In effort not to derail the Duckett's Dot thread below, I am putting this up. For the first five years of my career I thought I knew exactly what balance was and exactly how to attain it. For the past ten years, not only do I realize that it is highly subjective and continuously changing, I have very few answers but a multitude of questions. There are likely as many hypothesis out there about what balance is as there are farriers. This thread is going to be wide open to any aspect of 'balance.' Hopefully it will get those who 'know it' to question what they know, help the newer farriers to realize what can and can't be known, and keep the rest of us focused on the journey instead of a destination. Here is a history of the horse in the radiograph below: The horse was being shod by one of our locally 'esteemed' farriers. When I got the call, the horse had blown a quarter crack and was lame. There were no flares on the feet. Heel heights were even. No bruising or any other abnormality in this foot. Shoe fit the foot and was secure. I told the owner I would be happy to shoe the horse, but seeing nothing obviously wrong with the foot, she should get a set of radiographs...which she did, the next week and this one below is one of them. Prior to this radiograph, I removed a little excess length, fit a new set of shoes (told her that we would likely be doing a bar shoe after radiographs), and floated the heel under the crack. In your terms of balance, what do you see, what would you do, and most importantly, why?
Its difficult with this x-ray, the view is oblique to the capsule but not to the bone column, the capsule has rotated around P3. IMO capsule has deformed in acordance with the force on it. Work out what tht is and reduce it. If I cant trim it then I draw the shoe down, spiral it at the toe. If you look at this horse it will prob open the elbow as the mass passes over the mid stance phase. Interestingly if you x-ray the bone column obliquely you can sometimes see the proximal phalanx medially or laterally longer, so balance of the capsule or more importantly deformation of the capsule will be dependent on how the horse copes with that. here is a similar image with the bone column straight on, the proximal phalanx is lateraly longer, interestingly this blew a quater crack.
If we could shoe ever horse from x-rays we would put vets and chiro's out of work. But until we can carry a machine around we must do and deal with what we are presented with. I find keeping to basics is a good start..
David is the same thing going on with this one? He is toed out and was interfering with shoes on. Lowered the outside because when holding the hoof it appeared longer. Requested this view to see what lowering the outside was doing, and P3 is level but you can see the uneven joint spacing. Also the capsule appears shifted over on both views.
Kim there are so many factors, it looks long on one side, I was present at luceys x-ray so we took different views to make sure we had what we wanted. For those that think the thread has been derailed I ask what do the readers think the capsule on this leg looks like when the foal was matured, and remember this is an extreme so the same forces to a lesser extent can have smaller defects in the capsule, but defects that trimming wont correct, just facilitate. Gary the beauty of x-rays is we can guess but with a decent x-ray we know.
John, To my eye the heels do not appear to be quite equal in height and the walls do not appear to be growing down at the same angle. Since the horse blew a quarter crack, that to me indicates he is coming to the ground unevenly and with enough force to disrupt the horn tubule interface and attachment to each other. Much like you, I would have floated the wall distal to the crack and all the way back to and including the heel. I would have used a bar shoe from the git go and would have incorporated some form of supplemental frog support to help manage the load bearing responsibilities/distribution I was removing from the cracked side. I'd also clean(dremel) the crack and once I was sure it had settled down, would consider patching/lacing it depending on other factors. To that end, I am not a fan of horizontal lacing over the crack, rather, I prefer diagonal lacing because IME, that does a better job of stabilizing the wall against sheer forces. Alternatively, I would consider a "Z" bar shoe.
This horse was standing straight, both feet on blocks, and the rad was shot straight on. Opposite leg has the same lateral deviation at the distal end of P1, P2 on both are shaped like parallelograms, and P3 on both are closer to the ground on the medial side when joint spaces are even. I wonder if this horse had some serious 'corrective' work done on it just after the physis plate on P1 stopped...will never know. Very similar. Thanks for posting. Yours appears to have compensatory remodeling on the distal border. Which side did yours blow the crack? Mine was on the lateral heel. I think both of these are excellent examples of how a singular method of trimming/shoeing are completely inadequate. I have heard nationally known clinicians say that the distal border of P3 needs to always be parallel with the ground. There is also a widely known vet who has a published paper which says that heels must always be trimmed to be even in length. Some say that trimming to the sole plane is a must. It would appear to me that all of these methods would fail both horses in the rads we have posted. Granted, these are a little on the extreme but horses are not neatly separated into two groups, one being 'normal' and the other being 'grossly deformed.' They all fall somewhere in a range between the two.
Yep lateral heel to. I did all the usual fix methods and it united twice, only to split again. the crack extended through the bar, I think that makes them very difficult to mend and stay mended.
You are correct. This rad was taken the week after I put the first shoes on the horse. I trimmed the lateral side down a bit also...in addition to floating the lateral heel. Prior to my trimming away from the crack, it was pretty darn even. I almost went with a different shoe package on this one from the get go, but from what I was looking at, I thought the previous farrier did a pretty good job (and told the owner so) and thus didn't understand why he would have all of a sudden blown the crack. With no real idea what was going on inside, I wasn't real sure I wanted to make a moderately drastic change before we had a more definitive answer. In hindsight, I would probably have gone ahead with the bar shoe and possibly a wedge rotated on the shoe...maybe...
I think both of these are excellent examples of how a singular method of trimming/shoeing are completely inadequate. I have heard nationally known clinicians say that the distal border of P3 needs to always be parallel with the ground. There is also a widely known vet who has a published paper which says that heels must always be trimmed to be even in length. Some say that trimming to the sole plane is a must. It would appear to me that all of these methods would fail both horses in the rads we have posted. Granted, these are a little on the extreme but horses are not neatly separated into two groups, one being 'normal' and the other being 'grossly deformed.' They all fall somewhere in a range between the two.[/quote] Makes it hard to sell a concept if ya cant write it down as bein a definitive way!
Makes it hard to sell a concept if ya cant write it down as bein a definitive way![/quote] That is why you need to be horseman first and farrier second....
John, was this horse tranqued. for the x-rays? I've heard some interesting stuff about that recently. Would like to see pictures of that foot from the outside looking at the foot from behind while it is loaded. Thanks for starting this thread. Good food for thought.
Horse was VERY sedated...would bite, strike, flip over backward, etc...even at the vet. This one had actually already broken another vets leg at the university...which is also why after 2 shoeings, I referred the whole barn to someone else. Anyway, do tell about the sedation correlations.
in pain..........???? before domosadan; in the 1990's we would have the vet do a cocktail of ace, rompum, torbogesic, with a 1o cc banamine, and 20 cc bute, I think correct for horses that were in so much pain. torbo is a pain reliever/TQ loved it for shoeing.
That is why you need to be horseman first and farrier second....[/quote] Agrreed, most seem more interested in selling one concept as bein the ONLY way though, its easier to convince people they're ready to shoe/trim a horse after one or a couple of weekend courses
Question about the wear under the clip on left side of photo? Is that source material for the clip pulled or did you roll the edge, or is it the way the horses wears the shoe?? Thanks good thread !!
From a conversation with Martin Kenny back in the spring. Seems that in the course of developing his patented a platform for radiography of horse's feet, he and Dr. Myers noticed differences in the same feet (sedated vs. not) in images taken just minutes apart. So they started collecting comparison data. Evidently the kind of changes (direction and distance) that happen are unpredictable - each horse/foot/bone alignment reacts differently under sedation.
Only pain I knew about was coming from the crack. I have been in a few train wrecks with horses sedated with Ace and Ace cocktails. Don't know what all was in there with it, and maybe it wasn't enough of whatever worked for you, but I hope Ace just fades away like the bad memories it made. Come to think of it, I have't seen Ace used in a few years. It is 'grinder wear.' I usually safe all the medial branches. I wonder if this is because of loss of or diminished active control over the flexor/extensor systems which could result in instability in the associated joints? Interesting regardless.
Those were my thoughts as well. I would never have thought about this, but I wasn't "surprised with disbelief" to hear it either. I made for an interesting topic of conversation with my chiropractor last visit.
