This certainly puts you off shoes

Not sure if I am going to watch that, can you give a non gory summary?

At an endurance ride the farrier told me I was in for problems as there was "no hoof wall" and she is walking on her sole, which I actually thought was what she was supposed to walk on along with the frog obv? Serious question.
 
It actually points out how a horse,s weight is not designed to be taken on the walls! I watched it and I am pretty pathetic when it comes to looking at hoof dissections!
 
FfionWinnie said:
At an endurance ride the farrier told me I was in for problems as there was "no hoof wall" and she is walking on her sole, which I actually thought was what she was supposed to walk on along with the frog obv? Serious question.
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My understanding is the wall should be about 1/16th inch proud of live sole. Everything on the bottom of the hoof is designed to bear weight but the load is shared depending on the surface. The hoof wall is the primary weight bearing structure on a hard flat surface but the pedal bone and bony column isn't under/above the wall so long walls (shod or unshod) can a big problem as the shared load of sole, frog, bars etc. is lost/reduced.

It can be difficult to keep this correct if sole is routinely thinned or excess sole not removed/abraded.
 
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I posted this a few months back. I was fascinated!

I keep my pony barefoot anyway as he has fab feet and it suits us, but watching that would definitely make me think twice if he was shod.
 
The video shows dissected hooved being put under pressure to demonstrate movement within the hoof capsule. In order to show this fairly clearly the hooves appear relatively fresh and are seeping blood at points. That is the 'gore' content as it were.
 
amandap said:
My understanding is the wall should be about 1/16th inch proud of live sole.
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Only at the quarters. None at the toe and none on the heel plane. Heels, back 1/2 of frog, and toe callous are all equally as weight bearing as the hoof wall. The miracle for me is not that horses can work without shoes but how horses stay long term sound suspended from their laminae when they aren't designed to be.
 
cptrayes said:
Only at the quarters. None at the toe and none on the heel plane. Heels, back 1/2 of frog, and toe callous are all equally as weight bearing as the hoof wall. The miracle for me is not that horses can work without shoes but how horses stay long term sound suspended from their laminae when they aren't designed to be.
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I am pleased you put that as I was so pleased this morning looking at how one of mine has now developed a good toe callous as he has worn away the wall in the toe area through plenty of hacking, just need to get the frogs back to how they used to be.
 
That's really interesting.
In the case of laminitis then, how do we end up with rotated coffin bones? If ive understood the video, then its saying the coffin bone actually sits on the sole "pad". How should it be possible then for a coffin bone to to rotate and penetrate the sole?
 
Because it is 'counterbalanced' by the tendon at the back, which comes down the back of the leg and pulls the back of the pedal bone upwards. If the laminae release, the bone rotates. This is why tendon snipping is a treatment for rotation.
 
cptrayes said:
Only at the quarters. None at the toe and none on the heel plane.
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Leaving aside the trim or not question.
Some hard working horses may well wear their hooves this way but is it wise to trim them so? That would leave the quarters longer than heel and toe. I've never heard or read of that way to trim before to be perfectly honest.
 
Lancelot said:
That's really interesting.
In the case of laminitis then, how do we end up with rotated coffin bones? If ive understood the video, then its saying the coffin bone actually sits on the sole "pad". How should it be possible then for a coffin bone to to rotate and penetrate the sole?
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Supporting the inflamed hoof by peripheral loading also encourages sinking or rotation. This is why it is important to support the whole of the under side of the hoof with deep conformable bedding or pads.
In the end the danger in laminitis is the inflammation of the lamina, if this isn't got under control a well connected hoof capsule cannot be grown down. Disconnected lamina can't be mended, healthy connection has to be grown down to connect the hoof wall to the bone and allow thicker sole to build.

Cutting tendons might be a treatment used but in my understanding all it does is turn a rotated bone into a sinker. There is no need to do this.
 
You might find this post interesting. Note photo two. It's not so much that the pedal bone 'rotates' as the hoof capsule becomes disconnected and the space fills up with disorganised biological material.

http://barefoothorseblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/laminitis-what-is-going-on-inside.html

Some say this 'rotation' is irreversible. This is not the case, but you do need to remove the cause of the inflammation. Then a healthy hoof capsule can be grown from the top and the 'rotation' grows out very nicely. It takes time and attention to detail, but doesn't need drugs, box rest, resection or heart bars.

Peripheral loading is not a good idea and there should be no more peripheral loading in one area than another. Soles are designed to share load with pressure and release. It is not healthy for a flat thin sole to take continuous pressure, but a healthy sole functioning as nature intended is perfectly capable of taking it's share of the load as part of the natural hoof mechanism.
 
amandap said:
Leaving aside the trim or not question.
Some hard working horses may well wear their hooves this way but is it wise to trim them so? That would leave the quarters longer than heel and toe. I've never heard or read of that way to trim before to be perfectly honest.
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It does not leave the quarters longer than the toe because in most horses the sole scoops upwards at the quarters, which is why you can see hoof wall height there when looking from underneath.

The two trimming alternatives are to leave the wall ground bearing at the quarters or to scoop the wall to follow the sole. In my experience it does not much matter which is done as long as the hoof wall at the quarters is not longer than the rest of the foot. The giveaways when this has been trimmed wrong are a rise in the hairline at the quarters or in severe cases, quarter cracks.

I do not believe that it is ever right in a long term barefoot horse to have hoof wall higher than the toe callous, that would simply be mimicking the peripheral loading of a shoe.
 
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This is a pic I took around the time I got this comment from him. The green line is because I was trying to measure her up for epics by the way!

34242BAD-5E6F-47CC-91CF-BA20546AADF5-2604-000001F2B1D80137_zps03588e7f.jpg
 
Tried to do it twice, within days he is crippled lame, and I dont mean footy, I mean so lame, he can barely walk more than a few steps bless him, then then it causes an abcess too.

But now have v thin lightweight aliminum plates on, its as good as anything and he goes a dream.

Hes 19 an dont think hes ever been without shoes either.
 
Taffieboy1 said:
Tried to do it twice, within days he is crippled lame, and I dont mean footy, I mean so lame, he can barely walk more than a few steps bless him, then then it causes an abcess too.

But now have v thin lightweight aliminum plates on, its as good as anything and he goes a dream.

Hes 19 an dont think hes ever been without shoes either.
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OK, I understand your reasoning. It probably is possible, but you would need to boot and pad for several weeks and build his soles up over time with increasing stimulation. At that age you'd probably also need to test for metabolic disease. Medication might be necessary, and so might heavy curtailment of grass consumption.

I can understand completely why you would not want to do that, but if you did, it would probably improve his feet markedly.
 
Thank you for posting this link. :eek: I'm already very much anti shoe but this has really driven the message home. From what I've read and tried to understand the horses hoof is a pretty incredible work of natural evolution. Well until humans try to improve it anyhow. Giving how material sciences has progressed and the technology we have available to us you'd think that a better solution than a piece of bent iron held on by nails would have been invented by now. :(
 
Really interesting vid - thanks for posting. Think this is the kind of thing that might start convincing non-barefooters, that at the very least we aren't bonkers for expecting horses to walk without metal protection...
 
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