What a difference a good farrier can make

     Raven has had 'bad feet' for many years. I've written about them before on this blog, so I'm merely going to condense things down a bit.

    When Raven was being shod by the "old" farrier, that man...well, he didn't help the feet at all. A case could be made that he exacerbated what was already a bad hoof. Raven had picked up white line disease somewhere that had steadily eaten away the hind feet. The 'old" farrier, rather than take measures to treat the white line, merely packed the holes in the hoof with some sort of epoxy. 
   I'm not slamming the old farrier. He meant well, but he was in above his head with Raven's feet. He just didn't know how to 'fix' them. The epoxy was meant to hold the shoe on the hoof, nothing more. I do believe that the old farrier knew how to shoe horses with good feet, but problem feet were beyond his capacity to rectify. 
   
   The epoxy kept the hoof in one piece for about a month, then would start crumbling away. In addition, the epoxy sealed the white line IN, making it even worse. 
To add to the problems, the old farrier had trimmed the hooves so that the heels weren't contacting the ground, meaning: contracted heels. 

   By the time we moved Raven to the New Barn, his feet were a dreadful mess. 

   Sue, by this time, had conquered her feelings of guilt regarding 'firing' the old farrier. She didn't want to hurt his feelings and had continued on with him,more, I suspect, out of a feeling of sympathy for him and accepting that he wasn't fixing the hooves.  He was the only farrier she'd ever had. She had nothing to base it on.

   So it was fortuitous that we moved Raven to the New barn about the same time as the old farrier hurt his back and shoulders so badly that he was forced into (perhaps permanent) retirement. This was Sue's out. I told her, farriers lose and gain customers all the time. It won't hurt his feelings. 

   We also found Matt, the 'new' farrier, at the new barn.

   The differences were amazing. Matt, being a professional, didn't say anything about the work of the old farrier, but he probably silently whistled in amazement. And joy...this was going to take some time. And cost money.
   How this horse managed to function with his feet in such bad shape was, in his words, 'amazing.' And a testament to the horse...Raven's a trooper. 

   He was upfront with us. It was going to take a year of frequent trimmings, and a change in feed to get Raven's feet back to something resembling 'good' hoof.

    We put him on Trifecta, a supplement that costs a lot. 

   And so it has proved. At first Matt put a different sort of epoxy in the hoof. This was to hold a shoe on and hopefully, provide some sort of support. He taught us the formula for killing the white line: 60/40 blend of Iodine/venice turpentine. Put it on the hoofs OFTEN, not on the coronary band, and keep the feet dry. 

   The first several trimmings consisted of cutting out as much rotten (there's no other word for it) hoof as possible, and replacing the shoes.

    But the shoes weren't holding. And the hooves were too badly deteriorated to benefit from any support the epoxy may have provided.
    
    So...let's go bold and remove the shoes altogether. The old farrier had warned Sue, never ever let this horse go barefoot. That, to me, had been an alarm bell.  But I said nothing. I'm not a farrier, and Raven's only mine by Sue's kindness. I was glad when Matt said, let's  take the shoes off. It would give the hooves a chance to grow out without the nails putting torque on the new growth.  

    By this time it was January and cold, and the white line didn't like being  poisoned or frozen. 

    The epoxy didn't, either. It kept falling out, taking hunks of hoof with it. Those hunks were dead hoof. Yes, hoof is already dead, but this was just shitty hoof to begin with.

   So in March, we made the decision to cease using the epoxy all together, continued applying the goop, and put Raven in Easy Boots.

    April's trimming showed a lot of improvement. We kept him barefoot. The white line was almost gone.

   In May, the Easy Boots weren't working so well anymore. One can only clean them so often, then the Velcro stays gritty. The grit started wearing sores on his heel bulbs. That hurts. 
   With clean Easy Boots (we had two pair) I could see he felt better by just watching him move. For the first time, when Sue trotted past me, I could see the soles of his hind feet. That had never happened before. He'd always dragged the hind feet. 

    Here's a picture of Sue on Raven taken in May. He's in Easy Boots.
 

Picking up his hind feet at last!

  He told us his feet felt better by acting like a fit horse. Lots of running and bucking in his paddock with his new paddock mate, Zeke, put a lot of wear and tear on the Easy Boots. He wore them out!


   So we took him out of Easy Boots and Sue began putting cast tape on the feet. This stuff looks like vet wrap but is what 'they' use to set broken arms and legs these days. You apply it wet and it dries into a stiffened 'cast'. That stuff went on the hoof well and could be kept off any skin or tissue. It worked well but his toes wore through and then he'd lose the cast. I'd find it in his paddock, the inside a perfect match for his frog. But when it came time to remove it for trimming, Matt had to literally rasp it away. Which is why the last photo I'm posting on this blog shows blue dust below the hoof.

   2 June 15's trimming was a revelation. I am posting four pictures of the left outside hind, from January to June. (mostly because I have about sixty pictures, taken over the months, and just don't want to post the whole series). The left hind outside was always the worst of the hooves. The new growth and improvement in the foot his amazing. The white line disease is GONE in all his feet. We are letting him go barefoot for a week, because the tape...while it protected his growing hooves, was also making the frog a bit 'soft'. So right now he's barefoot on the hind and shod on the front feet.  If going barefoot shows signs of buggering up the edges of the hoof, we'll put him back in tape. 

   But look at the improvements!! The outside hind is looking almost normal. I'm posting pictures of the right hind sole. One is of the sole taken Nov 14. The last was taken on 2 June. The white line is gone. Oh my gosh.

Left hind outside January 15

 

Left Hind outside after trimming March 2015

   

Left Hind outside before trimming 29 April 15

Left Hind outside after trimming (note blue fibers from cast) 2 Jun 15

 

Right Hind sole showing white line all through sole November 2014

Right Hind sole after trimming 2 Jun 15

    It's so encouraging when someone can make a horse's feet RIGHT. Matt's our MAN.

Encouraging signs of improvement in Raven's feet

     While none of us (me, Sue or Raven) have a bit of the Irish in us, still, St. Patrick’s day brought good news. Matt, our farrier, came out to trim and shoe Raven.

    We’ve been faithful in applying the goop (60/40 iodine/Venice turpentine). This has resulted in an almost complete cure of the white line disease in his hind hooves. 

    Instead of putting shoes back on the feet, we decided to put them in 'easy boots'.

   This rubber slipper is well known to endurance riders, but it works just as well on a dressage horse with raggedy feet. This is perhaps the fifth or sixth generation of easy boot. First hitting the market waaaaaaaaay back in the 80’s, they were difficult to put on and remove, and made the horse’s hoof sweat. I remember pouring a cup of water from a horse’s easy boot.

 The boot technology has improved remarkably. This style is cinched down using Velcro. They seem to breathe much better, and perhaps the only problem is they are inclined to accumulate dirt inside. But we take them off every night, to let Raven’s feet breathe. We also apply the goop once his feet are cleaned off.

    They worked. Not only did they allow Raven’s hooves to grow out but they also kept his hooves dry. That helped the goop kill the white line. 

    They also protected his feet from sustaining anymore damage from our rocky soil. In fact, they did so well that his hind feet had developed a 'lip' (for lack of a better term) on the bottom of the hoof. 

   I took pictures of his feet on the 15th, before the trimming, and the 17th, afterwards. For some reason, some of the ones I took of the inside of his right hind didn't register on the memory card. 

   No matter. You can see a lot of new hoof growth coming down from the coronet. Matt is very encouraged at the progress that's been made on Raven's feet.

 If you look at the edge of the above photo of his left hind, you can see the 'lip". It's on the toe. This specific photo was taken 15 Mar 15. Below is the same foot,left hind outside, after trimming.

Compare it with the one below, from my post "A picture can cause a 1000 shrieks".

What an improvement!! And below is the photo of his sole, that I shot on 15 Mar 17. The odd coloration is due to the hoof goop's iodine, staining the tissue. I did NOT take pictures of the sole after Matt worked on it. Linea, the barn owner, has a sea of dogs who insist on being underneath one's feet.
When you squat down to take a picture of feet, the dogs take it as an invitation to kiss you. I hate being kissed by a dog. So the pictures didn't get taken.

But you can see that much of the 'garbage', as Matt calls the infected hoof, is gone.

 Below are shots of his right hind, taken last month (or was it January?), which wasn't as bad as the left, but was still not a very good hoof.

    And now, the same hoof as above, before trimming on 15 Mar:

I don't have pictures of this right hind hoof after trimming, but if you look closely, you can see a bit of the lip. Below is the right hind sole from 15 Mar, and you can see the lip on both the right hind and left hind sole.

   We are tickled at the progress that's been made. Even Linea came over and wanted to know what Matt thought. Matt, was..well, encouraged, but wasn't effusive. He's seen a lot of bad feet, and so he advises we stay the course. We'd love to take Raven out of shoes altogether. After coaxing these feet into growing better hoof, I cringe at the idea of putting new holes in them.

    Oh, I forgot to mention, we've also been feeding him a supplement called "Trifecta". It is way spendy, oh my gosh, but it certainly seems to be contributing to the new hoof growth. 

    It seems to me that the right hoof is growing out faster than the left. 

That's merely my pondering, though.

   I wish I'd taken pictures of the soles after trimming. Matt took off the bars. I don't think this is a good idea, but...what do I know. He seems to be fixing the feet, so....I'll keep my humble opinions to myself. 

    Next hoof trimming is on 5 May. The weather is improving and he's been on green grass for some time, so I imagine that will speed up hoof growth, a lot. We'll see.

A picture can be worth a thousand shrieks

    "The continuing saga of Raven's feet". 

    Last week, Matt the Farrier returned to work on Raven's feet.
(see "A silver lining to white line disease").

    I was able to take decent photos of his feet this time.

    In  a way, I wish I hadn't.
    Take a look at these and tell me they don't make you cringe.

      EEEK.

     Especially the last one...that nail end was a tendon ripping, artery opening accident waiting to happen.

     I can't tell from the first series of photos how bad they were. The damage was hidden in part by the epoxy from earlier sessions. We were focusing too closely on the white line to really pay attention to this.

     But, again, things aren't as bleak as they may appear.

     The white line is almost gone. Matt dug out just a little bit in both hind hooves. It's almost cleared up. 
     Raven's hoof angles are improving measurably. Not only can we see that the heels are opening up and actually impacting the ground when we're holding a hoof,  we (I) can see it in the way he moves.

    Even before Matt came back for this latest session, I could see Raven feeling 'happier' in his feet. Watching Sue ride as often as I do, I've learned what is normal for Raven. Up until now, he's always dragged those hind hooves. You could see long, shallow grooves left from them as he trotted (in a freshly raked arena). I'd watch the puffs of dirt rise up from them as he trotted on hot dry days. His hooves were burnished on the fronts. In other words, he's always dragged his feet.

    But last month, watching him move under saddle, I saw something different. Not as much dragging, in fact, hardly any dragging at all. Instead, when they trotted past me, I'd see: shoes. Four of them, not two in front and just a suggestion in the back. His trot has developed more bounce, more rhythm, more balance. His whole body language said that he was feeling more comfortable in his feet. 

   Matt was early, as usual. (it's so nice to have a farrier that not only is on time, but is sometimes early).  He got right to work on Raven's feet. This time we were going to do something different. We decided to let Raven's back feet go barefoot.

   There's a lot of argument regarding barefoot horses. My last owned horse, Jordan, had feet like rocks. My farrier at the time would bitch that he had to use his harder rasp on Jordan, a CMK Arabian. Within six months of buying Jordan, I realized he didn't need shoes, and had them pulled. He went barefoot for the rest of his life and was quite happy. So was I: shoes are expensive. I kept him trimmed every 8 weeks.

   Alas, Raven isn't so lucky. He's 1/2 Trakehner, 1/2 Thoroughbred. He has the TB speed and the TB feet-meaning they're not as tough as one would wish. 

    The Last Farrier, a well meaning man, advised Raven NEVER go barefoot. But as I've discussed earlier, I'm convinced that he was unintentionally the reason for the problem. He was right: Raven's feet were so bad that going barefoot would have been disastrous. 

    
    I'm a big fan of letting a horse go barefoot, especially if he's not going to be used for trail riding. But I also understand, now, that many horses just cannot go barefoot. Five thousand years of domestication has given us a wonderful animal and friend, but it came with a price in the form of anatomical and conformational weaknesses.

  There's a mindset among some horsemen that NO horse should wear shoes. 

   The 'natural shoeing' set think that a horse is a horse, but they're not. Basing their ideology on the legendary toughness of mustang's feet, they insist that all horses can and should be barefoot. 
But they are wrong. The reason the mustangs that were examined and their feet extolled over are mustangs that had good feet. Mustangs with bad feet DIE.  (I think one of the wierdest things I ever saw was a mustang at the BLM with a split hoof. I mean, split in two, toe to heel. The only reason he was alive was that he'd been rounded up). The basic premise of natural selection is that the sick, the old and/or the disabled animal is the one that is picked off by a predator.

   Domesticated horses are bred for many things, but never, as far as I can tell, solely for good solid feet. So they don't have them. While I don't like it, I understand that most horses NEED shoes. We ask too much of their feet: carrying us as well as the horse, on unnatural surfaces, in unnatural conditions, applying unnatural forces, keeping them confined in small paddocks or worse, in stalls,  in too soft, too wet, too dry, and trimming them as well as we are able and not always succeeding.  That is where all our foot problems arise. Shoeing and improper trimming exacerbates an already poor hoof. 

   If you still doubt me, consider Homo sapiens. Us. Chances are you grew up in what we consider 'first world' conditions-you lived in a house, you walked on sidewalks, you started wearing shoes at a very early age. Your feet look 'normal' to you, until you look at the feet of someone from, say, Kenya, a person who grew up never wearing anything more substantial than a pair of flipflops. 

    Humans who have never worn shoes have feet that look almost deformed to us. Their toes and feet splay out. They are the natural human foot, a part of the human body that was never meant to be shod. WE shod humans are the ones with the deformed feet.

    People who grow up in warm climates, such as that found in Africa, living in poor rural communities, often never wear a shoe. They might not be able to afford shoes, but they are also in a place where they don't need them. It pays off, too. Let's consider the  Thoroughbreds of the human species, Kenyans. When it comes to running long distance marathons, there's the Kenyans, and then there are the also rans, all us white folk who seldom went barefoot, bringing up the rear. The Kenyans sometimes run the marathons barefoot. 

I believe they compete in the Olympics barefoot. When they compete in our marathons,  (you will please forgive the pun, but I can't resist) they are a shoe in. They're so far ahead of the rest of the runners that, several years ago, some boneheaded racist tried to make a rule that any Kenyan that ran in the Boston Marathon be disqualified solely because everyone knew they'd beat all the white (and black) Americans by many, many minutes. Thankfully the dipshits were shouted down and, hopefully, run out of town on a rail. I have no patience whatsoever with racists.The point being, Kenyans win. Every time. It's because they grew up in natural feet.

   The above photos were captured from the net and I'm sorry but I cannot find any citations of the original posters. The first is fairly recent, showing the feet of two Africans who are showing normal, never shod feet. 
   The middle picture was taken as part of a study of the human foot done in the early 1900's. It shows a picture of an African person who'd never worn a shoe in his or her life.  The third one shows a pair of normal, never shod feet in fig. 1, and, in Fig. 2  a pair of shoes or boots that look all too familiar to shoes of today (especially high heeled ones and cowboy boots) and the third showing the resulting pair of feet from wearing such footwear. 

  See the differences? That's what happens to feet. As they grow, they're formed by the footwear. Our feet, while they grow throughout our lifetime, can and do change but it's usually in response to wearing shoes. I don't believe that they can revert to the natural form. Horses, though, have a different foot that changes shape to suit the environment. 

   That doesn't mean that there's not a propensity for the 'natural shoeing' mindset to also afflict human runners.

     There are millions of runners/joggers in the US. You can see them everywhere-running in parks, alongside roads, running with dogs, pushing strollers, running fast, jogging slowly-but moving at a fast clip-in shoes. 
     
  About two years ago, the 'natural running' fad hit the US. 

   Someone who obviously had good feet to begin with came up with the idea that we should all be running barefoot. We were "designe to run barefoot."  (you will excuse the term: I don't believe in 'creation science' or 'intelligent design". One look at our bodies will tell you that if we were designed by some creator, he was insane. Bluntly put, we evolved.)
We DID evolve to run barefoot. But civilization changed that, as it has changed everything else about us. 
    The barefoot running craze hit-and lasted perhaps one season. People who ran in shoes for miles without pain had it forcibly proved to them that running barefoot is a terrible idea.

    The instances of foot injuries skyrocketed. Podiatrists were inundated with runners who had shin splints, bone spurs, plantar fasciaitis, torn ligaments, green stick fractures of the tibia, sciatica, broken ankles, people with hip, back and neck injuries-all due to trying to be something they aren't: barefoot runners. That's just skeletal injuries: skin damage from our relatively filthy roads, strewn with gravel, rocks, broken glass, pieces of metal, dog dung, pollutants such as oil, you name it, it was on the roster. Feet that had carried their owners for miles, were suddenly sources of pain and medical emergencies because they had been forced to be barefoot. You can't unscramble an egg, and you can't run barefoot if you've been wearing shoes all your life.  

    We are so formed by shoes that one day, I was forced to walk about in my rubber boots without my orthotics in them. One day. And the next week I was in great pain and so lame I could barely walk.  


    Back to the topic! 

    Once Matt had pulled the shoes and the epoxy, I took photos...and am still cringing at the damage still evident from bad shoeing and the white line disease. Yet underneath, the sole is improving, and Raven is growing the hoof out at a good pace. 

   He dug out what was left of the white line. The feet are looking better even though, externally, they look dreadful. 

   Matt, however, was so encouraged by the real improvements he's wrought in Raven's feet that he decided to forego the epoxy, for now...and let the horse go barefoot. (in the rear only).

    We decided to let the hooves grow out without shoes. NOT, though, unshod. No, we put him in boots. They're rubber overshoes.  Matt insisted we keep applying the white line killing stuff and to keep the hooves dry. We are making progress. Spring and summer are coming, and with the warmer weather, his feet will grow faster. We take them off at night when he's in his stall to let his feet breathe and dry out. (because he sweats in them, a bit).

    He seems quite content to be in them. It sounds odd to hear him walk..instead of that sweet, sweet 'clip clop' (a sound so near to my heart that it probably could replace my own heartbeat) and is now a "clip fwub clip fwub". 

   We're getting there. Next trimming, I'll post more photos.