June 2021 - Set Up Trim
August 2021 - Third Trim
September 2021
These are two slightly different views of Dante’s right front. It’s a crooked limb with a twist. When documenting, it’s important to get the same view of the limb for comparisons. I put a red + sign where I aligned the camera angle from. This shows that the foot is pretty well balanced but the leg is crooked. You can also see the crookedness where the growth direction of the hair converges along the back of the leg.
I roll the heel walls evenly above the calloused live sole at the seat of corn ( green arrows ). I put dark lines on to show how imbalanced the lateral cartilages are. If you look higher, there is a medial-lateral bend in the fetlock. The fetlock joint has zero tolerance for imbalance. A lot of horses have joint morphology and they compensate to cope with it. Once the morphology is there, it’s important to respect the deviation. I put the red arrows on to show how the medial heel is getting jammed up and the lateral heel is relaxed down. So in my opinion, this is an accurate correction at this trim. Too much and he’ll be sore, too little and he won’t improve. This is at a stable full of shod horses. This horse belongs to the owner of the stable. He was in bad shape with a lot of body pain issues when I started. She wants to convert the stable to barefoot, starting with her own horses so it’s important that they make graceful transitions. Knock on wood, but he’s been steadily improving along with the other dozen horses that I’m currently trimming and the owner keeps calling me and trying to add more horses on my schedule.
November 2021 - This is Dante’s left hind. The caretaker messaged me saying that she thought he was lame in the right front and suspected an abscess. After having a look at him I asked if she noticed the swelling in the right hind but she hadn’t.
He probably went about 4-5 weeks this trim interval. I asked for his right hind but he refused so I asked for his left hind. He reluctantly gave it to me and I got it trimmed. I immediately associated the swelling in the right hind with the separated lamina in the medial toe pillar that was curled over the sole and putting pressure under the rim of P3. After giving him some relief on this foot, he cocked the right front.
The right front had a similar situation going on. I trimmed that foot and gave him some more relief. Then he gave me his left front. It was over grown but without separation. Then he gave me his right hind. It looked similar to the left front. My assessment was that he is naturally right front and left hind dominant with the majority of the load on the medial sides of these two feet. This caused the wall separation and the painful curling under of the lamina. He compensated by leaning more on his less dominant right hind. That’s what caused the swelling in the right hind and that’s the reason why he couldn’t give me the right hind at first.
Left - pre trim | Right - post trim ( a few days later )
Left hind ( pre trim ) showing the cause of the swelling. This needs to be slowly corrected from the bottom and grown out straighter not disguised by rasping out the flare from the top.
March 2022
June 2021 - July 2022
August 2022
Change in frog/heel/seat of corn relationship after 1 year
