Wright Hoof Care

27/07/2025

10/06/2025

I will never understand how farriers do this for people who want it and judges who reward it. Completely inhumane.
But it does demonstrate what a long toe can do to soft tissues although this example is extreme.

17/01/2025

14/01/2025

Like cutting off a cat’s whiskers.

SENSORY HAIRS

The FEI has determined that any measures to trim or shave off a horse's sensory hairs, including whiskers, eyelashes and the hairs of the inner ear, is not permitted and shall lead to an elimination of the combination for the competition's duration.

Sensory hairs are of extreme importance for proprioception for the horse. They aid the horse's ability to judge distance and navigate in the dark. It has been shown that trimming or shaving these hairs leads to increased susceptibility to injury.

11/01/2025

Coming 2 year old with lesions on the cheeks from sharp enamel points on the caps (baby teeth).
This is why dentistry on young horses is so important! Their teeth are softer & erupt more than a middle-aged horse. Therefore, they get sharper faster & need floating more often.
I recommend young horses get checked every 6-8 months to ensure they are comfortable & caps are shedding properly. 🐴🦷

02/09/2024

Looking for a nesting box for your hens? Located in Ringwood. $75. DM for further details.

01/09/2024

👉 YOU GET THE TRIM YOU STAND FOR 👈

Period.

- Training/Behaviors: It is NOT the job of the hoof care provider to train your young or green horse to stand for trims WHILE trying to trim them. It is the responsibility of the of the horse owner to work with the horse before calling out the HCP and setting the horse up for a comfortable, calm appointment. Of course we will work with you and your baby brained equine as they grow and mature, but do not expect picture perfect trims if said equine cannot hold still enough for them. And do not expect us to wrestle with them if they are not ready.

- Pain: Pain is a FACTOR, not an EXCUSE. Ooooo. I may ruffle feathers with this one. Pain? Behavior? Both? A horse with an old injury, arthritis, etc will need special considerations during hoof care appointments. Yes, 100%. But also realize, PAIN INFLUENCES BEHAVIOR, and can most certainly make for undesirable and dangerous behaviors at that. *Again, it is not the HCP's job to put themself at risk working with an uncooperative equine for any reason.* If you have a horse in pain, it is YOUR job as the owner or caretaker to properly manage that pain and work with the horse to find ways for them to stand through trims as comfortably as possible. Without this attention, behaviors like ripping legs away, kicking out, biting, avoiding, etc. can develop. Just because they are defensive responses due to pain, DOES NOT MEAN THE HCP HAS TO PUT THEMSELF AT RISK DEALING WITH THEM. (Can I get an Amen?) The pain brings about the behavior. If the horse truly cannot stand for trims in a way that works for them AND the HCP due to pain and dysfunction, then that's another conversation about quality of life.

My shoulder was injured last November due to being ripped around by uncooperative horses. It will never be the same. I can speak for countless HCPs when I say we've been injured (sometimes permanently) in our work. Working with horses comes with a risk. Things happen. One way we can reduce those risks is to be selective with the animals we take on. This is our livelihood. These are the only bodies we get. There is no magic farrier dust that comes out of our rasps that solves behavior challenges, regardless of where those behaviors stem from. With these challenging situations, expect either an incomplete trim, or no trim at all. We have limits.

Some tips:

-Take the time! Pick up. Put down. Repeat. Do it again. Hold it longer. Repeat. Build strength and duration and in doing so it will also build trust and patience. We come out once a month. There is no progress if the only hoof handling the horse gets is during appointments.

-Manage the pain! Daily CBD, Equioxx, strength building through appropriate exercise, massage, etc. Make sure the approach to pain management matches the level of pain the horse is in! CBD is great but they may need something more like Equioxx. Equioxx is great but if the pain is acute, maybe some bute or dorm gel needs to be on board.

-Find what works! If a horse has limited range of motion, train them to prop their hoof on something close to the ground and STAND STILL in that spot. Find where they are comfortable and train them to hold there. Home Run Hoofstand LLC is a neat creation for those horses who need their limbs low!

-Think outside the box- Clicker training, "open bar" feeding with hay pellets, tying up a hay net, etc. can be low stress ways to help keep the horse distracted enough to let us HCPs do the work that needs to be done.

The point is, there are numerous ways to address hoof care hiccups. In order for a horse to remain on the schedule, I have to first be able to trim them without putting my physical wellbeing at risk. Horses with repeated and unaddressed challenging behaviors will not be kept on the rotation for long. Losing my physical ability to work is not worth your horse's hooves.

09/08/2024

06/06/2024

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.

02/05/2024

To most farriers, this would be an ugly sole and would be scraped smooth. This is what I LOVE seeing! Horses need their sole callous for protection against rough terrain. Without that callous comes trouble. When sole is pared out it becomes thin and causes extreme pain and can lead to more serious issues. An ugly sole is a healthy sole!

11/04/2024

An in-depth and close-up investigation into all the amazing parts and fascinating functions of the Equine lower limb - with Dr. Tomas G. Teskey, holistic equine veterinarian from Insight to Equus.

16/10/2023

Easy keeper horses...where does it come from?

(There is nothing easy about it)

Many Morgans, donkeys, Quarter Horses, Mustangs and others can be found with this label.

If we harken back to those and other breeds' ancestry, we find that they were genetically adapted to survive in harsher situations or in high work by having an exceptionally thrifty metabolism and traveling a lot.

This is why you can take a mustang off the range in Nevada and have it come to Virginia and become an air fluff with hoof issues. Horses who grew up in starvation situations can also flip over to fluff status later in life. Horses who in their early years were fed an exceptionally high starch/sugar diet can also be predisposed to falling into this category.

They most often have cresty necks and fat deposits on their bodies (especially near the tail head and over the eyes). These are the horses who drive their owners crazy trying to keep them slim enough because dry lots and 2 flakes of hay per day only seem to make them bigger and angrier.

For these horses it is especially important that they have a diet that is balancing adequate mineral needs with low carbohydrates and limited fat intake. This is Hard

Commercial feeds that are supposedly low NSC and marketed for Easy Keepers/EMS horses are often really not, either. The goal for these horses is to have an NSC value at 10% or less. Many of the feeds that are targeting these horse owners are actually 16% or above, which isn't ideal at all.

Add this frustration to soaking hay for 30+ minutes and keeping your horse off of grass much of the time while still getting exercise in, and it is enough to make a horse owner take up kick boxing just to have some way to let off steam.

We can empathize having gone through this struggle ourselves. People want to have an easy path to follow, and in these cases, there is not always a one size fits all, step by step approach.

The journey to health for your horse begins in the education of yourself and understanding what resources that you have available in your own area.

Some information that you can start with...

1. Carbohydrates are not these horses friend. That means a lot of the time grass is going to be off the table for your pal and you need to know what is in your hay. High protein should also be off the table. Watch your ration balancers because some of them can be very problematic also.

2. We cannot stress enough exercise, exercise, exercise. Your horse has got to move. Ride your horse, make a track system, get him a donkey that chases him in circles all day but doesn't beat him up (maybe that is a joke, maybe not)

3. You cannot make these horses think they are starving. Somehow you have to figure out how to feed them in an all day trickle. If you are soaking your hay make sure your horse does not get the soaking water. It contains all you just tried to remove from your horse's diet.

4. Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Vitamin E, plain salt and Magnesium are super important for these horses. You are probably going to need someone very knowledgeable to help you analyze where your horse is and what your horse needs.

5. In most cases bags of grain, no matter what is on the label, do not serve these horses well. You are probably going to have to go to more simple ingredient feeding. Some ration balancers can be a great help.

6. Have your hay and ground analyzed to see what you are dealing with. High iron sources can interfere with copper and zinc absorption which is very unhelpful. Clover is high iron and so are some weeds. Timothy Hay is more NSC than orchard grass. Hay grown in high iron soil is also high iron.

Here are some resources for you to start with.

https://www.ecirhorse.org/treatment-

https://www.facebook.com/124619504251477/posts/2330795680300504/

https://www.ecirhorse.org/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ddte_campaign

https://ceh.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/health-topics/equine-metabolic-syndrome