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His feet confuse me + foot sore

2K views 10 replies 5 participants last post by  ApuetsoT 
#1 ·
6yr old WB. Has contracted SDFT(not club), I don't know how much that effects his actual foot. His LF coffin bone is lowered a few degrees though.

He is one horse who's feet I'd never touch myself because I don't know what is going on with them. If it's normal, normal for him, problem, idk.

Overall the dimensions of his feet seem ok to me. His heels are being kept back(could go another ~1/4" still imo), toes are not running away, especially the LF which tends to with how his coffin bone sits.

The part that gets me is his soles and walls. He has no wall and a bunch of sole, or something like that. He's never really grown any walls and chips off as soon as there is any length. 4-5 weeks is as long as hell go without trashing his feet from general wear. (Last two cycles he went way too long, I didn't realize the farrier wasn't scheduled to be out until 8 weeks!)

His soles and bars looks weird. It seems like false sole, but doesn't. He's always has this ill-defined bar/ sole junction. Could it be some kind of callus thing because he has no wall so his soles take the weight? idk, just came into my mind.

He has been on and off foot sore for a while. He was shod in fall/winter/spring 2013? as an experiment to help with his contacted tendons, come spring he wouldn't keep shoes on for more than 2 weeks. Don't know if that's from it being spring or from the pad we added adding instability.

He was foot sore before shoes, very minor. Only noticeable when he was on the hard packed arena track or stepping onto concrete when his feet were packed with sand. Moved a year later and went barefoot(shredded feet, no wall to nail to). Tried glue ons to make him more comfortable, those lasted longer but one got sucked off in mud, the other pulled when I turned him into a bigger pasture. Shortly after I sent him away for trainers and didn't see him for a year. Never heard anything about him being foot sore from the trainer.

Moved closer to him this summer and see him all the time now. He's been on/off foot sore since I got back in July. Mostly tied with the weather. Wet weather he's worse. Not bad enough most of the time to stop riding, it'll be the occasional hard step when he hits hard footing. Did lots of riding outside on grass where he's comfortable so idk if he was sore that whole time too.

Winter is here now. It was rain/showers last week so everything was wet, now the ground is frozen. Went to bring him in Yesterday and he was hobbling over the frozen mud.

My trainer is having me paint his feet to harden them, but idk if it's just a hardness thing.

idk!

Pictures, fresh trim from last Saturday:







 
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#2 ·
Looking at those hooves, you need a different farrier---under run heel, false sole, and leaving too much hoof on the sides. They also do not appear to be balanced and the way they are trimmed makes them appear to be club footed.


Good hooves are also dependent on nutrition---what are you feeding him?


Also does this horse have turnout in a herd so he has a buddy to play with and keep him moving?
 
#3 ·
Looking at those hooves, you need a different farrier---under run heel, false sole, and leaving too much hoof on the sides. They also do not appear to be balanced and the way they are trimmed makes them appear to be club footed.
This is the second trim by this farrier. Farrier before was a flake. This one is supposed to be the vet's farrier :/ I know I'm not impressed with how my other horse is trimmed, it seems to be impossible to find a farrier that is capable of trimming the other one right... how hard is it to back up a foot? But I digress...

Compared to his fetlocks, those feet don't really look clubby. He has very little bend to his fetlocks. I worry more about his angles getting too low than too upright. Part of why I don't know how much is his contracture effecting and how much is trim.

So that does look like retained sole? I just looked back at his feet from a few years ago, I guess he did have more defined bars then... Will retained soles make him footsore? I've heard about embedded bars... Is that something here? I did see the M/L imbalance. Underrun? I didn't think under run. Look from the sole view his heels don't have that much more to come back. From the side I see it, but his feet have always looked weird from a lateral shot...

Also, when he does chip off, his wall ends up... feathery? where it breaks. I noticed this last summer when he shredded his feet from the shoes, then noticed a little bit in the last month when he started to chip... I'll find a picture...

Can't find a picture. Must have still been on my phone when it was wiped. But it looked his tubules of wall, very bendy, stuck out from the rest like brush bristles. Weirds me out.


Good hooves are also dependent on nutrition---what are you feeding him?
Currently he's just on pasture(I guess hay+pasture now). Last winter he was on a complete feed, but stopped in June when he went on outdoor board. I wanted to put him on Gro n' Win this summer but was told very strongly by BO that he did not need extra feed and he was getting all the nutrients he needs... Didn't want to rock the boat too much since I just moved back... Planning to start him on Gro n' Win for winter as soon as I can get my feed bins back. They had all been lent out in my absence... Depending how he hold his weight.


Also does this horse have turnout in a herd so he has a buddy to play with and keep him moving?
Yes, big pasture + forest to romp in. Big herd, buddies. Room to run and hills. Unfortunately no real variance of footing as I don't live in a rocky/sandy area. It's all pasture/prairie so on the softer side.
 
#5 ·
Bummer, just lost my response... essentially, asked why you think 'contracted tendons', how long has the horse been like this(assuming whole life, but...), whether you have xrays & care to share, and whether you've had a bodyworker, like a chiropractic vet, to see to the horse?

Briefly, I'd call those feet 'clubby', albeit mildly, and heels aren't hugely high or contracted, as is common. High heels shouldn't at all *necessarily* be lowered to 'ideal' angles, but hoof care *in conjunction* with bodywork - as it's extremely likely it's 'upstairs' that't the issue - can indeed 'fix' them.

Regardless of whether heels need to remain high, bars should be trimmed, so they don't run over the sole, and quarter walls should be trimmed to/near level with the sole, to prevent active pressure & flaring.

Toes should be kept short, to prevent leverage forces acting against them, when there is more pressure on the toes, but not by 'dubbing' them vertically through the entire thickness like that. Doing so weakens the walls unnecessarily and dumps the horse onto what I think are more likely to be quite thin toe soles, rather than 'false' excess. Padding under the soles could help with comfort & protection if this is the case. By the look of the quarter walls, I don't think the walls are as innately thin & weak as you're thinking, but they've been made that way at the toes by trimming.

Heels/digital cushions will be weak, due to being high, combined with what looks like quite severe central sulcus thrush, and the frogs being carved like that. So even if heels were low, angles 'ideal', he will not likely use his heels properly & toe first impacts will be perpetuated. I'd suggest treating the thrush, not cutting away healthy frog tissue when trimming, and using a 'frog support' wedge pad(foam wedge under frog, NOT heel corners), to allow the horse to *comfortably* start impacting on his heels.
 
#6 ·
Bummer, just lost my response... essentially, asked why you think 'contracted tendons', how long has the horse been like this(assuming whole life, but...), whether you have xrays & care to share, and whether you've had a bodyworker, like a chiropractic vet, to see to the horse?
That is what the vet diagnosed him with. Wasn't treated as a baby so this is what he's got. I've gotten x-rays of him 3 years in a row now. In the past he's has a chio out(we don't have chiro vets here), but not for a year or two now. He's never had anything crazy wrong so I've been putting my body work budget towards my other horse who I know has a problem.

Pictures are about 2 years old, but he will fluctuate between fetlocks looking like these depending on trim, footing, how he's standing, ect.





Xrays: From this spring



From last year:







Briefly, I'd call those feet 'clubby', albeit mildly, and heels aren't hugely high or contracted, as is common. High heels shouldn't at all *necessarily* be lowered to 'ideal' angles, but hoof care *in conjunction* with bodywork - as it's extremely likely it's 'upstairs' that't the issue - can indeed 'fix' them.

Regardless of whether heels need to remain high, bars should be trimmed, so they don't run over the sole, and quarter walls should be trimmed to/near level with the sole, to prevent active pressure & flaring.

Toes should be kept short, to prevent leverage forces acting against them, when there is more pressure on the toes, but not by 'dubbing' them vertically through the entire thickness like that. Doing so weakens the walls unnecessarily and dumps the horse onto what I think are more likely to be quite thin toe soles, rather than 'false' excess. Padding under the soles could help with comfort & protection if this is the case. By the look of the quarter walls, I don't think the walls are as innately thin & weak as you're thinking, but they've been made that way at the toes by trimming.
I've never been told he has thin soles, I might even remember being told it was ok. What does it look like in those X-rays? If he does have thin soles are you saying shoes+pads?

So you don't necessarily think that is false sole? Then what do you think is making them look so... weird? The bar not being addressed? (I notice no one around here seems to touch the bars. My other horse has bars that are at least an inch too long and fractured. Considering they were fractured when I sent him away a year ago and still are, nothing has been done in a year for those bars... But I digress again...)

Heels/digital cushions will be weak, due to being high, combined with what looks like quite severe central sulcus thrush, and the frogs being carved like that. So even if heels were low, angles 'ideal', he will not likely use his heels properly & toe first impacts will be perpetuated. I'd suggest treating the thrush, not cutting away healthy frog tissue when trimming, and using a 'frog support' wedge pad(foam wedge under frog, NOT heel corners), to allow the horse to *comfortably* start impacting on his heels.
I've been told he has a weaker cushion, notable on the left. We were trying NB shoes(1yr+ ago) with pads + magic cushion to see about putting more pressure on the frog to act on the digital cushion. Had wedge pads plus my then-farrier made some frog pads to nail to the wedge for more support. That's when he started pulling them off within days.
Thrush I hadn't noticed, I didn't think his sulcus was that deep. But then again I've only realized recently I didn't actually know what people meant by deep sulcus. I'll look today.
 
#7 ·
Def check the sulcus. They both look suspiciously dark, but the lighting isnt good. I think I see butt cracks. Use a q tip and GENTLY probe those cracks and see how deep they are. That should only be a thumbprint, not a crack.

This looks like a horse trying to get off his heels to varying degrees to me from a quick initial look. Deep sulcus thrush would be a simple and ofter overlooked even by the best farriers and vets solution. I dont like the trim up top either. It looks like the toe is being shortened from the bottom too much, bars are overgrown and the balance is off.
 
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