Ellen Curnow - Equine Podiatrist

21/09/2025

Autumn is autumning! Be careful out there folks! 😳🌱

01/09/2025

A luscious August with J 🧡

30/08/2025

5 months of building palmar soft tissue, building sole depth, turning false concavity into true concavity, and improving symmetry. The goal being long term comfort and soundness.

23/08/2025

Counting my lucky stars ✨🧡
📸

22/08/2025

Not the finished article but moving in the right direction. 🧡

02/08/2025

The best kind of client update 😍
Everybody meet the legendary PB (he has quite the fan club)! At the grand age of 23, last week he completed his last ever graded endurance ride of 24km in a very respectable 2hrs44! He hasn’t always been a straightforward horse, in his character and also his healthcare. His mum is incredibly dedicated - he always comes first and I think it shows! She now has one of the fittest, happiest, healthiest 23yos I think I’ve ever met! Whilst he’s now finished with graded rides, you’ll still be able to find him towing his mum round pleasure ride routes, usually with his dinky ears pricked the whole way. What a top good boy 😍

01/08/2025

Jolly in July 🧡🧡🧡

Disclaimer - this series of pictures makes it look like I jumped the legs off him, I really didn’t, it’s just that they’re the only occasions I have photos 🙃

01/08/2025

It’s a fine line to walk, and it takes great skill, to have a horse with ‘manners’ without just shutting them down entirely. Anyone can beat a horse into submission, and conversely anyone can have an expressive horse that has absolutely no concept of personal space or boundaries. The happy medium isn’t so straightforward and achieving it will depend on the horses character and prior experience of the world.

Enough concept of boundaries that they’re safe to work with, but enough open lines of communication that they aren’t just ‘sucking it up’ when something is wrong. Even when you have it, it still requires work.

28/07/2025

I spent the weekend in Northamptonshire at a clinic with David Landreville. It was really fascinating to see how he works and thinks about different aspects of hoofcare. I’ve definitely come away with a lot of food for thought and I’m really interested to see how his approach will spring to mind whilst working! One of the big factors he holds really high on his priority list is cycle length and I can absolutely understand why. I’ll be chatting to a small number of clients towards the end of the summer about trialling different cycle lengths as a little experiment to see how those horses’ development compares to other horses I see, and if it turns into something I can see helping horses then I’ll think about rolling it out across the board!

24/07/2025

Holy heelbulbs 🤩
When looking to improve broken back HPA and/or NPA I think it’s sometimes difficult for owners to understand the difference between heel height and heel structure. So, I’m hoping this will be a really helpful example of adding structure without just leaving excess height.

Things that haven’t changed:
- heel height above frog
- heel height above sole
- toe height above sole

Things that have changed:
- frog width
- frog depth
- frog density
- sole depth
- collateral groove depth
- concavity
- the centre of the frog is ‘suspended’ rather than ‘hanging’ between the heels (see the shape of the hairline)
- the heel bulbs look like someone’s come along and pumped the air back into them. We’re usually aiming for ‘two little tennis balls’ back there!
- the heel bulbs feel fuller and firmer, rather than empty and saggy.

All of these things DO equate to more distance from coronet band to floor at the heels, which I think is where the misconception between height and structure comes from.

23/07/2025

Nice little progression sequence of some underrun heels. Improving the angle of the heel growth moves the heel purchase backwards, and in turn alters where the ground impact force goes within the hoof capsule. By moving both of these things backwards, we direct that stimulation more effectively into the frog and digital cushion, which is then going to enable further improvements of heel structure. This takes a potential downward spiral of crushing and shrinking, and turns it into an upward spiral of building and growing 🤗

23/07/2025