I began working on this Arab mare in the spring of 2005. She was then 7 years old and had been suffering from a severe club foot for most of her life. She was in shoes and was completely out of balance on all her feet. She had other issues as well which we believe contributed to her club foot. She had some serious all over body chiropractic and deep muscular issues in the same shoulder which were being dealt with the entire time that I was working with her. Aside from all these issues, the mare was also dealing with dietary problems and sensitivities to just about everything. To read some more on her background, please see my testimonial section. I would like to add that I had an extremely co-operative horse owner who did anything and everything she could to help this mare and if it weren’t for the owner, I never would have got the results I did with this mare.

I am hoping that this case study will help owners and practitioners see how consistent natural trimming along with other vital body work such as chiropractic and therapeutic massage, proper saddle fitting and even proper equine dentistry, as well as natural diet and lots of movement can help a serious condition such as the one I will present here.

Here is a full body shot of her grazing, this is how she always grazed with the right front back underneath her and never leading, she had a serious problem extending that leg out in front.

The first hoof photos will show the club foot upon my first visit while still in shoes and immediately upon removal of the shoes. Notice on the left how high the heel is and how vertical the toe angle is, as well as the nasty dorsal wall flare. With the solar view you can see how weak the entire back portion of the hoof is, the frog is atrophied and the heels and bars very weak. It is obvious that the widest part of this hoof is near the front not the back. She also had very flat dropped soles with lots of dead crumbly material as you would expect coming out of shoes. The third photo in this group is of the two fronts so you can see just how different the right front club foot is from the left front on this horse. I never checked the shoes but I know she was wearing a 00 on the club and a 0 on the other as that’s what size she ended up in boots.

We were not working with radiographs on this mare, but I did use her toe length in conjunction with the depth of her collateral grooves to determine that she had a lot of foot at the back but nothing at the toe! She could not afford to have any sole removed at the toe at all. I cleaned out the chalky sole and brought her heels down to live sole level and the depth of her grooves at the heels were still way over an inch deep possibly close to 2 inches. I imagined this horse with a coffin bone much higher in the caudal aspect than in the dorsal aspect with the tip of the bone just underneath the sole.

These next few photos were taken in June and July 2005, the horse was placed on a 4 week trim schedule which turned out to be too long for her (see her toe at 4 weeks later in the August 2005 photo), so from this point on the horse was then switched to a trim cycle of every 3 weeks on the fronts and every 6 weeks for the hinds. Note the serious flared dorsal wall at the toe again, we are trying to get rid of that but at the same time, she had NO walls to speak of as a result from being SO upright for so long! This mare really didn’t know what to do with her stance upon removing her shoes, she didn’t want to place weight on her heels.  She was placed in BOA boots for riding to help achieve more of a heel first landing with movement.

Do note though that the heel height is already significantly lower when you compare the May 2005 photos with the August 2005 photos.

August 12, 2005 Before Trim

One thing I began to note during the trimming process was that this mare would routinely lower one heel at a time. Whenever I came to trim for the first 4 months, I would notice that the outside heel of this hoof was always higher than the inside heel. I routinely lowered the heels just to the live sole plane and then gave the heels a slight bevel right back to the heel buttresses to help her off her toes. Strict adherence was made to not invading live sole at the heels or in the seats of the corns. I tried once to lower that outside heel possibly a millimeter into live sole and what happened the next time I came to trim? The heel was LONGER than it had been prior to my trimming it 3 weeks prior. So, I had to respect the imbalance in the back of the foot and be really strict with myself NOT to try to balance in the name of invading! While trying to lower the heels we were also trying to encourage the hoof to expand or de-contract a bit, to do this – our goal was to get a heel first landing. To achieve that, we felt the mare needed sufficient padding in the frog area, so frog wedges of padding were made for the mare to wear inside her boots during riding.

Also note in these solar views of the hoof in August 2005 (left) and September 2005 (right) the increase of width and healthy structures at the back of the foot. Note the frog becoming healthier, thicker and wider and the central sulcus becoming more open and shallow. After every trim with my doing the bevel at the heel as depicted in the bottom photo, the mare would have a bit of space under the heel which would correct itself within a few days, as the mare adjusted to the new lower heel height. This pic wasn’t take on the most even of ground but it was pretty close. Sometimes the space was enough for me to put my rasp under, but when I came back to the next trim, she would walk flat or heel first and stand very square on the foot. You can see also in the last photo that I did not bevel or rasp too much at the quarters as her walls were still quite thin there. Her toe length was shortening and heel height shortening without invading live sole and her dorsal flares were growing out! There is still a bulge to the hairline and room for improvement but these things take time and patience on the part of the practitioner and the horse owner.

September 2005 After Trim

I don’t know why we didn’t take photos of the mare through the winter of 05/06, however I can say it was uneventful in that we were making progress slowly in the fashion as I have depicted above. Slow lowering of heels, paying special attention to medial lateral balance as well as getting the diet adjusted, keeping the horse away from sugars and putting her on trace minerals, digestive enzymes and probiotics. This mare had a tendency to colic, I think she didn’t deal with stress well, this combined with weather changes, hormonal changes and green pastures wreaked havoc on her system.

So we are now skipping up to spring of 2006 with photos of the progress made at this point. These photos show before the trim (left) and after the trim (right) Notice in the lateral views the nice straight dorsal wall, there is still a slight dishing but this horse was continually resetting her toe angle as the heels lowered. Also note on the solar views that now the inside heel is higher, this is the way the horse lowered her heels, I went along with her and respected this by not going into live sole at the heels, instead I opted to bevel it back towards the buttresses. The bevel applied was in the range of 35 to 45 degrees. I kept it closer to 35 or so for the most part to avoid any strains on the tendons and drastic changes in heel heights and angles. I found by doing this, the horse was able to find what heel and toe angles she wanted.

At this point also, the mare was going through some strange warping of the hoof shape, I assumed it was due to de-contracting as I had always followed live sole and removed flare where I could in light of thin walls. I was keeping in mind that this horse was mainly used on the trail and was to be used in competitive trail riding, so we didn’t want to over thin the walls! You can also see nice concavity in the soles here.

Our last photo was taken in February of 2007 (right). I apologize that not all the photos were great, some were taken at night in a dark barn. Let’s take a moment to compare the hoof from 2005 to 2007. This photo is post trim and measurements were taken of the hoof at that point.  When we took the measurements of the toe angle we were shocked to find a 59 degree angle! After 2 years of trimming, chiropractor and massage therapy work, this mare STILL had room for improvement as noted by the bulging hairline. However - this hoof was pretty decent compared to her hoof 2 years prior. She moved heel first, was never off on a circle or figure 8, had no problems moving out and was sound everywhere. Notice over the last few post trim photos that even though I was still beveling the heels back, the mare no longer displayed a gap between the heel and the ground level.

Unfortunately for this mare, shortly after this photo was taken she succumbed to another terrible colic episode. She did not make it this time. There were a number of events occurring around that time such as spring shots, worming and lush pasture sprouting, we’ll never know exactly what did it but the sad and tragic thing to me with this case was that after working SO hard to bring this mare to soundness, metabolic issues found another way to get the best of her.  She was truly one of my best teachers in putting all aspects of natural hoof care and natural horse care together to make things work.