggest here cypatrayes. However the chiro said to me her feet need trimmed as they are ragged and have flares. Now I am in a quandary. My other one was similar and is now self trimming. Am I on the road to ruin or will I stick to my guns.

Hope yours comes sound MM.
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FUNCTION OVER FORM :)

Your horse is functioning just fine - so you are doing just fine.

It really doesn't matter if they're pretty or not ;)

Ragged edges are purely cosmetic.
Flare is worth keeping an eye on. It can be a message that something is going on in diet/body....but not always. If the horse is happy - then leave her to it :).
 
Absolutely agree with above. One of my barefooters has completely different shaped fronts - and until Nic/Rockley started posting about celery and how symmetrical wasn't the way to go, I used to always shape his fronts so they looked the same - and he would always grow them right back so they were completely different. Then Nic re-educated us and I saw the light. Now I hardly every tidy up, he grows two very different shaped front hooves, and he's sound as a pound.

I recently had a back injury and couldn't bend to do the tidy, so got one of the yard farriers, under explicit instructions from me, to do the tidy. He was a really nice chap and totally followed instructions as in No Knives, not too much wall off, leave frog alone etc., but still through habit I guess shaped both fronts so they were symmetrical - boy hobbled for 2 weeks until he'd grown a few cms of hoof back.

Also, one of my others grows a false flare on the inside of both fronts which make her look horribly pigeon-toed. Again I used to rasp off in the old days, embarrassed at her 'ugly' hooves, until I became enlightened. Now she can be as pigeon toed as she wants to look, and she's balanced and sound!
 
amymay - No, he's got very upright hooves. I think your horse has his pedal bone tipping back (as in front to back), in mine his are squint from left to right when you look straight on from the front - does that make sense?

To the ones saying it would be beneficial so he can sort out his own balance - this is my thought on it too. I've always given my shod horses time off unshod over the winter every year, Im just wary with this one as he's 13 now and has NEVER been unshod (well since he was backed I assume at 3/4). Although in this case, I would actually intend to leave him unshod permanently as I dont see what benefit putting the shoes back on would achieve - I should point out that I won't be eventing this one, he's a showjumper so that's all I'll do with him and always on surface (so I dont need shoes for studs etc.). I wouldn't just leave the hooves to do what they wanted, I would fully intend to have the farrier trim every 6 weeks as normal, I really dont have the correct surfaces to help wear a hoof down enough. I do have a barefoot trimmer do my ponies so Ive had a chat with her about this too, she thinks the farrier is doing a decent enough job trimming so she's happy to leave him to it.

I just want him to become more consistently sound, thats my only aim!
 
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