Opinions on these feet please?

Casey76

Casey76

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(sorry, the photos are huge! :o )

Evening everyone,

My (just) 2yo was trimmed on Friday morning by my farrier. I have a DAEP coming in three weeks for an assessment and first HPT trim (and I can't say how excited I am to have found a barefoot specialist in Alsace at long last!)

Sorry the photos aren't brill. Although he is getting better, my baby boy isn't very patient with me hanging on to his feet for too long, as he is still working out his balance on three legs (not helped by the fact he has just gone massively bum high again :roll: )

The right fore and hind were taken with my phone on the evening they were trimmed, the left fore and hind were taken with a proper camera after a 30 min run round our coarse sand school the following day.

Right fore:








Right hind









Left fore









Left hind










And one of the young man in his entirety - if only because he is so gorgeous!
 
Interesting. To my uneducated eye, the angles on both feet on the near side look much better than those on the right.

With the right fore in particular, you can see an obvious difference in the correct growth angle below the hairline, to how it deviates towards the toe, along with a significantly under run heel. The hind is better, but there is still a change of angle towards the toe.
Yet it it isn't nearly as noticeable on the left.
 
I agree you have a bit of an under run heel on the front right. The right hind looks good to me though. Left front heel looks a tad long maybe. Could be a touch of high-low. I did notice that you have a lateral flare on both the right front and hind. There is generally a bit of flare in the bottom third of the hooves, but other than that growth looks tight and good.

The back of the hooves look pretty good, with the possible exception of front right - is there a thrush problem in that hoof? It looks generally a bit less well developed than the rest.

I think the frogs will be happier with a bit less pruning - hopefully the daep will oblige :D. A bit of in hand work on abrasive surfaces would also do them some good.

Hooves on the whole look nice :).
 
What I learned is that I should have taken photos of everything at the same time.

I re-did the right fore sole view at the same time as the left feet, just 24 hours after I did the right legs, and it looks completely different!

 
Tbh, even in that photo the frog & back of the foot still looks less well developed than in the other hoof. Has he ever seen a body worker? Might be interesting to see if theres any obvious reason for the difference.
 
He was crunched by the osteopath at the end of May. He was out of alignment in various places, but mainly on he left - which I can only attribute to when he "accidentally" jumped a boundary fence which was much lower on the field side than the road side from where he jumped it.
 
Hmm, it's possible that the lateral flares on the right could be compensatory to the issues on his left side. It's also possible the slight high-low could be related as well. It's all a bit of a guessing game though ;).

It's interesting (for me, because I'm a geek :D) to keep a photo diary which you can link to physio, trims, dentist, saddle fit etc & thereby keep track of the changes you see in the hooves as a result. It's fascinating to watch the way hooves adapt and respond to all the stimuli they get not just from the environment, but also from the changing horse above them. Interpreting what you see is another matter, and much trickier I find!
 
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