Legendary White Stallions

Check out this Nature documentary on PBS while you can, it expires on Feb. 11.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2364999318/

Contraction continued...

Before I get to the hooves in the photos I'd like to mention a few other factors that might play a part in hoof contraction:

• The weight of the horse: the heavier the horse, the less likely it is that their hooves are contracted. Drafts can have sorry, sad feet and still have very little contraction, small ponies and minis are the opposite.
• Movement: Allison had it quite right in her comment on my last post, movement is essential. Without movement and heel first landings the hooves will contract. Standing = stagnation.
• The hardness/softness of the surface they live on: hard surfaces offer more resistance to the hoof causing it to expand wider, soft surfaces are the opposite. Mud or soft sand can contribute to contraction.
• The moisture content of said surface: here's a bit of a contradiction to the last point, drier environments leave hooves more contracted than wet ones. This is because tissues tend to shrink when water isn't abundant. A healthy hoof in a desert environment will probably look more contracted than a healthy hoof in a more humid environment.
• Injury/disease: if one hoof is contracted, I would suspect an injury in the leg or disease in the hoof. Anything that makes it uncomfortable for the horse to land on that hoof correctly.
• Shoes: when the horse weights the hoof it expands, when they lift the hoof it contracts. In order to nail a shoe onto a hoof it has to be lifted- so the hoof is already at it's smallest when the shoe is nailed on. The nails will then interfere with the normal flexing of the hoof once the horse starts moving again, and if the nails are placed too far back they will interfere with the expansion of the heels. Shoes lock the hoof into its smallest (contracted) size which can get worse over time. I've heard there are farriers out there who can avoid this, but they are very, very few and far between.

Okay, onto the pictures.

Personally I think those hooves were contracted due to the pain from the bars (cue the broken record...). The bars are meant to give structure to the back of the hoof and to keep it from expanding too far upon impact with the ground. If the bars are left to grow unchecked, they can grow so long that, not only do they cause pain, they actually stop the back of the hoof from expanding. When the hoof can't expand all it can do is contract.

Lets look at some of those pictures a little closer, shall we?

The red lines outline the bars, the blue lines are there to show how deep they've grown into the hoof. Keep in mind that you can't see all of the bar, there's probably quite a bit that has been pushed up inside the hoof too. The accordion folds are a tell-tale of too long bars. Those are compression folds that are created when the too long bars get squeezed between the inside of the hoof and the ground.

I know there are some out there that still don't think bars need to be trimmed, all I can say is that every time I've trimmed off overgrown bars one of two things happen: they either start licking and chewing (a sign that a stressor was removed) or they pick up a hoof I haven't gotten to yet and ask me to do that one too. I imagine the horses in the photos would react the same way.

Charlotte Du Jardin sets the records straight!

Charlotte Du Jardin and Valegro set a new freestyle dressage world record with a score of 93.975% at the London International Horse Show this week. She broke Edward Gal and Totilas' record, good for her!


Charlotte Du Jardin & Valegro WORLD CUP Grand Prix Freestyle to Music London Olympia 2013 from Toptalent Dressage on Vimeo.

In case the embed doesn't work: http://vimeo.com/82143908

Dang it, the video got pulled. Here's another one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Iu8B4FRNk&feature=share.

What's the deal with hoof contraction?

A word that gets thrown around a lot when it comes to hooves is contraction, but I think a lot of people new to hoofcare don't really know what that means. I'm going to try to help you out.

con·trac·tion

: the act or process of making something smaller or of becoming smaller 

 Normally when someone says that a hoof has become contracted they mean that the back of the hoof, the heels, have shrunk/become pinched like in these feet (I snagged these pictures off the web):

What's wrong with that? There are structures inside the hoof; like the coffin bone, navicular bone, live frog, digital cushion, and lateral cartilages that are all negatively impacted by hoof contraction. There's only so much room inside the hoof, and when that space gets smaller- through contraction- they stop functioning correctly. The lateral cartilages lose their efficiency at pumping blood, the digital cushion loses its shock absorbing function, the coffin bone itself can even be remodeled due to the pressure. All this measures up to a horse with impaired movement at best and dead lame at worst.

What causes contraction? Simple: The horse not landing on the back of the foot. Without the weight of the horse pressing on the heels, they don't expand.

 How can you tell that a hoof is contracted? Take a look at the hooves above, they all have a few things in common. For one, they all have long toes. Yes, even the second one down, it's not as long as the others but it'll get there. Toe first landings = long toes as the constant pressure will stretch the lamina and sole. Second, look at the frogs, they are all narrow little triangles with ugly looking trenches in the central sulcus collecting thrush. Third, look at the bars, they are all very long. Lastly, look at the heel bulbs and see how they look like cleavage squeezed tight in a corset.

Here's a hoof that isn't contracted, can you see the difference?

The trim isn't perfect, but you get the picture

Most of us know that horses should be landing on their heels because that's where the shock absorbers of the hoof are. So what would cause a horse to land on their toes instead? It's normally because of pain in the heels, you just have to figure out where the pain is coming from.

Let's go back to the thrush issue real quick: Thrush and contraction go hand in hand (or hoof in hoof). As the hoof contracts the frog folds up like an accordion, creating that deep crevice you see in these photos. Thrush just loves deep, dark crevices like that. Some people think (and I thought this myself once) that the pain from thrush can cause contraction. What I've learned recently points to the contraction happening first, making a nice, comfy home for the thrush to move into later.

So can anyone guess what I'd say caused the contraction in the above hooves?

Settling in

They've been home for a month and we're starting to figure things out here on the homefront. Gwen has relaxed and finally stopped pacing the fence; she's even started lying down for naps every morning, which is wonderful to see. I'm figuring out how to care for my animals and a baby at the same time- thank goodness for playpens and strollers! I think the little guy is going to start walking in the next month or two so then I'll have a new monkey wrench thrown in the works.

I've had to get a tad creative about grazing since my permanent pasture is currently grass-free. I now have a collection of step-in posts that allow me to make temporary paddocks.

Temporary paddock #1

I wish my husband would let me fence in the yard so we wouldn't have to mow, but he is emphatically against it. That doesn't mean they can't graze there loose for an hour or so.

mowing the lawn for me

I've been on a bare handful of  rides since they've been home. It took a while to get a trail cleared so I could ride. My husband was so proud that he'd gotten his tractor and made me a trail to ride on by my birthday, so I got all excited and tacked up Coriander and got Gwen in tow (because I can't leave her behind or she'll catch up, dragging the fence behind her.), only to find that what my husband considers a cleared trail is not what I consider a cleared trail. There was brush and broken trees everywhere! Oh well, I guess everything looks different from horseback than from a tractor.

That's about all that's happening here right now, eventually I'll have more to talk about- it might not be until next year though. Babies do change everything!

They're home!

They came home last Thursday, getting them here was... ugh. I really wish I'd gone with my instinct and just walked them home last month, instead Gwen and I had a little saga going on with the trailer for 2.5 weeks. Let's just say that, at this point, the only way she's getting on a trailer again is if she's dead. Yeah, it went well.

 

It's sure nice to have them home though, where I can see them whenever I look out the window. I've gotten a front row seat to Gwen's neurotic show. She wore this lovely path next to the fence line by pacing FOR DAYS ON END. On the bright side, she's getting better, I only saw her pacing for an hour today.

Coriander, on the other hand, settled in pretty quickly. By the second day he was comfortable and begging for treats.

Unfortunately the pasture looks pretty ghetto right now. There isn't much grass because we had to go around and fill in a bunch of holes and dips with topsoil and then we had to dig a drainage ditch to try to keep it dry. I am planning on making more pasture but we need to clear out a few more acres first. They should have grazing available next year.

Baby boy has been getting some horse time too. He likes to chill in his stroller with his feet up and smile at them. Maybe he'll be a horse boy someday?

Sounds vs. "sound"

First, to clarify a very important point left over from my last post: If the hooves are unhealthy, soreness after a trim might be a sign of healing. If the hooves are healthy, however, the horse should NEVER be sore after a trim.

The nice thing about really healthy, sound hooves is that they are resilient. For instance, Gwen has never been sore after a trim, ever. Which is really amazing considering how many times I've screwed up. Fortunately for her, I studied and documented and kept improving so I didn't make the same mistakes over and over. For a sound horse, one bad trim shouldn't hurt much, a series of bad trims will probably ruin them.

A "sound" horse is a different matter. This is the horse that most people think is sound but really isn't. Coriander falls into this category, nine years of no hoof care (before I got him) on top of halter horse breeding have given my boy less than perfect hooves. That poor horse is my trim barometer- if my trim is a little off he'll show me. Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist trying to figure out exactly how he wants his hooves trimmed: leave the heels higher here, leave the toes longer there. It takes trial and error to keep that horse happy.

It's my personal opinion that there are a lot more "sound" horses out there than sound. When I go out to trim a new horse I always ask the owner to lunge the horse for me so I can do a lameness check. Most of the time I find that the horse is a little off on one foot or another- but the owner never saw it! Now, I am not an expert on diagnosing lameness, I think people just get used to seeing their horse move a certain way and think they're fine. And really, here's where the problem lies for the trimmer: If the owner already knows their horse hurts then they can usually handle a little soreness after the trim if they know healing is happening, If the owner doesn't know anything is wrong with their horse then they'll probably freak out.

Here's a short list of what I consider to be signs that your horse might only be "sound." I'm not saying that all of these are definite signs of unhealthy hooves, just that they are often correlated:

• If your horse is perfectly comfortable on sand or soft grass but has issues as soon as they step on pavement, concrete, or hard dirt (gravel doesn't count, that's hard for most horses)
• If your normally well-mannered horse is especially averse to picking up a specific hoof
• If your horse takes short strides/ has a limited range of motion
• If your horse does not stand with the front legs straight underneath them but with them stretched forward or back
• If your horse typically stands with one front hoof in front of the other/pointing a hoof (not when grazing)
• If your horse has bouts of "mystery lameness" but seems fine most of the time
• If your horse squeals or bucks when jumping (this could also be a back/tack issue)
• If your horse is a dead-head in the pasture but turns into a fire breathing dragon as soon as you mount (again, might be a back/tack issue)

Want to read a little story about me screwing up? Of course you do. I trimmed a horse that I knew was lame and unhealthy but the owner was completely clueless; thought the horse was perfectly healthy.

Here she was before:

and after: 

I learned a lot from trimming this horse, because she hurt after the trim and the owner flipped out. I learned that you can do the right thing for the horse (this was the trim she needed, after she got past the soreness she moved better than she had in months) but if you don't prepare the owner it's all for naught. I also learned (after consulting with my mentors) that the growth rings showed this horse was foundering- they are further apart at the heels and starting to bunch together at the toes. Which is not surprising considering the horse had been taken away from a place where she was starving and thrown immediately into spring grass. It was just a bad situation all around, basically the owner was a neglectful ________.

If I had to trim that horse again (I wouldn't) I would leave the toes and heels a little longer to try to avoid some of the short term soreness. Chances are she would have been sore anyway. Live and learn.