Frog Trimming (Listening to the Horse)

I learned how to trim frogs by paying close attention to the feed back from the horses:

• I noticed when they would lick and chew when I removed certain areas

• I paid attention when they asked for their foot back and over time learned the proper timing

• I noticed when they were happy with what I was doing on one foot and that they wanted me to do the same thing to another foot

All this added up to trimming the dead stuff off and finding the true live insensitive frog. Eventually I realized that I was just aligning the live insensitive frog with it’s live sensitive corium. It was similar to what I was doing when I was trimming for steel shoes, but for a different reason. Not all shoers trim frogs, but I think a lot of the ones that do are thinking along the same lines as I was in the beginning…thinking of hygiene and about making room for the shoes. Some shoers and trimmers trim for frog relief and some trim for frog pressure. It just depends on what they believe the role of the frog is, or more likely, what the frog condition and what it’s relationship to the ground is at the time of the trim.

I think it’s important to mention Dr Bowker here because his soft tissue research has had such a big influence on the way people are currently understanding, or misunderstanding, hoof trimming.

This should help answer the question about why I think and trim differently than many other schools. It was his research that first opened my eyes to the role of soft tissue. Here’s my understanding about what he advises:

• that the frog should “kiss the ground”

• that the “diamond shape” of the central sulcus should be flat and parallel to the ground

• that the heels should be trimmed to create a platform from the toe pillars to the back of the heels.

• that the toe should be aggressively rockered, even into the sole, to keep up with toe growth and keep them short.

You can listen to some recent podcasts where he was interviewed and make up your own mind. The reason I’m mentioning this is because it’s about 180 degrees from what I believe and how I trim.

In my experience, feet that have been trimmed to Bowker’s specifications gain more dead heel horn height, lose soft tissue development, and get parked on the coffin bone. Excessive toe length comes from excessive toe loading. This is due to the lack of frog trimming and trying to keep it in a “kissing the ground” position. This only compresses the frog over time. The frog is meant to grow a layer and shed a layer in order to self maintain, just like the wall and sole. All the structures have to be trimmed with respect to their load bearing roles and according to what stage of development the feet are in during each trim. Too much focus is on long toes…which is a result of avoiding properly shaping the heels. Dissections are important for learning anatomy, but there’s more information in a living foot than in a dead one. A living horse can lead us to the answers with their opinions about how their feet are being trimmed. We just need to pay attention.

15 years ago my research on semi-feral horses led me to put my own seven horses on a weekly trim schedule for 7 years.

This coincided with an experience that I had with a particular horse, a chestnut mare, who was an extremely good communicator. After her trim she was clearly saying that I wasn’t done trimming one of her feet. My daughter, Claudia, who was 10 at the time, was with me that day. She helped me figure out what the mare was trying to say. (She wanted her bars taken down a little more ). This mare reached out and “asked.” She took a chance that I would listen and she changed my trimming forever. I am very grateful to that mare for that lesson. She has helped a lot of horses over the years. That was the first actual “conversation” that I had with a horse. Before that I just pet them when they were being nice and told them to knock it off when they were doing something annoying…or dangerous. Since that day I’ve never finished a trim without asking if there’s anything else I can do for them and many of them have requests.

When they know you’re listening…they will tell you.

My daughter and I developed our awareness of this way of trimming together. My brain doesn’t usually come to my rescue in many instances, but it does recognize and file patterns. My daughter notices fine details and intuitively connects hoof shape with comfort. Things like…shapes/colors/actions/times of the day/weather/environmental changes, etc. are what catch my attention and get stored away. When horses give me feedback it all goes into the data bank. Teaming up with my daughter over the years (when she was available) helped me become more empathic.

Taking the time to actually photograph and document changes has enhanced my awareness of patterns even more. I am even more detail oriented than I was in the beginning and I’m more aware of my emotions. This has made me better at life decisions and worse at business decisions. I take more time now. I’m just present and I’m less worried about the schedule for the rest of the day… so my clients either love me or hate me depending on whether I’m trimming their horse or they’re waiting on me.

That’s the long way of saying that I learned how to trim from listening to and observing horses from the perspective of my teenage daughter. I never followed a particular method, yet my trimming has become increasingly methodological. This is just due to linking up the patterns of thousands of trims over 17 years and becoming increasingly more aware of the patterns. My own horses, and many of the other horses that I trim, have feet that have been continually developed over more than a decade due to the lessons that I learned from trying to simulate miles of wear and knowing how far to push it and when to lay off and wait. The communication with the horses has been just as important as the awareness of form, function, and performance.

From this experience, my current understanding of the function of the frog is that it’s a complex curved, elastic webbed, arch that follows the heel/bar contour. The back of the frog is supposed to touch the ground at the widest part of the frog where the collateral grooves end during the touch down phase of the stride when the foot isn’t bearing very much weight. As the horse’s momentum moves forward, the weight bearing gradually increases on the heels as it gradually decreases to the frog. At peak load bearing, the heels share the majority of the weight and the frog is suspended off the ground, but supporting the descent of the boney column. This is what activates soft tissue development and relieves the horse of foot pain. The central sulcus opens and closes in conjunction with the rolling of properly shaped heels. The contortion of the hoof capsule during this process is what moves the blood around and the resistance to contortion is what makes the foot strong and highly functional. The resistance increases as the hoof structures build. It’s the balance of contortion and the resistance to contortion that continually builds the feet. This is a simplified description of hoof function, but it’s a good start to why I think and trim the way I do.