I seem to have difficulty finding quality farriers in my area (southern ontario) and have gotten to a very frustrating point. Everyone seems to be so gung-ho about the long toe, low heel way and I do not like it - neither does my horse. I took some photos of his last reset job and have been told by a couple people it's not good. I have tried contacting my farrier again and he's now suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. Last message I received from him was 12 days ago and he isn't answering his phone. My horse is going onto week 3 of a 5 week cycle so I'm getting nervous as well as predicting a change in farriers. Some background - I have an 8 year old TB x drafty pony who is a competition horse, ridden extensively 4-6x a week and does both dressage and jumpers, as well as heavy trail riding. Anytime he's been barefoot I deal with nasty quarter cracks and nearly crippled on gravel/stone so a year ago I bit the bullet and shod him on all 4's. I have never had a more comfortable horse who moves 10x better and we could intensify his training. I have gone through some pretty poor farriers during this time, before finding the current one who was success on pulling the toe back. My horse is now moving out better and landing heel first. But now I worry about that heel as it's on a more extreme angle. I haven't been able to discuss it further with my farrier because, as I said, he's suddenly vanished and I'm become so frustrated I am forced to continue my search. I am in the Hamilton/Binbrook area if anyone has some suggestions. Being my competition mount, I want/need him in shoes to keep a happy and sound horse. I have tried the barefoot way many times with no success and I honestly just want to stick with shoes. Here's some before pictures before current farrier And of his last reset. I apologize I don't have any shots but these! He's not wearing wedges - just snow pads with corks on the heel due to snowy/icy turnout and the amount of trails/road hacking we do. Day 1 Day 7 Day 14 I've been asked about the dark ring on his foot. My best bet is it is from when he colicked in September. Please, all opinions are welcome about his feet angles and I would love suggestions for a farrier!
The LT/LH seems to be commonly misunderstood. Directly below the center of the coffin bone is the center of pressure. If you were to put a stick under that point the foot would rock forward and backwards. From that point you can start to understand toe lengths. Horses need a certain amount of sole depth to remain sound. Let's say a horse needs 1" sole depth. On a club foot if you draw a line (1" below) from the center of pressure to the end of the toe it will be shorter than if you did the same measurement on LT/LH. As the angle of the foot decreases the toe naturally becomes longer. For some unknown reason many vets, farriers, trainers, horse owners..... hate to acknowledge this little law of physics. So then you get people trimming the toe short, filing the wall away, stacking heels, setting shoes back excessively to get the appearance of having a more upright horse. Now in your case, you went through farriers giving you a LT/LH. Now you have a farrier willing to stack the heel and shorten the toe. When you stack the heel it's fairly easy to get them to land heel first. I prefer to trim excess length which includes heel if it's excess. Then modify a shoe to fit the horses conformation.
+1 for eric's thoughts. The answer for balance lies between the two extremes of LT/LH (in reality most of these heels are run forward and need to be trimmed to straight horn) and short toe/stacked heel.
Yes, and I much prefer a healthy sound horse that enjoys moving out and landing heel-first with a shortened toe, then incredibly long toes (like in first 2 photos) where he trips more easily and stabs his toe down. I see far too many horses with flipper feet and no heel, and farriers saying it's the correct way to do it for hunters/jumpers - when you can see the difference in the ring. I think his toe length is fine, but his heel angle is much too sharp but I have no idea how to correct it, and none of my farriers seem to be touching upon that either.
You should reread the last sentence of my post - That doesn't mean trim all the heel and leave all the toe. And it doesn't mean stack as much heel as possible so the owner thinks the short toe is what's causing her horse to land heel first.
The photo at the top looks like the horse was due to be done first of all, then it is compared to a photo just after being done ???haha typical. I am tired of the dates being off in comparrisons, and really I would never judge anyones work until I worked on the horse myself. I do not think this "fever ring" is due to anything other than the horses health or diet. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. I think the lower picture looks like the foot is plenty gathered up however there are a lack of angles.
did you ever think that a wedge pad does the hoof the justice of simply covering it up as an aid in protection, then wow all of a sudden, despite the overloading of the heels the horse goes sound and more confidently not minding the ground so much? I have a wedge pad stuffed between my door jam and baby gate to keep it nice and ... balanced?
