Other What should I do about a clubbed foot?

My horse has a clubbed foot and my farrier is the type to do what you ask him to do, but not really give you advice. I know I want to get shoes on my horse, at least. I am just not sure if I should put pads on him as well. Here are some pictures of his feet. They are only of his front feet because his back feet are fine. The pictures are recent and it was about 9 weeks since his last trim and the farrier is coming out again in a couple of days. Please help.

Back of feet

Left foot

Right foot

Front view

Teddy, obviously your pictures didn't make it. Seeing them would get you better advice. Try again. The one piece of advice I would offer is don't try to fix a club foot. I have several on my books that are in their mid to late 20's, always club footed, and to my knowledge have never taken a lame step because of it - except the one the owner insisted I try to fix early in my career. On him, we had to wedge him back up to duplicate his original angle to get him comfortable again.

Regards

Does this help?

http://s258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/mytigger13/Club foot/

First, if the horse ain't broke, don't try to fix him.

Both feet look a little broken forward. You could put a 1/2 inch board under the toe of the club foot, and lift the other foot off the ground for about 5 - 10 minutes, and then see how the horse walks off, as an experiment, to maybe see what the consequences of taking the heel down would be. You could X-ray the foot, as an aid to help your farrier see what's going on with P3, and if adjustments should be made. I would hesitate to second guess your farrier, from a picture.

I hope someone else can weigh in on this. It could generate some interesting discussion.

Regards

When he is trimmed to have matching angles he will go to the right and take the right lead a lot better than if he is not trimmed. I think I will look into getting an X-ray done to see if that will help.

If you can trim his feet to match and he stays sound, that's good. Almost all then club feet I trim, I take heel and leave the toe alone. The feet are closer to a match after the trim, but when I go back, they are back where we started. The caution is to not take too much heel.

Regards

Use an egg/straight bar shoe on some club footed horses if soundness is an issue.

Rick, why do you leave toe? How much toe? What does it do?

with club feet it is a conformation of limb length disparity. Read up on Dr. Esco Buff, Phd. book on it; it will explain a lot.

What does a egg/straight bar shoe do compared to a regular shoe?

i wondered that , and whats this about lld very few club feet have this problem . the one that has not been asked or mentioned is what age is the beast

T

There is very little excess toe to take, compared to the heels. That's the way clubs grow and wear. How much toe depends on the horse.

Regards

The little beast is 2 years old.

I'm not so sure that every club foot(or its iterations) has LLD. What I see is LLA(limb length asymmetry) which is to say that until actual bone length measurments are done of these limbs and compared to their contralateral mate, an assumption of lld remains only a hypothesis as opposed to LLA which is [ my hypothesis] the result of factors that influence how the horse stands, ie: posture, conformation, injury, etc. If Esco's hypothesis were true, then why, even when we compensate through the addition of shims, etc, and here I'm referring to the front end,does the disparity, as reflected both at the shoulders and the hoof, continue? And, why, when addressing the problem in the hind end, do we often find that after a period of time, shimming, etc is no longer necessary because the lld is no longer present?

too technical for me , i know if you measure the limbs from a set point there is rarely any difference

Chris, what points would you measure from. The distal ends of the joints to the CB? Thanks.

Regards

give me a day to mull it over ,i thing mr buffs book is full of