Front left again
Valerie
~VWiles02@yahoo.com~
UC Davis student
Ciscolarkā¦your horse that you are concerned overā¦looks like a nice job of placing the NB shoe. Notice that the bars are curvedā¦this indicates contracted and/or underrun heels (I think you noted that?). As the foot starts to become more round and heels go to where they belong, you should start to see the bars straighten out. It takes time, but I think your farrier is doing a good job overall. 
I thought I would post some feet pics, since I had my camera to take pics of the wierd shoes that my new horse had onā¦ I couldnāt figure out how to get more than one pic on a canvas, so I have to post each one seperately - sorry.
This is the near front hoof by itself.
slb (or anyone else) -
i posted this separately but got no answers so i thought iād try this thread.
kipperās front feet wear unevenly. the outside edge wears considerably more than the inside (especially on the right foot). farrier says we might have to put front shoes back on. he also says itās caused by conformation.
BUT someone else at the barn said that itās her hoof wall thatās growing at different speed. i have to admit this sounds a little strange to me.
so what do you think? farrier is right? is putting shoes back on the only way to slow this down?
āIt appears we are being transformed from an information
society to an informant society.ā Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Hoss - he has little nails with borium on em at the back of each. You bet I was paranoid about ice skates! Those things are working like magic. He is cantering little tiny circles now days without any slippage in the outdoor. I think heās feeling better. 
I canāt STAND the noise they make when he turns around on the cement thoughā¦ it hurts my ears.
He has been barefoot for about 6 months. His feet hold up GREAT but the underrun toe and long heel caused us to put the shoe back to hold the foot up for corrections. Vetās advice. Canāt hurt to put the shoes on for this.
I told the shoer I want them off in a few months with no more toes too long and the heel where it belongs.
The vet he saw for his bonescan said he ādoesnāt have enough hoof wall for his sizeā. I didnāt ask her to clarify - and I have no idea what she meant. I wish I had.
His feet arenāt huge, but they are normal sized. She said he needed shoes on or he would wear his heel down too fast by nature of his foot construction. I think it was just a vicious circle of the toe too long and not breaking over and then the heel got too long and you know the rest.
His back xrays were severly broken angles.
This new farrier is pretty cool. 
He charged me $98 all around for all new shoes and lots of talking and looking and talking and fixing. He called me 5 times to set up this first appointment, in ONE DAY. I was impressed. Iām keeping him.
martha
Iāll try to get some done soon -and will do hinds and soles while Iām at it. Heās currently barefoot, so we can see all the uglies.
He had sheared heels behind too, but they are gone now (I"m happy about this, but he would have been a good subject!)
Hoss Shoerā¦glad you are here to impart some of the techical and creative aspects of shoeingā¦although I know some about trimming, I donāt generally stick around for the forge work.
Some good ideas on dealing with the problem of shoeing hinds only
<BLOCKQUOTE class=āip-ubbcode-quoteā><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mcmIV:
Looking at feet now with a little bit of an obsession, I am starting to āseeā things that arenāt there, I imagine.
martha<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
am i the only one who doesnāt agree with the mustang trim? ( well besides my farrier)? Because there are no natural āmustangsā and only feral horses, the true effect of a mustang trim wouldnāt be there.
Feral horses donāt have to work, they have no natural enemies, they eat and walk around, and bred. A pleasure horse riding on a mustang trim would seem to aggrivate more than it could helpā¦
maybe iām just crazy, but it seems like a ātrendyā thing to do, instead of just trimming the horse correctly the first time. My farrier refuses to do it for those reasons above, and once he explains it in his amazing fairy language most people back off in wanting it. oh well, just an opinion.
Are these pictures OKAY for a critique or should I go out to the barn and grab some better pictures?
My old farrier shod horses with a type of natural trim under the shoes (we rode on the road a lot we needed shoes in front at least most of the time or their feet turned to nubbies) He put St. Croix eventers on them.
He was a genius, I learned an immense amount from him! He had a neat gadget that showed you how the horn tubules grew in relation to the ground, My horses would have pencil marks all over their feet and I would have articles he photo-copied for his clients form various journals and mags in my pocket by the time he was done.
I told ALL my friends and clients about him, and many of them experienced fantastic results with his shoeing. After several trims many horses that had been on and off lame for years and in all manner of fancy shoes (including some from the vet school) were perfectly sound in plain shoes.
The only drawback was that I moved and now I am NEVER happy with any shoeing job I see LOL.
Everything that is wrong with a foot.
Before I knew what I was looking at, My mares feet looked like this. She was shod (BADLY!) the entire time I owned her I thought she had problems with her hocksāI now know it was most likely her feet.
I look back and cant believe my ignorance about feet until the last few years.
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest menā¦
FairWeather
CANTER West Virginia
Most likely an old injury to the area near the hairline that resulted in damage to the corium. This is not uncommon and shouldnāt effect soundnessā¦nor can it be fixed. I have a finger nail that looks like that. I injured the part of the finger between the nail and the jointā¦the bone feels flat right were the nail grows indented. I donāt believe that I broke the boneā¦just severly damaged the area around it. It never looked damaged, but you can feel it.
Interesting - Iām anxious to have the farrier out again! I notice his frog in the rear seems to be soft and almost sunken in. I need to look more closely - wonder if this is symptomatic.
martha
**Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they wonāt bother you for weeks. **
We had a mare come to us with 3 year old unresolved founderā¦her feet had been trimmed once or twice after she foundered and never again. She had huge splits (more than one in some) in all four feetā¦some going all the way to the cornoary. We didnāt apply shoes or anything to hold the feet together. Just gave her double doses of vit/min, Forus HF (good in zinc and copper levels) and kept her toes backed up and trimmed often (about 3-4 weeks). Within a few months all there were left were toe cracks and they all grew out with no problem. They were a bear once they got near the ground, but we relieved all pressure from those areas and they didnāt give us much trouble.
slb, thatās the best explanation of the āotherā trim and her disciples Iāve ever seen.
You in politics or what???LOL
My guy had screws and wires at one point but what really worked was a hose clamp screwed into the wall. I think he put a glob of acrylic over it to keep it from catching on things, and to keep the screw in the hose clamp from becoming tighter or looser. We were backing off the toe tremendously at the same time and he was in handmade shoes that were actually C-shaped. We kept the hose clamp on for several months, until it had grown down to the ground and the hoof above it was uncracked. This was during our bout with WLD so we were working with the farrier at the vet school.
I am happy to report that his beautiful new foot shows no signs of our year of misery. Our new farrier keeps a close eye on a couple of chronic sand cracks in the other foot and, knock on wood, his feet are healthy and sound. So with some effort and intervention, there is hope!
OK. Iāll play. I just found these and they were taken this summer of my 4 year old TB/QH (AKA, Ozzy ) I donāt have a solar view unfortunately. But tell me what you do see. In this pic his foot looks a little dished. If that ISNāT a trick of the camera, I can tell you itās not dished anymore.
Just some background. Iāve had Ozzy since birth. Heās a super sound horse and in his 4 years has worn shows for about 6 monthsā¦and that was as a 2 year old. Donāt ask 
This past summer we worked on a pretty regular basis (rode 3-5 time a week, trails and some flatwork) Iām trying to keep him barefoot as long as possible. I event, and Iām thinking that should be hopefully up through training ā¦ if we get there
ā And how did you feel about being denied these Hungry Hippos?
Hosshoer can I ask a question? And I actually took a foot picture a while ago and will try to find it. heās got funny feet, but theyāve been holding him up quite well for 14 yeras.
My horse (TB eventer) has fairly small hind feet (yes, with the fairly thin walls of your typical TB). They tend to, when heās shod, to almost twist underneath him - hard to describe, but if you look at the hoof straight on, instead of both sides being perpendicular to the ground, they seem to meet the ground at an angle. like / / rather than 1 1. My farrier prefers to make her own clips rather than use keg shoes that come with clips, and she puts the clips fairly far back. I think that this increases the likelihood of the hoof to not stay straight because the shoe twists off to the outside, and no longer supports the wall. She wants them back there, nearly on the sides of the hoof, not the edges of the front, because she thinks it makes the shoe more secure.
Once last summer I had to have a different farrier shoe him in a short-notice situation and she used St. Croix eventers with the clips already in place. They are fairly forward, if youāre not familiar with that shoe. This shoe did not slide to the side even at the end of his 5-6 week shoeing period, and his hoof stayed straighter. I have not been able to convince my regular farrier (who except for complaining a lot about his thin-walled, slow growing TB feet, does a good job) that the St. Croix gave him better support and stayed put better than her own forged shoes.
Am I crazy? Your mention of a toe clip behind made me think to ask you this question -
I hope Iām not coming across as trying to bash my farrier - she is very good with the horses, her shoes donāt come off, but she and I differ on where the clips do the best work.
Right now heās enjoying the deep snow barefoot.
This is the horse who has the feet I am most concerned about. She had been barefoot for all of her life and had the best feet any of the farriers I used had ever seen. She came down with some lameness problems last year which have been hard to resolve. After x-rays, we are trying to gradually shorten the toe and build up her heel for support with new balance shoes. I would love any advice on her feet in general as it will only aid me in the development of more comfort for her. Thanks for the responses
Here are Clancyās front feet - yes, he toes out, from the shoulder, moreso on the right than the left.
Heās got rocker toes to help keep his toes from 'ski jumping" out the front door (I think this was the technical farrier phrase she used) because his heels were not great, but his angles arenāt too too bad.
Itās worked well for him. I took this picture to show the toe-out, rather than the feet, but if you look carefully you can see the crack in the left one. Itās always there and seems to be just on the surface, but it hasnāt changed.
His right front is whitish, vet thinks b/c he was blistered at some point.
