@eruss I get what you are saying but in this case what we did worked. The flip flops and the packing material… how do I explain this? At any rate it took the pressure off the heels and allowed them to grow down rather than crush under. We also got increased sole depth from this which helped.
Yes her toe is rockered , not the shoe.
Floating the toe is an interesting idea! Any chance you can get some pics and post them?
It would not be til next month as she just had her feet done, but I’ll see what I can do.
How much sole did you have to begin with? I think it’s hard to rock the toe via the trim unless you’ve got some excess sole to work with. Unless you just mean the shoe was set back.
OP’s horse has a bit more heel support and a little more sole depth from a year ago but the angle has not improved, and that has got to be putting some strain on the soft tissues.
I’m not a huge fan of wedges for horses with low/crushed heels but at some point you just have to get the bones aligned. I wonder if a wedge shoe with pour in material instead of the bar shoe would be helpful. And I might escalate the cycle to 4 or 5 weeks to try to get ahead of that toe.
@IPEsq – I don’t recall what we started with, but at last films we had put on an addt’l 5 mm. That was back in June.
No, the shoe was not set back. Her actual toe was rockered - I watched the farrier do it. Don’t ask me to explain it, I’ll try to get pics next time he’s out, but that’s what he did.
This mare also has some loose stifle issues, and breaking her over quicker behind has helped with that.
I am in agreement with you about the wedges. If this had been a more “dire” situation we may have started there. As it was, farrier asked me if I was willing to put in the time it would take to go the flip-flop route. I was, we did, here we are today - 14 mos later.
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To my eye it appears you had better alignment in the 2016 pic than you do now.
When I bought this horse in 2011 he was wearing an aluminum rocker toed shoe and was not lame. My farrier at the time didn’t like the shoe (he called them Natural Balance) because he said they indicated that something was wrong with the horses feet. I believe farrier switched him to a plain steel shoe.
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To me, it looks like things improved a bit from 2016 to 2017, but then regressed in terms of the back of the foot sinking more, through 2018 and to 2020. Sole depth and shoe placement are best in 2020, but alignment doesn’t look to have improved at all.
Thanks eruss for your explanations.
These were my thoughts. 2017 looked best to me
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