One thought on “Wizard’s hoof progress photos: April 1, 2014

  1. Hi !

    Just saw your blog today. Googled “lame horse blogs.” I’ve been studying horse’s feet and shoeing for over 30 years, even took a lot of photos JUST LIKE YOURS, too. I like how sharp and detailed they are and (modest plug) I’ve admired your racing photos for quite some time now. But the real reason for my commenting is to tell you about Wizard’s feet. I’ve never seen feet anything near to how appallingly bad he was shod back in January. He shouldn’t have been lame, he should have been an unhappy memory. If you were to let his heels grow out, you would see that the left fore foot is “club” footed and that the right foot is severely under-run. No, I don’t mean that he is crippled… this comes from grazing with his right fore foot extended all the time. It simply flattens out. The mysterious lameness is simply the result of the “frog pressure” theory that says that a horse’s frog should be in contact with the ground. No, it should not and at worst the frog should not be lower than the heels. Yet his are (or were). All things being equal it is possible that you’re looking at a horse with contracting heels because of another incompetent shoeing theory. The link is to the 11th edition of Anton Lungwitz’s “A textbook…”

    https://openlibrary.org/works/OL185485W/A_text_book_of_horseshoeing_for_horseshoers_and_veterinarians

    illustrations 183 & 184 on the book pages 157 & 158 (the text is useless)

    If you think about it, what this is describing is that the pasterns and the coffin bone are not in a straight line and yet all horses are trimmed and shod as though this were true. The “correct” way (my way) is to look down the inside of the frog and make a mentally “vertical line” using the hairline of the coronet band. In this fashion the outside toe is cut down and the inside heel is left to grow out. The only problem is that the inside quarter (between the toe and the heel) has to be “gutted” or the wall will push up into the hairline. That’s how you get quarter cracks. The hind feet are just the opposite, the outside heel has to grow out and the inside toe has to be cut down. If you “gut” the inside quarter of the left hind foot you’ll notice something else, most horses are subtlely off behind in this foot, which effects thier stifles and hocks. Before you start cutting or anything just try looking and becoming familiar with my ideas. and be sure to check out other horses and how they graze and and the angles of their hooves.

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