03/09/2023
Propping vs Building (click to expand full image)
These drawings show why I believe steel shoes, wedges, and DIM are only short term fixes, and that they prolong and cause more damage, making it harder to heal the horse in the future:
- The top drawing shows a fully live and well developed hoof capsule that is undeviated from its origins at the coffin bone. The horn tubules are all parallel from the dorsal wall to the heels and the growth rings are all parallel to a properly arched coronary band. These lines form a perfect grid that should be seen, but not felt. This indicates perfect P3/Hoof Capsule alignment.
- The second drawing down shows the soft tissue ( outlined in pink ) with the digital cushion ( shaded in pink with arrow ) supporting the coffin bone naturally from within.
- The 3rd drawing down shows a hoof capsule with a common type of distortion from improper, infrequent trimming or inadequate wear. It’s easy to tell by the disorganized horn tubules and growth rings that the hoof capsule has deviated from its origins at the coffin bone.
- The bottom drawing shows a commonly used “solution.” The problem with this is that it’s only addressing the symptoms of distortion rather than the cause. Worse than that, I believe this causes more damage and distortion. The wedge pad ( dark gray shaded area with gray arrow) is placed externally where it can only superficially change the angles and hold the DIM in place, which only artificially props up the digital cushion. The reason that it is such a common practice is that it can temporarily relieve pain and keep a horse performing in the owner’s preferred discipline. The same applies for non working or companion horses, it can also temporarily relieve the owner of worry, but it does not heal the feet.
Trimming and shoeing in this manner artificially props up the foot and causes the majority of the weight to be distributed in front of the widest part of the foot. Excess toe loading causes pedal osteitis ( bone erosion ) and live sole depletion. The natural response from the foot is to retain and compress dead sole. This can be perceived as improved “sole” thickness to the untrained eye, whether they’re a professional or not. It’s very difficult to tell the difference between live sole, insensitive live sole, and retained dead sole on a radiograph. To further complicate the situation, over loading the sole allows the heel horn to gain height. This can even “stand the horn tubules up” more vertically in the beginning. If the horse gets a chance to go bare foot again after this, the retained sole is likely to exfoliate ( usually after wet weather followed by a dry period ) leaving the thin live sole exposed and the horn tubules typically collapse again.
Once you learn to read the hoof and see what’s actually going on inside…you can’t unsee it.
Soft tissue is very regenerative and thrives on consistent proper form and function, which means that the horse’s feet have to be worn and/or trimmed in a way that works for them,instead of against them, in order to continually build/heal their feet and the rest of their body.
It comes down to the sustainable cure of rolling and building a living, moving, working system vs the short term “fix”
of treating the hoof like a stationary object with flattening, buttressing, and propping.
I'm always open to being proven wrong, but I have never seen any long term proof that the set up in the bottom diagram will make real, sustainable positive change. It will not build the hoof into what I've shown in the top diagram. We do not want a band aid fix and an angle change using artificial support, but a fully regenerated, self supported hoof.
