Transitioning to barefoot with bilateral PSD

[budatiger]

My 5 year old has just been diagnosed with PSD, plus mild bony changes to hocks & forelimb fetlocks. Also has a very sore back. He's been hacked only & his hindlimb conformation would not predispose him to the above. However, he has asymmetric front feet (left one narrower with high heel, right lower and wider) and does land slightly differently on each. It's fairly audible, almost 'slamming' down the right foot with more force.
His hocks & suspensories have been medicated & he's on pen turnout during the day with 5 mins walking in hand. Will be reviewed in a month or so.
The op has been mentioned, but I'm not sure I feel comfortable with that. He's so young I would rather address his whole body, particularly as he'll likely have a very very prolonged period of rest & rehab.
I've read that some consider PSD to be secondary to other issues. Hence considering removing his shoes. I follow the Rockley blog but am wondering if anyone has done similar, and with what results? My farrier is excellent and is very open minded but I expect the vets will recoil in horror if I so much as enquire what they think. No remedial farriery has been mentioned. This horse is young and energetic and also particularly adept at pulling shoes off in the field and has to wear over reach boots all the time, which has resulted in on/off dermatitis!
Any experiences & guidance would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Goldenstar]

Buy the feet first book .
Use a good 'foot friendly ' balancer or supplement .
I use the performance balancers from forage plus and saw a definite improvement on the performance ones verses their foot version.
You need to get the horse moving on different surfaces in hand and then if you can leading from another horse if possible is great because you can go further walking out a horse speed with out loading the horse without the rider .
I think if I where you I would want X-rays of the fore feet before you start .
You will need to assess why you have the lateral imbalance on the asymmetric foot based on what the X-ray shows you and the professionals involved will decide how much you correct it by trimming .
If it's dodgy farriery and the foots normal Inside then it's likely they will advise you trim to correct it .
I like to correct over say three trims as it's my experience to much too soon is not the best way to do it .
You need to use judgement and that's down to how good and open the people you have on board are .
I had one horse with a turned in toe this caused some lateral imbalance and In time minor unlevelness .
We xrayed the feet and gradually reduced the imbalance in line with what they saw on the X-ray we xrayed every three weeks ,this could not have been done with self trimming ,self trimming would have produced the opposite effect ie the horse would have worn one side not the other left to his own devices .
The X-rays clearly showed the inside structures of the foot correcting after the shoes where removed this was a revelation to the vets who where somewhat sceptical
The horse was quickly sound and had six months without shoes he was then very carefully shod in a natural balance type shoe and remained sound .
This story does not really apply to your situation but illustrates how much judgement is involved in deciding what trimming to do .
Self trimming is not the correct answer for all horses .
I think in a young horse already with lots of issues bf is really the best choice , it's very sad when you hear about a youngster with multi causal lameness , you will need time and patience I wish you all the best with it.

 

[budatiger]

Thank for the advice, GS. He has been on Equimins Hoof Mender for 5 months now after removing the same shoe several times (upright hoof) in short succession and damaging the wall. There has been a huge increase in growth very recently. I'll look into the Forage Plus.
The vets report has come in and actually states the forelimb fetlock changes seen on X-ray are consistent with chronic inflammation. They didn't seem to think the asymmetric hooves were related, which seems strange to me given the pastern angles are quite different. Will discuss further when he is re-assessed. The bone scan showed no increase in uptake in the hooves, but of course that gives no indication of soft tissue status.
Most of our initial in hand rehab will be on Tarmac, with limited gravely surfaces until we can go further. Is this likely to be a problem?