Revelations and Reassurances

appellativo · Revelations and Reassurances

A new/fellow boarder had an appointment with a well-respected barefoot trimmer and I tagged along. I had spoken to him on the phone a couple of times when I had a question and looked forward to watching him work and get a review on how I was doing on my own horse's feet.

He was very talkative and friendly. He told me about balancing the foot three dimensionally, how the frog is always centered 'on' the coffin bone, among other things. Then he had a look at my horse and her conformation and her feet. He told me that since she is very narrow, she stands with her feet out (pics will be posted) for support (probably partially, the other partially is probably genetic). I've noticed over the last few months her feet go from flat to nice and concave, yet when I rode her last weekend on a trail ride there were some rocky areas and she would seem less than 100% surefooted which surprised me due to the 'good lookingness' of her hooves. He pointed out to me that her way of going was, unlike most horses who swing their lower leg to the outside and then back in when almost to the ground, her feet swing to the inside toward the knee in the first phase of stride and then back out at the end of stride (I have a long story that proves this which I may add later). I was like 'Aha! yes, that's right!' BUT!! the explanation for why she goes less than 100% on the trail ride is this. He asked if she is sore on concrete. I said no, and she's not sore on uniformly sized gravel. But if there are large chunky rocks, and she steps on one, she seems gimpy. I'd always thought it was her hooves but what it is, is since her conformation regularly puts uneven pressure on her knee joints, when she steps on a rock (particularly on the lateral/outer half of her front hooves), it puts even more sudden torque on those joints that is painful, thus she 'gimps' occasionally.

This was a major AHA moment for me and also reassuring in that I HAD improved her hooves tremendously but that this conformational fault was still keeping her from being 'sound on rocks.'

As an aside, he mentioned that for her being such a conformational conundrum, I had done an excellent job on her feet and the only thing I had to improve on would be to take a little off from the front of her lateral toe quarters (on the front feet) to help lessen the torque on her knees.

It was a great day!

Not to mention he was HOT. LOL
This is from October 2008 but I couldn't find anything recent and straight. If anyone's interested I might take the camera out and get a better shot.

I suppose it's a good thing that I am a pretty part time rider and we don't go on day-long or multiday rides and I don't use her for other extremely athletic endeavors!

whudson

Interesting....looks like my boys front hooves

And actually, these were taken last year and I do see a lot of improvement since I have been trimming correctly

appellativo

yeah. I used to look at her and it was very much exaggerated. Now it is of course still present, but much less than it was.

xenophon

Great post! I will print it out to re-read and ponder. Thanks.