by Ida Hammer, founder and instructor
Mackinaw Dells 2 Whole Horse Hoof Care
When horse owners hear terms like “corrective trimming”, many get excited and imagine that their horse – who may be “toed out” or “toed in”, or who loads heavily medially or laterally, or has any number of other issues – can be magically “fixed”.
I never tell an owner that I am going to “fix” their horse. My job as a whole horse hoof care practitioner is to help the horse be their best self, by giving their hooves the best possible balance in relation to their body.
Patient intake
It is critical to collect the horse’s history. It is helpful to know if we’re dealing with a high-low situation, and whether the horse has issues such as ring bone, arthritic hocks, or arthritis or other issues in the cervical, thoracic, or lumbar spine. Having that information can make a big difference in the decisions we take about the horse’s hoof care.
Wear patterns, compensation patterns
In an ideal world, we would want to see 50/50 balance – from heel to toe and from quarter to quarter. But horses have wear patterns and compensation patterns which tell us a story about how the horse is moving. If we are not aware of how and why the horse is moving in a certain way, we are missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
For instance, a horse who weights his front hooves more medially will generally have a steeper straight wall on the medial side and a flared wall on the lateral side. The hoof flares because it isn’t wearing that part of the hoof as much. Our job as whole horse hoof care practitioners is to bring the flared side in – not necessarily lower – to make it medially-laterally more balanced. We are not “correcting” anything, and we are not doing anything that causes the horse to stress the proximal joints or soft tissue – we are “rebalancing” the hooves in relation to the body.
I have worked on horses who have had a hip fracture. Consistently, on the injured side, they wore the hind hoof medially, which gave the hoof quite a lateral flare. In those cases, I did not remove the flare because it was helping to stabilize the leg.
We would all love a standard, black-and-white way to trim, but unfortunately, that is just not realistic.
Composite shoes
I truly love what glue-on composite shoes can do for horses. I routinely use them.
However, I do not care for open-heel shoes of any type if there is nothing there to support the digital cushion (which is the subject of a separate discussion). Much of the time, those shoes help support the body rather than deal with a hoof problem.
I use composite shoes on “uphill” horses who have ground-parallel or negative-angled coffin bones on the hind feet. Adding angle to the hind hooves levels the top line, reduces tension in the hocks, lumbar region, sacrum and pelvis. We can do much the same with a “downhill” horse by applying front shoes to remove excess pressure from the shoulders, elbows, and navicular bone.
If the horse is neither “uphill” nor “downhill” but needs shoes for hoof protection rather than for body support, I prefer to put four shoes on, so as not to create a new issue.
I prefer to glue rather than nail them on, but I have no issue with practitioners who nail. Unless the horse has some particular issue, I prefer either weight-bearing glue or no glue at all on the bottom of the shoe.
But I do not like non-weight-bearing glue. While waiting for glue to set, the hoof must be held in the air. With this type of glue, this means that the practitioner will be imposing the wear pattern rather than allowing the horse to do it, i.e., the horse will be obliged to load the way the glue was set up, forcing all the soft tissue involved in the original wear pattern to adjust to the imposed wear pattern.
If this happens to be a horse who needs his old compensation pattern for stability, this could lead to crippling him. And think what that could do to shortened tendons or ligaments? Or to horses with cervical arthritis, fused ribs, fused lumbar spine, ECVM. The horse’s legs and hooves will be straight and balanced, but any compensation pattern the horse was using to stay stable will have been removed.
The horse is never wrong
Many years ago, a young client of mine wanted to show her pigeon-toed mare in halter class. She and her mother routinely insisted that I make the mare’s feet look straight so they could win. When I refused, they called in a farrier to install “corrective” shoes to straighten her feet. The mare was 11, her growth plates had fused a long time ago. It took only one shoeing cycle for this poor mare to break down.
When I teach whole horse hoof care, the most frequent advice I give my students is: “It depends” – it depends on what the horse says – the horse is NEVER wrong.
In closing…
In addition to paying attention to the horse’s movement patterns, how they are loading, are they comfortable, are they compensating for something, we need to remember that a good veterinarian, bodyworker, and dentist are an absolute must when making important trim changes.