FEET !!!

[horsey123]

i went to look at two very nice warm bloods from a small breeder near my sister (only has two foals a year) both horses were great nice ish movement although a little small

she was selling two very nice horses and we looked at all her other horse the horses were all very well muscled very nice comfo well just perfect for what i wanted until we opened the stable doors

they were all shod and all there feet where s"""t not a nice shod foot they were cracked very high in the heel very boxy the heels were contracted and the feet were all wrong one had a huge crack up the middle and the farrier had told her to put hoof oil into it witch she hadn't been doing as she didn't have any thanks god ,,

the girl who owns the yard said they have good strong feet she has been told by her farrier
so i pointed a few things out to her and shown her a few websites
any ways me and my EP are going down there next Sunday to take the shoes off the 2 horses i am interested in and if they are is a big difference with out the shoes then she will consider taking all the shoes off and not putting any on anymore
she seamed really keen on the idea,
i said then i will come back and see how they are looking and maybe buy a few dressage prospects off her and carries on the rehab back at my yard

but i don't know how she could put a horse up for sale for 12,000 and its feet be falling off i suppose she just did not no how bad they were as her farrier would beg to differ

the horses had quite short choppy strides and i am 100% sure when the shoes come off and the feet are re-balanced and bare they will have a huge movements as the unbacked un shod 3 yo do

cant wait

[beany1]

There is a lot of ignorance about feet still - people go by what the farrier says, and generally farriers are not that knowledgeable about feet and their functions.

I only know what good feet look like now I have seen them - I didn't know before and I cringe to think of how flared my boys feet used to be.

[june]

I think farriers start out being reasonably knowledgeable about feet, but shoeing horses causes changes to the feet and that starts to look normal if it is what you are looking at every day.

Our horses were all trimmed by a farrier for years and had good feet. He retired and a young farrier took over. He did a great job for a couple of years and then started making them sore for some reason. I suspect it was because the fad of short toes was at its height and so he was taking too much toe off. Prior to that, both did a nice job of balancing the foot and addressing flare and we never had any foot problems.

Like any profession there are some people who are better at it than others. That goes for trimmers too. I know people call trimming a science but in reality it is an art!

[beany1]

Its good that more people are aware of what is good and what isn't, don't you think? I was so ignorant I would have believed anything that was said to me about feet! I guess the whole horse 'movement' is changing though - people are researching themselves, and taking responsibility for their whole horse care, instead of leaving it to the paid help.

[june]

Yes, years ago I thought a good farrier was one that turned up on time and put shoes on that didn't fall off. (Sometimes I wish I was still in that place!). It was only when we had a horse diagnosed with navicular that I started to explore a little deeper. That took me off down the Cytek shoeing route.

The theory of Cytek was flawed, although it did "fix" the horse with navicular, but it was an excellent learning experience for me and it was a Cytek farrier that first suggested not putting shoes on one of our horses "because it was a shame to put nails in such a nice foot".

I think it is great that people are becoming more aware of good and not so good feet. It was reassuring that most people on a KC course last year drew a good shaped foot when asked to draw a side on and underside view. There was one farrier on that course and he drew contracted heels. That was what he saw every day, hence it had become normal to him.

I think we still have a lot to learn about the equine foot. Most of the stuff we "know" has precious little scientific evidence to truly back it up. For example, rapid frame X-ray/MRI scan type photography on a horse moving with under run heels versus one without under run heels versus shod etc to really see what is going on inside the foot.

[mrsart]

Dec 27, 2008 19:37:25 GMT 1 @beany1 said:

There is a lot of ignorance about feet still - people go by what the farrier says, and generally farriers are not that knowledgeable about feet and their functions.[/qujavascript:add("%20:o")ote]

I just wanted to say that I trust my farrier completely, he really does know what he is doing & has been looking after my horses feet for nearly 10 years now. Indeed if it hadn't have been for his expert knowledge I would certainly have lost my previous pony to laminitis many years before her time, & more recently he has been far more help than the vet when my veteran mare has been lame.

I'm sorry if your experience of farriers is poor, (I have met 1 or 2 in my time) but just wanted to point out there are also some truly excellent ones about.

[beany1]

I'm sure there are of course - I really liked my farrier and he did an okay job - it's only now I realise some of the things he said demonstrated very little actual understanding of foot function, and he was straight out of college.

[Yann]

I've been using a newly qualified farrier and we've had some interesting discussions, they really do come at it from a different direction on some subjects. The most surprising thing for me was that he didn't agree that there was a link between footiness, flaring and grass growth, something which my own experiences have made me think was self evident.

[horsey123]

Dec 29, 2008 11:50:33 GMT 1 Yann said:

he didn't agree that there was a link between footiness, flaring and grass growth, something which my own experiences have made me think was self evident.

yes i would have though that they were all licked so would my EP

i have nothing at all ageist farriers its just finding a good one thats the trouble these days unfortunately

[marianne]

In my limited experience it's really a case of "if someone doesn't point it out, you don't see it". My first horse was shod for a couple years when I got him and I didn't think ANYthing about it because that's what you 'did' with horses. It wasn't till we moved to France (change of diet and change of farrier) that he started having problems keeping shoes on and I started researching feet, hooves and the inevitable barefoot ....

Needless to say, my 6 are now all barefoot, but I think until there's a problem most people don't even think to look .

[june]

Dec 29, 2008 11:50:33 GMT 1 Yann said:

I've been using a newly qualified farrier and we've had some interesting discussions, they really do come at it from a different direction on some subjects. The most surprising thing for me was that he didn't agree that there was a link between footiness, flaring and grass growth, something which my own experiences have made me think was self evident.

But you don't see footiness very often in shod horses, so the farrier would have very little experience of it. It's only when you take the shoes off that you notice footiness immediately after a grass growth spurt, and put two and two together when it happens a few times. Then it seems obvious.

When our horses were shod I never experienced footiness in a horse and never thought about grass. Now, we have a couple of fit TB type horses that go footy with a grass spurt. Keeping them off the grass during the day for 3 or 4 days is enough to fix the problem but if they had shoes on I'd never have noticed it in the first place. The grass spurt would have stopped and the horse would have returned to normal.

Which leads me to wonder if the flaring from a grass spurt is the main reason shod horses tend to end up with under run heels. The flare would pull the heels forwards and the farrier would fit the shoes as normal and rasp off the flare to fit the shoe but the foot would start to creep forward with successive shoeings.