Case Studies

The benefits of Hoof-Line in Racehorses and Dressage
by David Farmilo (Accredited Master Farrier) Oakbank South Australia

Examples of the HOOF-LINE rule

CORRECTING THE RACE HORSE

Last year in May at the Broome racetrack I saw a few racehorses all shod with graduated aluminium shoes on the hinds; a 3 degree graduation in the form of a wedge to lift the heels off the ground to stop them going down on their bumpers on the dirt tracks. They thought that was the cure-all, but on removing the shoe and putting the HOOF-LINE on the hoof it measured 6 1/2 to the toe and only 5 to the heel - in other words it was the length of the toe that was CAUSING the horse to go down on its bumpers. But instead of cutting the toe down, they had just put the graduated shoe on which lifted the heel off the ground, but it blew the hoof pastern angle to pieces. As soon as it was corrected, these horses immediately worked so much better – in fact one of them came first in his first run a few days later.

Four days before Melbourne Cup 2004, I was in Mt Isa in Central Queensland where I visited the racetrack and spoke to 3 different trainers who were all having problems with their horses’ galloping. One in particular had 4 horses which all had potential but were all very, very ordinary in their performance; he was basically a social trainer who went along for the social aspect of horse racing never expecting to win any money. I reshod and balanced these horses using the HOOF-LINE rule and then went off back to NSW on Friday. I then held a course at Murwillumbah and shod another poor horse that was on its last try – it had 3 previous races and the best he ever got was 20 lengths behind the winner so I reshod him as part of the course to demonstrate to the participants. He was shod with high heels behind and very stumpy toes behind. His off-fore foot was pointing out, his near fore was pointing in and he could not even walk in a straight line– the owner was grumbling that he was a useless horse and was never going to make a racehorse. I suggested we would try the HOOF-LINE, so we put the rule on it and the class reshod every hoof and got him to move exactly square. He raced on Melbourne Cup day the next Tuesday (no, not IN the cup) and he ran 4th, so we probably increased his performance by about 18 lengths in 1 shoeing. Then, that night, Melbourne Cup day, I had a call from the trainer in Mt Isa, absolutely off his face – he was slightly drunk and quite rich because of his 4 horses that I reshod, 3 of them ran outright winners and the other ran a very close second. He couldn’t believe that correct trimming and using the HOOF-LINE rule could have made so much difference. The only snag was that he had a huge problem with the stewards, having to explain the complete reversal of form.

Recently I looked at a group of four big 17 hand warm blood dressage horses that had been shod the morning I got there – the rasp marks on the hooves were still fresh, the cuttings on the ground hadn’t even shrunk. My first impression was that they must have had a good farrier, as the feet were nice and round in the toes, the nail clinches were all nicely placed. I then moved to the side of one horse, and something was not right with the hoof/pastern angle, so I picked the foot up and there it was – the toe had been set correctly but he had left trailers coming past the buttresses of the heels by ¾”, and underneath those shoes were big rolled under collapsed heels. On quizzing the owner of this horse she said “Oh yes, this horse has always had under run heels so he leaves them out the back to give the horse a bit of support.” That horrible word again – support. The horse had been like this for 5 years and they had never resolved the problem of getting rid of the under run heels. When I explained that the ¾” trailer on the heels of those front shoes was actually CAUSING the rolling under by ski pressure leverage, she was horrified. I examined the other 3 horses and they were all shod in a similar fashion. One horse, a gelding, was the son of the first horse, and the shoes had been finished on the buttresses of the heels but the toes had been left too long, so the one heel that was correct had been messed up on the toes!

I did put the HOOF-LINE on the front feet of the mare with the ¾” trailers – it measured 5 ½ to the toe and nearly 9 to the heel – it was very graphic. The other 2 horses had similar measurements. It is so sad that 5 years later the horse had the same problem – totally unnecessarily and all for the lack of understanding of balance.

HOOF-LINE IS USED FOR ANY SIZED HOOF, LARGE OR SMALL

I have just finished running a 2 day course at Muresk College of Agriculture at Curtin University in Western Australia. One couple brought along a 17 hand warm blood mare that took a size 7 shoe. With it was her 4 ½ month old foal that needed to be trimmed for the first time. The owner, doing his own shoeing, was an auto mechanic in that area and had shod this mare with pointy toed front feet and big round hind feet. Putting the HOOF-LINE in his hands and showing him what to do, he did a job that keeps rolling around in the back of my mind – in all the time I have been teaching, he would be the most improved pupil I have ever seen – the mare came up absolutely perfectly balanced in one shoeing with the aid of the HOOF-LINE rule in the hands of an inexperienced horse shoer. Her hind feet were then taken down to the correct shape and she was absolutely perfect, both front and back feet.

The next step was to trim the foal. We then went from a size 7 hoof on the mare over to a 4 month old foal with feet that were probably a 0000 in size, with stretched toes, high heels, hoof pastern angle yet to be established, and the pupils were absolutely blown away by the fact that it was possible to go from a measurement with the HOOF-LINE on a size 7 hoof and then to go a 0000 size hoof using the same reference pint and the measurement was totally accurate and resulted in a balanced hoof/pastern angle in both cases. But the outcome is totally predictable on every horse.

HOOF-LINE HELPS NEGLECTED PONY

The black Shetland pony mare was brought to a course in the workshop at home looking as if she had foundered. 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 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.

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. This restored the pony’s feet to normal in just one trimming by using the HOOF-LINE rule, establishing the point of the frog and working in a very systematic manner to get a properly balanced foot. An email from the owner a week later said “we learnt 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”.

I saw a similar horse last year in Cabarlah, north of Toowoomba, where the feet had been hacked off by a previous farrier using a hacksaw, and left sticking up like a pair of funnels, yet with one trimming using the HOOF-LINE the feet came up as near perfect as one could get.

JAKE & THE HOOF-LINE

The youngest pupil I ever had was at a course in the Northern Territory last year. The boss’s son Jake, a gregarious young fellow who was 9 years old insisted on joining the ringers for the course. He had never trimmed a hoof, but he trimmed his own pony’s feet, then he trimmed his sister’s pony’s feet, once again using the HOOF-LINE. He did a jolly decent job too.

EASY TO USE

Out from Mt Isa, I ran a class for 5 Aboriginal stockmen, all totally illiterate, so my course notes were of no value to them whatsoever. However, putting the HOOF-LINE in their hands and showing them how to use it, I recalled that the Aboriginals have a wonderful eye for balance, and when you give them something like this with a reference point on it, they follow it religiously. The HOOF-LINE made it easy for them to identify the equal measurements. Their boss was absolutely thrilled that the horses’ feet had gone from being pigeon toed, splayed, high heeled, low heeled, short toed and everything else possible to a hoof that was absolutely correct, in fact as correct as I could get it myself after 50 years of shoeing.

Two people at the Muresk course had never picked a horse’s hoof up; one was a young girl, probably 17 years old, hardly strong enough to complete the job but she did the trimming of her own horse all around and did the job absolutely perfectly. The other one was a budding horseman who had never shod a horse. He came in with an old gelding, about 16 years old, that had consistent neck problems and back problems with the most splayed and crooked feet imaginable with pointy toes and flares. But the end result was that he shod the horse all round in one day with the aid of the HOOF-LINE rule to end up with perfectly balanced feet.

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