Tag: Cruze

Riding/Horses

Hoof Post: The Beginning

roamingridersite

Hooves fascinate me which I suppose isn’t that surprising given my profession as a foot doctor. Biomechanics and foot function are interesting and complex topics in both humans and horses. That doesn’t mean anyone else finds it to be as well, so while I chronicle the changes in Cruze’s front feet for my own sake in the journey, I won’t mind if anyone decides to skip these posts.

Unfortunately I never grabbed immediate pictures when the shoes came off in the pasture four weeks ago. I was too worried about getting him comfortable again to bother making him hold still for a picture. There have been early changes but not drastic enough to ruin this series, so I’m starting out today as his baseline.

His front right is the better of the two. It has a higher heel to start with and a shorter toe. The sole is more concave though he still needs to lose sole out by the toe.

Too high of a heel, long toe and a lot of nail hole cracks. If you look at the toe itself you can see a distinct ridge just above the lost area from the nail hole that needs to grow down and come off. 

The hoof keeps breaking as the old nail holes grow down and I am hoping once that all goes away the wall will be stronger. He has almost no wall to walk on and while the angle of the hoof will take a year to grow fully out, he should get a stronger support base a lot quicker.

There is some concavity going on in the front right foot. He still has sole touching at the toe but it is getting smaller. You can see the formation of bars at the heel that need to grow forward and thicken but at least it is a start. 

He is more sound on the front right and I expect that hoof to make changes quicker than the left which started out from a worse position. The heel on the left is extremely low and lacks support. The sole remains flat and has a lot of changes to make.

A lower heel and much longer toe. I’d like to see the new hoof grow in more upright. 

He is doing a lot better on the front left but his hoof print shows a lot of sole contact happening. I expect him to rock back on the heel as that lessens.

Still pretty flat. You can see that on the entire right hand side he is weight bearing on the sole itself. He has a baby bar beginning on the right, but not on the left as of yet and his frog remains pretty narrow. 

It is nice to have some baseline pictures to use as this process slowly moves forward. He gets a lot of motion in the pasture, has the paved driveway to walk down twice a day, is getting Farrier’s Barrier applied regularly and is on a hoof supplement daily as well. Plus he gets his high end complete feed, so nutritionally and physically he should be set up for success.

I began writing this a week ago and as of now he is walking at a normal tempo down the paved drive instead of slowly crawling and asking to go in the grass. That’s a huge win in terms of comfort. I also noticed that he has changed from toe touch to flat foot touch which while still not the holy grail of heel touch is a step in the right direction. I expect his soundness to be complete once he begins rocking back and landing in the heel. That will also jump start the changes he needs to make.

Time is my friend here and I’m in no rush to go beyond the basics of riding at the moment, so hopefully things move along well enough before the ground gets mushy in the fall rainy season.