My farrier came and looked at his feet and he said that one leg is shorter then the other, he said he could help him by putting a wedge on that foot and let the heel grow out more, and he said to have the vet x-ray his foot to see if he would be prone to early arthritis if he was jumped alot, has anybody had experience with this
Yes, the horse just had a pad/wedge to level out the foot. Ours was a pleasure equitation Saddlebred and he was still showing in his late teens. he came to us with a regular shoe on one foot and the pad on the other. We never changed it since he was sound and working well.
most, if not all horses, have some form of limb length disparity… and for most horses, it is not a problem. My late gelding had a crooked knee and one leg was about 1/4 an inch shorter than the other - you’d never know it looking at him, but you could see it in his shoulder. It never bothered him.
I have been told to never try to “fix” an anatomical difference that the horse has already compensated for (aka if it aint broke…) - are you sure she is not clubby? How bad is this disparity?
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It is actually pretty uncommon for the actual bones to be different lengths, at least to any significant degree. What is much more common is a difference shoulder development, and whether the feet are in a high/low situation. The latter is not uncommon. I’m not sure it’s actually classified as common, but it’s just not rare. However, actual bone length differences is considered rare.
So, you need to determine where the problem originates. You can work on the foot all you want ,but if the real issue began with, or is now exacerbated by, the shoulder, if you don’t also work on the shoulder, you won’t fix the issue, you’ll just keep bandaiding it.
The picture doesn’t help, sorry! It would be better to take it head-on, with her standing square, on a flat level surface. Then you can lay markers to see the levels of the coronet bands, middle of fetlock, middle of knee, etc in relation to each other.
I would also stand up and behind her (be safe of course) with her standing squarely again, someone keeping her head centered and relaxed, and take a picture of her shoulders.
Managing this really does require a farrier and a body worker to work together, as even if the root is an upright foot, the muscles above the legs, on both sides, have compensated.
Getting to and continuing with correct riding, using shims as necessary to center the saddle laterally, will help the whole package too.
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I agree the pictures are not very helpful. I also wonder if the root is in the hoof.
There’s quite a few papers out there about LLD in equines. It’s very common in my experience, so we may have to disagree there about the incidence of LLD in the average horse… As to what “significance” the degree is depends on the horse.
IME, it can be commonly misidentified if there is high/low heels, uneven hooves and incidence of clubby feet. I’ve found that that particular type of limb length disparity is often due to a lack of a balanced hoof, and is functional over structural, however, according to my vet (also the one that pointed out the disparity in my late gelding) structural limb length disparity is not uncommon in TBs and is what my gelding had. Almost everyone has a leg or hand that is marginally longer than the other.
I don’t disagree that generic LLD is pretty common. I’m saying that actual bone length (aka structural) disparity is rare. It’s much more common for it to be functional disaparity, which is what I described above - musculature, high/low syndrome, even whether a leg is such that it cannot fully straighten.
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