Possibly numpty question about barefoot hoof balance.

Nickles1973

Nickles1973

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Hi there,
I posted yesterday about my horse's recent transition to bare and our lameness issues.
Yesterday my vet confirmed his bilateral high suspensory damage and after consultation with Sue Dyson has devised a plan. Apparently the right hind is slightly worse than the left confusingly as the left is the one causing the lameness. This does point to the assumption of early arthritic changes in the left hock as being the over-riding cause for his lameness. according to the vet there is no sign of inflammation around the suspensory damage and this is a good sign??
He has injected both hocks with Steroid as this will have an effect on the arthritic changes but will also "leach" to the suspesory.
I am to begin light walk exercise tomorrow for 10-15 mins and gradually build up over 2 weeks after which we will regroup and consider shockwave?
Tbh I am trying not to get my hopes up as I can find loads of info about psd and very little of it is positive. However this gradual build up of work does fit well with his barefoot transistion.
The vet didn't mention again about having him reshod with lateral extension so I didn't ask.
An awful lot of the info out there about psd mentions hoof balance being extremely important though.
So, with his hind shoes removed recently what should I be directing my farrier to do about his hoof balance. My farrier is fantastic and has totally embraced his transition out of shoes and he feels that George will show us the hoof he needs and his job is to follow that. Is this right under these more complicated curcumstances? Or should he regularly address the balance of George's hooves to make them "fit" his diagnosis?
I feel the first to be correct, but any advice would be gratefully received.
N. x
 
Hi, I was not familiar with your recent posts but have just read a few of them - I'm sorry to hear you and your horse are having such a rough time of it at the moment. He is lucky to have such a caring owner. :)

I think, personally, if you trust your farrier and he has embraced him going barefoot, then I would trust him to do what he felt was necessary balance wise. If your horse is comfortable walking over concrete then he is obviously doing something right!

I would also read the following website, which I found very interesting... http://www.barefoottrim.com/2007/balance/balance.htm

Good luck, keep us posted on how you get on.
 
Sounds like your farrier's a keeper :)

I would just go for a minimalistic sympathetic trim and let the walking excercise remodel his feet the way they should be. It's the stimulation that will get the results - the job of the trim is simply not to screw things up!
 
Your vet and farrier should work together to devise the best way forward. Not sure you should be "directing" your farrier; sounds like he knows what he is doing but when there is a vet involved the two should be communicating!
 
My hubby is a farrier and in some cases he has suggested to the vet that maybe trying bf and let the hoof wear to the condition and how the leg wants to take it.
Sometimes this is the answer other times not and sometimes the horse needs the support of a shoe.
 
horsemadmum1 said:
Your vet and farrier should work together to devise the best way forward. Not sure you should be "directing" your farrier; sounds like he knows what he is doing but when there is a vet involved the two should be communicating!
Click to expand...

Ok so directing may not have been quite the right word. Discussing with him would have been more appropriate.
The thing is though that the farrier and I decided on the plan of taking G's shoes off because his hooves were "shoe sick". (can't think of a better way to describe it) And because my previous farrier that I trusted implicitly could have been contributing to G's current soundness issues by poor shoeing. It's ironic (and a little sad) that just as I find a great farrier and G's hooves have started to recover by taking his shoes off (after 3 years being told he'd never cope) that all his issues should catch up with him.
 
Nickles1973 said:
My farrier is fantastic and has totally embraced his transition out of shoes and he feels that George will show us the hoof he needs and his job is to follow that. Is this right under these more complicated curcumstances? Or should he regularly address the balance of George's hooves to make them "fit" his diagnosis?
Click to expand...

Your farrier is BRRILLIANT


Warn him that what he may well see is that as the weather changes and your horse is more, or less, comfortable with wetter or drier weather, the collateral grooves in his hind feet may vary a lot in height. When he is sounder they will be more even, when he is lamer the inside heel will be much deeper at the collateral groove. I can show him a picture of moulds that I took of my spavined barefoot horse if he wants to see it - one side is 50% deeper than the other. The hoof wall height above the sole did not change but the depth of the groove did. This was not uneven foot wear due to pain, but uneven foot build to alleviate pain.

This ability to change the foot according to the circumstances at the time is one of the chief benefits of barefoot treatment for arthritic conditions.

I hope it goes well.
 
This is interesting cptrayes, I've never read about this before but I have noticed that there is a big difference in my TB's front feet CG's. Would that be happening for the same reason in the front legs?
 
muff747 said:
This is interesting cptrayes, I've never read about this before but I have noticed that there is a big difference in my TB's front feet CG's. Would that be happening for the same reason in the front legs?
Click to expand...

In the front feet I would expect that to be a conformation issue rather than an injury, like a turn in the cannon bone from the knee, or a slight shoulder misalingment if nothing is visible in the legs. Only because I am unaware of any front leg injury or disease that would cause it, there may well be some that I just don't have experience of.

As long as the height of the hoof wall above the sole is equal on both sides, then the depth of the collateral grooves is something that the horse is producing to keep its foot landing flat with even pressure up through the leg joints. One of mine is not straight from the shoulder and to compensate he grows a foot which is not straight either, but it is a perfect match for his lack of straight movement and both his heels hit the floor at the same time, and the pressure is even right up through all his joints. Unlike the horse I had with spavins, that foot never changes. With the other, the colder and wetter the weather, the bigger the difference in depth between the two sides. I will stress again for newer readers, this was not uneven wear it was uneven, and internal, growth.

Some of the most fascinating pictures on the Rockley Blog are horses which look as if their foot has been shod in balance, but they are lame. Then when the shoes are taken off, there is often a very big change in the balance of the foot, while the horse grows a foot to match its own joints and not an imposed idea of symmetry desired by man. In general, those horses come sound and stay sound unless someone comes along trying to make their foot look more "normal".

If your horse is sound then uneven depth of collateral grooves would not worry me.

When I told him about these lame horses coming sound with odd shape feet, I had a vet once ask "yes, but how long will the horse stay sound?" and I replied "it wasn't sound at all in shoes, what does it matter?". But in fact horses with very odd feet have now been sound and hunting for years.
 
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