29/01/2021
Is it the farriers fault? *edit*
Firstly let’s understand that farriers are facilitating a human need for their horses to be shod.
Shoeing has consequences, as does everything else we do to the domestic horse.
The hoof is a product of its environment and the forces it is subject too arising from the work we do with the horse, its own conformation, composition and how that is managed with farriery intervention.
How much the hoof deforms due to these influences depends on the inherent strength of its micro conformation. The make up and architecture of its structures.
Many things affect this, things that are down to the management of the horse. You as owners. It’s diet, it’s general hoof health (thrush), shoeing cycles dictated by finance, it’s environment.
For instance we know that hydration of the hoof drastically affects both its hardness and flexibility, a water saturated hoofs strength is reduced by as much as 90%!
So, a farriers job is to recognise and mitigate negative influences as best they can. Many feet can not cope with the peripheral loading of traditional shoeing and collapse as a result. This happens even despite the best efforts of a highly skilled farrier if the feet, the environment and management dictate.
Of course there are less skilled individuals but again we must appreciate that the farrier is dealing with a product of its environment, yes they have a part to play in creating optimum balance and providing support to the feet that they recognise need it, unfortunately many don’t recognise it. But also many do and remain restricted by owners budget or reluctance to change.
Here is the type of statement I see regularly on my posts..
“actually I think those heels are very long but crushed and under run and contracted. Sadly So many Shoer’s in this area do this type of shoeing way too often. “ - Anon
Hopefully you can see the oxymoron in that sentence. Besides, how do you know whose or what fault it was?
The hoof suffers from Creep, a slow migration in response to a constant load, as well as failing due to its structures being pushed beyond their elastic limit dynamically.
These things are a result of forces on the foot, yes the farrier has to manage them, and poor farriery will exacerbate them. But again I’ll state, even the best farriers are just managing what already exists.
If they aren’t given the go ahead to shoe the horse as needed to try and mitigate those influences, because of the owners financial position or simply not listening to advice then the continued poor hoof morphology is not their fault! It’s not their fault that the horse has weaker feet that need extra support, it’s not their fault that the environment you keep the horse in is creating morphological issues.
If they have done their job in communicating that there is an issue, then let them do their jobs in addressing it.
If they aren’t recognising there is an issue, or denying it once you have raised the question. Just carrying on and stating “that’s just the horses conformation.” Then thats a different story.
