Bare Remedy Equine Podiatry

18/09/2024

Can OTTBs go barefoot? Of course they can! A few months progress for these feet. The front feet had thrown their own shoes by my first visit, the hinds I removed. She was understandably very sore (had an abscess from the move to the current owner), so was in boots 24/7 as living on a concrete yard. The stimulation has done its job and even trotted over gravel coming down to my trim this week.

12/09/2024

These front feet belong to a lovely horse diagnosed with Navicular and DDFT changes. He had his shoes off a month or so before my first visit in May (top pics pre trim).

He has improved significantly, not only in foot function but comfort. His palmar soft tissues, his digital cushion, have grown and filled the back of the foot, reducing concussion forces into the navicular region, allowing healing.
He is also now walking comfortably on gravel and trotting on concrete without resistance. He does still get lame moments on his more severe right fore, but these do seem to be reducing.

The owner has been diligent with in-hand walking, now moving towards ridden, booting for turnout in 3° wedge pads which is now weaning off and helping him to lose the weight he gained in previous box rest.

Will be great to see what another 6 months brings so we'll have a whole growth cycle of foot

11/09/2024

Glow up for these beautifully healthy hooves today. This guy is a Shire cross

03/08/2024

Lovely hard working pony hoof 🤩

24/07/2024

Some progress on these little hooves since April, nicked out the last tiny slither of wall separation that had apparently been there for around four years. A combo of trimming, exercise and thrush treatment.

Still progress to be made on getting the foot more under the leg and build some more palmar structure (but is harder in these tiny feet) but good so far!

09/06/2024

Just over a year later and I'm pleased with the progress of these tricky feet. The client has done a great job helping her horse lose weight, in hand walking and now ridden work. He's always been sensitive on his soles, often slightly retracted, but with boots and persistence he's doing much better.

What I'm looking at-
-Straightened hairline meaning improved palmer foot function and structure
-Foot more under the bony column
-Not having to trim so much toe and leave as big pillars at 10+2

There are a couple of other improvements, can you spot them?

29/05/2024

Now is the time to be particularly careful about watching for inflammation in your horses. If it looks like there isn't that much grass out in your fields it's because it's in your horses bellies.
My own horses are on a minimal grass track which looks practically bare and yet they are choosing to graze over free access hay and straw.
Inflammation doesn't only mean laminitis it can mean colic and abscesses. No horse is immune to inflammation. If your horse is showing footiness, reluctance to turn, heat at the coronet or raised pulses, lethargy etc then put on laminitis protocols straight away

27/05/2024

When a foot is interesting, take a picture of it!

22/04/2024

Positive changes for this front foot, came out of shoes two years ago now

31/03/2024

14/02/2024

All right, y’all, I’m going to vent a bit.

I’ve seen plenty of posts on social media of lame horses and owners asking for help with rehab. Unfortunately, hoof issues are a bit of a pandemic, but fortunately - through attention and research- we are learning so much more about the foot and ways to keep it healthy and give it a fighting chance at soundness.

So this morning, when I scrolled across some radiographs of a laminitic horse- where the before and after didn’t seem much better to me- I stopped to read the post.

The horse had been sore for quite some time and nothing seemed to help, so they tried bigger and bigger interventions to the feet, until finally they found an extensive shoeing package that allowed the horse to amble around a bit more comfortably.

My first thought was- wow, that seems really extreme, but I’m glad they found something to make the horse a bit more comfy.

My second thought was- I wonder why this horse needed such extreme measures to improve.

That question was answered pretty quickly when I saw an image of said horse out in a large green pasture of fresh grass.

Up to 90% of laminitis is endocrinopathic. Meaning up to 90% of laminitic cases should not be on grass. Meaning up to 90% of laminitic horses will continue to founder and their laminae will continue to fail until their diet and metabolic issues are addressed.

And we can do all we want to their feet- and some things may help, and some won’t, and some may work for a time until the horse can’t compensate anymore- but ultimately NOTHING will stop the laminae breakdown until the root cause is addressed.

I see so many turn to bigger and bigger interventions, more drastic approaches, when the root cause isn’t even addressed. And don’t get me started on the fact that half of these posts I see are trying to sell a product for these horses.. without even addressing the cause of the issue. Let’s sell a bandaid to people desperately trying to save their horse.

I’m trying not to become too preachy over here, but to be honest just sitting here typing this I’m getting a bit worked up.

Because when we focus on the feet in isolation, we are missing the forest for the trees.

Hooves are attached to an animal and the hoof reveals the health of that animal -in laminitis cases especially.

Doing things to the feet may (at least temporarily) help with comfort, but it will not stop the internal damage until we remove the trigger for the laminitis.

And maybe, if we got to the trigger first and removed it right away, we wouldn’t even need those interventions at all.

Now I’m not naive to believe that every single laminitis case is this straightforward. In fact, I absolutely know they aren’t. There are some where a toxin leads to SIRS laminitis and those feet almost melt apart. Supporting limb laminitis can feel like a car crash you don’t know how to stop. And some metabolic cases can be so tightly managed and still have refractory high insulin.. or we increase pergolide just a few weeks too late for the seasonal rise and those horses just crash and then we are chasing ACTH levels.

There are some who need every single tool in the toolbox and some who we just can’t make comfortable.

But at the very least, we need to start with the basics. ECIR emergency diet. Looking for the root cause. Removing as many triggers as we can think of. AND work on getting the horse comfortable.

But don’t just look at the feet and forget the horse and their living situation.

/rant. (And apologies for the drama).

11/01/2024

White feet are not weaker, but they do tell you a lot more. The white horn allows serum leakage and bruising to be visible in the outer wall. Any wall defects you see like this have grown down from the horns origin at the coronet band. People often don't notice bruises until they are further down and trimming reveals them, and then think they are new, when they are then often nearly a year old at that point.
This shows three different stages of damage to the coronet. The first is blood serum leakage from inflammation due to low grade Laminitis. The second and third are two hind feet on the same horse, showing heavy lateral loading, over pressurising the coronet band.
I have written points I'm thinking about when I see these. Remember, it's likely still there in the dark pigmented feet, you just can't see it

10/01/2024

04/01/2024

Some progress left to right on a hind foot on an 18hh Knabstrupper, he's a bit stiff but some bodywork really helped and seeing improvement in heel and flare angles 🥰

11/12/2023

Lovely progress from shoe removal 4 weeks ago to today. Lots of changes to make, mostly in angles to help hind end comfort

08/12/2023

My work mobile unfortunately went for a swim, if you need me over the weekend I'm contactable via email or FB

26/11/2023

'There's a lot of noise about laminitis on facebook at the moment. If you want to learn about laminitis and get a really useful Christmas present at the same time, you could do worse than buy this book from colleague and mentor Dr Richard Vialls.'

Laminitis, a horse-centred approach describes in depth the current mainstream thinking on laminitis and suggests ways of reframing our understanding of this challenging condition. New thinking based on putting the horse at the centre of the problem is presented, allowing a better understanding of...