She has desert hooves. If you live anywhere that isn't bone dry, your horses' feet won't look like this!
Front right, heel view. They're too long (I was going to trim the day I fell off) and you can see how they're flaring on the outside. That tight crack in her frog probably means there's thrush in there.
Sole view. The funny looking stuff on the sole is just really dried out dead sole. In wetter climates that's the white crumbly stuff you can dig out with a hoof pick. You can see the bar on the left side is high and starting to fold forward, and that whole heel quarter is flared. Her walls are very thick and rock-hard, from the climate, and her white lines are more stretched than I like to see.
I scraped at her sole with my hoof knife. I know she has thick live sole and I just poked around a bit to see if any of the dead stuff was ready to pop off. I dug the dead stuff out around the bars, to make sure they weren't folded up under there. Then I rasped the walls for a while from the bottom, then rolled them from the top. She has a lot of concavity and a lot of dead sole in there, so I just leveled the walls with the dead sole - they are still above live sole level, and hopefully she'll walk out some of that flaky stuff now. The heel on the left was starting to crack so I rolled that a little higher up, to take the pressure off of the cracks. They should grow out fine.
Rear right, heel view. Her rears are flatter, spade-shaped, and tend to flare on the outside wall. The flaring is because of her conformation or way of going, one of the two. I try to touch up the roll on the outside rear walls more often to keep the flaring from getting worse. The walls on the rears aren't nearly as long.
Sole view. See how the bar on the left side is sort of collapsed forward and smushed down? I pried and whacked at it with the hoof knife but didn't do a very good job trimming it.
I didn't take a very good after picture of the rear, because there wasn't much to do. I rolled the walls from the top, especially the outside quarter and heel. You can see some bruising on the outside heel, where the walls got too long and started to pull away from the hoof. If I remain injury-free and diligent about rolling that area, the heel will grow in nice and tight.
She is sound over any surface. I don't do long distances over rocks without boots, but she's perfectly happy to trot over rocks. If she showed any kind of soreness or hesitancy, I'd be more worried about the bruises and treating for thrush. But now that I've seen her get hurt, I know that she's not some stoic hiding her pain, so I'm not too worried about it.
Here's some side shots on concrete.
Front right (from the inside). I think her front heels could come down a little more?
Rears
The wonky curve I'm always battling
The full set has a few more shots. Trimmer friends - what do you see?
It looks like her heels are decontracting! That's what I see: daylight. :)
ReplyDeleteBarefoot and sound over any surface is awesome! Good job, you two.
ReplyDeleteLOVE hoof posts. But you already knew that. :)
ReplyDeleteI think you could probably have gotten her front heels down more, but without an after heel view it is too hard to say. I can see that you could defiantly get her weight bearing heel platform back more, to where the widest point of the frog is. On hard ground, take the heels down to share weight with the frog . A good trick is to take heel slowly until your rasp only just makes a slight scratch in the frog (without taking off any frog) and don't go any lower than that.
With that flare on the right hind, you are right - just keep on top of your bevel and it will grow out. If you don't address flare high enough on the outside of the hoof capsule it never really goes away though. A good guide is to rasp off flare no higher than 1/4 of the way up the hoof capsule. She has nice thick walls so you won't be thinning the wall too much if you stick to this at each trim.
Without seeing her move it is hard to say why her rh is distorting this way and that bar is laying over. I would say that the more flaring there the worse the distortion would get so I think staying on top of it will help you see an improvement. Please take another shot of this foot in about 3 month's time for comparison, I would love to see!!
Nice sound desert feet there Miss Dixie!!
I think it looks like she has some tough feet and admire those of your who can do it yourself. I just don't have the gumption.
ReplyDeleteI am always interested in what other horse's feet look like...is that wierd? I recently started Scout on some mineral/vitamins and am starting to see a big change in his feet. Post an update in a couple months. Maybe I'll go take some pictures now too.....
ReplyDeleteI do not envy you having to trim those desert hooves, trying to trim the bars on hooves like those is like trying to carve granite!
ReplyDeleteWhen mine show issues with the white line I look at the diet and the hoof walls. Since I know you watch her diet like a hawk it's probably safe to rule diet out as the problem- in that case it might be the excess hoof wall. Have you tried taking them down to the sole? As hot as it is out there I know that leaving a little extra probably protects them from the heat but it might be something to try once it cools off.
Anyway, I went over to flickr and left some comments (radal16), I am well aware that I am not the be-all end-all of hoof trimming so take any comments you like and ignore the rest. I'll try not to be insulted ;)
I got nothing more than what you already pointed out.
ReplyDeleteYou and Dixie got it goin' on!
I just love looking at everyone else's hoof pictures... I always learn so much!!
ReplyDelete