missyclare
Posted : 6/19/2011 4:34:27 PM
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No, unfortuneately not a healthy foot. This horse arrived and the xrays were taken 5 days later. He'd been up on heel wedges which jammed his heels up to his elbows. I not only had to grow a heel down, but get them back down first. On top of that, his insides were so tall, that it forced him to land on the outside of his foot, which isn't meant for that. The heel smashed across the hoof and his heel bulbs were literally twisted together. The wedges had come off and it was an instant neg. palmer angle.
If you put your hand out flat, palm down, then tip you hand upward, then lift your thumb side higher than your baby finger side, then go pidgeon-toed (because a high inside does this too) That's the way he was walking...all four feet. Body score of 3 from extreme pain. Barely made it from trailer to barn.
I couldn't stand his discomfort. Grumpy, not eating, not drinking, string halt, huge hunter's bump, ulcers. I started trimming right away and when the xrays were done 5 days later, I found that I had gotten P3 (last bone in the hoof) ground parallel without xrays. It was the one bright moment in months following painful rehab and recovery.....4 abscesses, 1 a major corium blow, teeth filed, then power filed again, full ulcer treatment, daily soaking, padding/booting and walking. The only thing that the vet said when he took his xrays was to make him as comfortable as I could for the rest of his days.
The red line on his coronary band is the existing run of it. The green lines are a perfect hoof. The yellow line going down the center is the horse's descending weight and where the back of the heels should land. See the length and shape of his existing heel? Its short, undefined and sunken under his hoof because it got smashed in that direction. Feel the sag in the red coronary band, from landing on the outside all the time. Note how the red band line goes up at the heel...still jammed up from those wedges despite having a short heel.
You can see that P3 is ground parallel at the bottom, but not a tight connection on the front wall. Those two lines should be parallel as well. A neg. palmer angle is when P3's nose gets jammed up higher than the back. The shallow angle on P3's nose hints at it. Now look at the run of all 3 bones (P1,P2,P3) Should be in a straight line, but not....tipping upwards. (like he was wearing high heels backwards) Now the green front line shows a perfect hoof outline, which shows both bone and wall have some work to do. Note also that the green hoof line is straight from ground to fetlock.
Barefoot trimming is about trimming the hoof with a goal of getting the capsule to fit the bone like a tight glove with all torque removed. This guy had saved the nose of P3, because it was raised up in the hoof and didn't get beat up with the ground, but the grinding to the bones above it looked like mini explosions had happened with shrapnel all over the place.
He had heel first landing when he left, no ulcers, a good bite, a couple of hundred pounds of weight gain, changed color and his hoof size had gone from barely fitting into a size 2, to easily fitting into a 0. Was well on the road to recovery. Just about wrung the life outta me.
Hope this helps to explain what you're seeing.
Now, to see if the pic I attached is going to work!