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Hoof Preparation Gone Mad
by David Farmilo
Accredited Master Farrier, Oakbank SA
PH 0418 835 186
www.horsefarrier.com.au
Two recent incidents resulted in this article.
The first was a beautiful riding horse. The complaint from the
owner was that the horse had become very unstable on its feet,
was tripping and stumbling, very rough to ride but had previously
not been like this.
On inspecting the horse, I found it was shod totally inappropriately
with square toed shoes all round (Photo 1). The danger seems to
be that although this is a supposedly new fashioned idea the real
answer to the problem is in the balance of the foot.
If the hoof is prepared and balanced in the correct fashion,
the ground surface of the hoof should be exactly the same shape
as the coronary band. However the square toed shoes tend to promote
flares either side of the square toed shoe
If you want an idea of what flares do to these feet, push your
own thumb nail down on a hard surface of a table, and you will
notice that about half way up you will see a red spot –
a stress point in your fingernail which causes pain. The horse’s
hoof reacts in exactly the same way.
If it is long and flared (Photo 2) that horse is unquestionably
suffering a lot of pain half way up that hoof capsule, and this
is why these horses get unkind to ride, become unstable and do
not want to work. As soon as you relieve these stress points and
get the hoof capsule to come down at the correct angle, you will
relieve this pain. It needs to be understood that this really
IS pain – you can’t see the red spots in most black
hoofs; it can be seen occasionally in white feet, but even if
it can’t be seen it is still there and is very very painful.
If you refer again to Photos 1 & 2 you will also see the
heels of these shoes hanging out past the buttress of the heel
- this creates pressure back there and will cause those heels
to collapse. It is the most illogical fitting shoe I have ever
seen. The heel of the shoe MUST finish at the buttress of the
heel otherwise if it is hanging out the back it will create pressure.
It is only natural that with a long extension hanging out the
back is a bit like wearing skis all the time. Make no mistake,
extended heels will cause pressure at the heel.
Photo 3 shows the same horse after reshoeing correctly to the
hoof’s natural shape, and Photo 3 shows the comparison of
the square toed shoe and the correct shoe once the hoof is trimmed
properly. As you can see, it is a bit like chalk and cheese.
The second instance relates to a Shetland pony that to all intents
and purposes looked as if it had foundered in the hind feet (Photo
4). The front feet were fine which didn’t seem to be logical
as most ponies will founder in the front feet first, seldom just
in the back feet.
If you look closely at Photo 4 you will observe from the nip marks
that someone had attempted to just trim the toes. The story was
that two farriers had in fact visited this pony a month or two
apart, and the last one was only two weeks before the pony was
brought to me.
On inspecting the pony’s feet, I found that none of the
sole had been trimmed out, none of the frog had been trimmed out
(refer photo 5) and the pony was actually walking on the bulbs
of the heels.
On quizzing the owners, this pony had been like this for eight
or nine months, in desperate need of hoof trimming and through
complete lack of understanding of the horses hoof, neither of
these farriers had been able to resurrect the hooves for the pony
and had in fact told the owner that the pony had foundered beyond
repair. They had both been paid for what they had done and the
owners had been left anything but satisfied.
The owners had then had the feet x-rayed, and found that there
was no rotation of the pedal bone which gave me great hope.
In front of a class of 12 people, I then began to clean out the
sole and pare the frog back. I found that there were about 2”
of excess hoof wall at the toe which then allowed me to cut the
heels down enough to achieve frog contact with the ground, thus
restoring the pony’s feet to normal in one trimming (Photo
6)
This resulted in amazement from the class participants, tears
of joy from the female owner and understandable anger from the
male owner at the performance of the previous farriers. I then
warned the owners that it would take a few days for the tendons
to become accustomed to their new position and the pony should
be rested.
An email from the owners a week later stated:
“….we learned so much, but best
of all is the complete turnaround of Cuddles.
She is running around with real joy! In fact
she has become extremely cheeky”.
Over 49 years of shoeing horses, I always expected that owners
had the capacity to maintain their horses feet or at least have
a pretty fair understanding of what was required for shoeing and
trimming for performance. All that seems to have gone by the board,
and owners are being led to believe that below the knee of the
horse is some mysterious realm of the farrier. I still believe
it is the owner’s responsibility to seek information and
take more of an interest in how their horse is being looked after
at hoof level. It is not rocket science, it is very very easy
to learn and to understand, and primarily the first responsibility
is for horse owners and riders to thereby be able to then have
a positive input into the hoof care of their horses.
If your horse is tripping and stumbling and becoming unstable
on his feet, the chances are pretty high that he is just simply
too long in the toes. If you then check the hoof pastern angle
from the side, and you find that is right then the answer lies
not in just squaring that toe off as the modern trends seems to
be, but simply to balance the hoof properly, trim it correctly,
and shape it as per the horse’s coronary band.
The misunderstanding that horses in the wild wear their toes
square is true only in one sense – at the end of a drought
when the springs have all dried up and the horses have to dig
for water, they wear their toes down so that they do become square.
However as soon as the season breaks their feet grow, they wear
off and their toe grows down in the same shape as the coronary
band. The answer is NOT in putting on square toed shoes. If your
horse is unstable, the answer is simply to balance the hoof properly
and shape the hoof as per the coronary band.
The farriers of today all over Australia need to understand that
they need to put their egos to one side and to acknowledge that
the horse owner has every right to seek a second opinion, and
learn from that experience and become better farriers by understanding
a little bit more about the balance of the hoof and of what their
duty of care is to the horse owner and the horse.
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