11/05/2026
And that’s why I love being part of a progressive school, you can’t ignore evidence and the horses always show us if we allow them too.
Years ago, when I trained with Jaime Jackson, I was taught to trim to the Hard Sole Plane (HSP).
And to be fair, in many horses that worked reasonably well - because those horses had not yet developed significant compaction or distortion. The hard sole you found was close to the horse’s true natural plane.
But there was one enormous problem.
Nobody really taught us how to define the difference between:
- the horse’s true Hard Sole Plane,
and
- sole that had become excessively compacted through long-term imbalance and distortion.
So generations of trimmers learned to “trim to the hard bit” and stop there, believing they had reached the horse’s natural sole depth.
Sometimes they had.
Sometimes they absolutely had not.
And if you spend your life assuming every hard surface you encounter is the true HSP, eventually that belief catches up with you.
Because compaction can hide distortion.
It can hide heels that are far too high.
It can hide toes that are far too long.
It can hide toes that are functionally too short relative to the heel height.
It can hide chronic imbalance.
And when you fail to recognise that, you perpetuate the very distortion you think you are preventing.
The greatest mistake of all, however, came next.
When stretched white lines and separation appeared, the blame was placed almost entirely on “diet” and “metabolism.”
The narrative became:
“The laminae are stretching because the horse is metabolically compromised.”
That belief conveniently removed responsibility from the trimming itself.
Because if the stretch is always blamed on diet, nobody has to ask whether the foot is actually being perpetually trimmed to compaction instead of to the horse’s true anatomical plane.
I believed that too.
I was taught:
- trim to the hard bit,
- don’t bother with x-rays,
- fix the diet, and the hoof would recover.
Until it didn’t.
And I regret deeply that I was taken down a road where I believed trimming to “the hard bit” and changing feed alone would restore distorted feet.
Because evidence eventually forced me to confront something uncomfortable:
Stretch is not caused by a dysfunctional metabolism.
Stretch is caused by distortion.
By chronic hoof capsule imbalance.
By heels left too high.
By toes left too short relative to their natural heel position.
By perpetuating divergence within the capsule.
The breakthrough came when I started doing the one thing that in my training I had been strongly discouraged from doing:
Tracking x-rays before and after trims.
Following the inside and outside of the foot longitudinally.
Monitoring P3.
Monitoring sole depth.
Monitoring capsule distortion.
Monitoring heel position.
Monitoring anatomical constants over time.
That is where the truth began revealing itself.
Because once you start following distortion as it grows - and watching what happens when divergence is systematically removed - patterns emerge over and over again.
And those patterns do not support the old assumptions.
Today, we still trim to the Hard Sole Plane.
But we no longer assume every hard surface is the true HSP.
There is a profound difference between:
- true anatomical sole plane,
and
- retained compaction masking imbalance.
That distinction matters enormously.
And this is exactly why some people now accuse us of “trimming beyond the HSP.”
In reality, what they are often calling “HSP” is compacted sole they were trained never to question.
Actual live sole is obvious.
You reveal dermis.
You create sensitivity.
You thin protection.
That is not what we are doing.
We are not thinning soles irresponsibly.
We are identifying where compaction is masking the horse’s true anatomical balance and restoring the foot according to anatomical constants - not assumptions.
Science does not move forward through loyalty to tradition - or a method - or to one person’s belief system.
It moves forward through evidence.
And evidence is not found in opinions, dogma, or repeating what we were taught twenty years ago.
It is found through longitudinal observation.
Through radiographs.
Through tracking change over time.
Through being willing to admit when previous assumptions no longer match the evidence in front of us.
Knowledge evolves.
The horses deserve that evolution too.
So for those still advocating “trim to the hard bit” while never questioning whether that hard surface may actually be pathological compaction, we invite you to spend time looking through our ever-growing portfolio of rehabilitation cases.
We no longer guess.
We follow anatomical constants.
And those constants lead us not simply to “the hard bit” - but to the horse’s true natural blueprint.
Lindsay Setchell
HM.
P.s. the foot in this picture I’m holding, was trimmed by an owner at our current 3-day workshop, following the horse’s natural anatomical constants, to show the true HSP revealed on the right side.
Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Balancing Horses - Naturally Guided Horse & Hoof Care, Alternative & holistic health service, Southend-on-Sea.
