Got called out to a horse with issues in the left front. I found sheared heels. Almost immediately after setting the hoof down on the floor with a Colleoni web shoe on it fell about 1 cm.
It appears to be a typical presentation of a conformation issue with P2 offset abaxially where it inserts into the DIJ. IMEs this will usually result in a sheared heel if one isn't paying attention to the conformation when trimming.
I believe Tom hit it on the head. She had taken the horse to the vet and there was some ligament damage between P1,P2. I didn't have a chance to talk to the vet as he was located in Germany. She told me since buying the horse, the horn capsule has moved to the lateral side with the medial side getting more steep. When I arrived, there was a normal, alum shoe on the horse. I told her I needed to straighten the hoof out, but she wouldn't let me. I took pics (CYA), the top on and had her send to her vet. He contacted me two days later and told me I was right and my correction method was spot on. So she paid me again to return and set the colleoni shoe. I set the shoe, with about a 1cm gap at the heal between the shoe and hoof. Before setting the hoof down I showed her the gap. She asked me how long it would take to straighten out. My reply was "about 5 minutes!" She looked at me puzzled and replied that I didn't understand her question. I replied back she didn't understand my answer. With that I sat the hoof down. After setting down I sent to the right side of the horse, looked down and there was about a 1mm gap at the heel. She looked so surprised at me. I had only secured the lateral side of the shoe and one toe nail on the medial side, so I proceeded to set the right shoe so the left hoof would relax more. By the time I was done, the left side had relaxed. It was a jumper, so I told her not to jump the horse for a few days, but to exercise him. She said she'd put him on the walker, I said NO! I told her a walker would take the horse in one direction the whole time, which wasn't good. Hopefully she took my advice. She told me when she got the horse it had eggbar shoes on but her former farrier took them off. I told her as Tom stated, there was a conformation problem and the horse would probably need at least a bar shoe the rest of his life to control the hoof.
I think Dr. O'Grady did a study on a group of horses where he deliberately tried to create sheared heels by trimming horses out of M/L balance. To my recollection his findings were that he was unable to create the condition in horses with "normal" conformation. Conversely he associates spontaneous quarter cracks with sheared heels due to unequal loading from conformation faults. http://www.equipodiatry.com/article_sh_qc.htm
Brian, there are a lot of bad conformation horses over here as well. A few years ago everyone was breeding because they thought they could make money. They gave no thought to feet and legs. Now there are a lot of "so, so" horses. And you know how sometimes things will skip a generation or so, but pop up later. Or if bred to one who will bring out the problems. If it were up to me, 90% of all the stallions here would be cut and half the mare listed so they couldn't be bred! Then maybe the problems wouldn't be so bad after a few years.
