Whispering Horse

16/11/2023

Är du en av dem jag har äran att samarbeta med?
Nu finns det en grupp på Facebook där ni är välkomna in i värmen!
Viktig information, artiklar, evenemang, trix och fix samt uppbyggande kommer delas i gruppen 😃
Sök på Whispering Horse - Hov och uppbyggande övningar

27/10/2023

In och lyssna 😃

Är du intresserad eller nyfiken på ämnet barfotahoven? I detta avsnitt nr 118 är jag väldigt glad och stolt över att få presentera Johanna Holmberg SM vinnaren i barfotaverkning år 2023. Johanna har en otrolig kompetens och brinner för hovar och ser till hela hästen. Som ...

04/10/2023

En hälsning till mina nyaste följare! Kul att ha er med! ❣️

Emma Nordgren, Kirsi Turunen Ourang, Lena Liljedahl, Ninni Alstéus, Evelina Lina Johansson, Zuzanna Konopacka, Hedvig Ahlsten, Nettan Lindkvist

03/10/2023

När en hov får utvecklas rätt mot balans ❣️
Visste du att hålrum försvinner när hoven belastas i balans?

03/10/2023

En stor häst kram är aldrig fel ❣️

07/09/2023

Jag vill tacka er alla som skrivit, ringt, skickat sms, skrivit på alla tänkbara sociala kanaler 😃
Ni är så många som uppmärksammat och gratulerat mig till vinsten i barfota verkning ❣️
Direkt efter helgen kastades jag in i vardagen med alla hästar och deras hovar, vilket är härligt men jag har inte haft tiden att återkoppla till er, det känns så där!
Så jag vill rikta ett stort enormt tack till er alla ❤️🥇💯

06/09/2023

Här har ni en häst som drabbades av metaboliska ringar, samma linje på samma ställe på alla fyra hovarna! Dök upp från ingenstans, de vi kunde enas om var ett kraftfoder som lagts till.

Så igen 🙌🏼✌🏼Metaboliska ringar är alltid resultatet av förändringar som påverkar ämnesomsättningen hos hästen. Drabbas din häst av störning som belastar hästens ämnesomsättningen syns det på hovens vägg. När hästen drabbas av en störning av detta slag får det en systemisk effekt, vilket innebär att de skulle synas i alla FYRA hovarna ✌🏼

29/08/2023

Vardagen ändå 😃❣️

21/07/2023

Ännu en islandshäst som slipper ”pepsi burken”
Tror du (före) hoven underlättades från artrosen?
Vi strävar efter den perfekta markkontakten 💯
Hoven (efter) ömsar stråle och sula på löpande band, markkontakt med stimulering ger hoven möjlighet att fungera ⭐️
Kommer aldrig sluta förespråka hästen rätt till en bra hov! Denna häst har boots vid behov 💪🏼
Men jag kan inte undvika att ställa mig frågan, vilken hov är det som behöver skyddas?
I min tanke; hoven med urdåliga vinklar !

22/06/2023

Ni som samarbetar med mig kring era hästars hovar eller i träning ☀️

Skulle uppskatta något enormt om ni ville lämna en recension 🙂
Tack på förhand! ☀️

22/06/2023

14/06/2023

Kan man få en finare beskrivning ❤️ ser enormt mycket fram emot föreläsningen på Pärlbygård 💯

Passa på och boka dig en kursplats för Johanna Holmberg som kommer föreläsa om hovens anatomi och vinklarnas betydelse hos oss nu på söndag 18 juni.

Hur vi kan förebygga/ läka skador och sjukdomstillstånd.
Möjlighet att rådfråga / visa bilder.

Johanna har räddat livet på vår ponny Juggler. Efter upprepade fånganfall i livet.
Bara på några veckor " verkat" honom frisk. Många bekymmer som ömhet att gå på hårt underlag, lätt att bli överviktig. Allt detta har också blivit betydligt bättre efter att Johanna ändrat vinklarna i hans hovar. Flödet i kroppen har förbättrats, vilket har lett till bättre rörlighet och en gladare ponny! Vilket vi är oerhört tacksamma över.😇

Vi vill sträva efter att bygga starka och friska hovar för våra travhästar. Att kunna, ibland, tävla barfota utan att riskera ömhet eller skador.

Jag kan lova att det kommer bli en mycket intressant och lärorik dag 😊🌞.

24/05/2023

Sussis Majblomma är fantastisk att arbeta med! ☀️ har du provat?

22/05/2023

Jag sitter här med en enorm känsla av glädje, jag har världens bästa arbete 😍🐴

21/05/2023

Ser så fram emot detta tillfälle ⭐️ kom och träffa mig för en spännande föreläsning!

Söndagen den 18 juni kommer Johanna Holmberg - Whispering Horse till oss för att ge en föreläsning kring hästens hovar, vinklar, centrering för en hållbar och frisk häst.

Johanna är utbildad Hovforms specialist, vidareutbildad på anatomisk verkning, vinklar och belastning. Johanna jobbar merparten med extrema hovproblemsfall. Se inbjudan nedan. Hjärtligt välkomna 🍀🍃🎋

27/03/2023

En resa som ligger mig varmt om ❤️:at.
Hur vinklar och hovens belastning kan förändras över tid med balanserad verkning i fokus! Vill du veta mera eller känner en nyfikenhet?
Såklart du gör! 😊
Hör av dig med frågor och funderingar!

25/03/2023

Did you know that Scoot Boots are legal for use in FEI showjumping events?

You can find the updated FEI guidelines here:

https://inside.fei.org/fei/disc/jumping/rules

In this photo, we have South African showjumper and long time Scooter Amelia Campbell-Horne and her Holsteiner mare Cordia wearing Scoots during an event ❤️

25/03/2023

Första mötet med denna underbara häst, innebar en hel godis burk och ett snabbt lyft på en fram hov. Sen var besöket över ❤️
KOLLA visst är hon duktig och helt fantastisk! 💯

07/02/2023

Du kan boka mig för lektion ⭐️ Jag har fått frågan av befintliga kunder, kan du träna min häst via töm i det uppbyggande systemet 😃
Självklart, uppbyggande träning är ett självklart system för mig att arbeta i för att uppnå en hållbar häst!
En häst som blir balanserad och inte utsätts för överkrav 💪🏼 vi ska bygga upp våra hästar med hjälp av systemet.

13/12/2022

Har jag världens bästa dagar ⭐️ Ja!

13/12/2022

11/11/2022

Fantastiskt bra föreläsning igår med Aksel Vibe ⭐️
Aksel är en av hovslagarna som arbetet i projektet med Peders hästar.
Något som gjorde mig glad och ännu mera entusiastisk var att han tydligt uttryckte att en ”korrekt verkning oavsett barfota eller skor är det viktigaste av allt” 💯
Vi talade också en del om denna tråkiga uppdelning som finns mellan hovslagare och barfotaverkare, det är galet.
Så oavsett vem det är man träffar i stallgången var trevlig 😌
Kan inte kollegan du har framför dig samarbeta med dig kring samma häst, gå därifrån.
Ny energi ⭐️ tack SANHCP

08/11/2022

Learning about hoof negative palmar angles (NPAs), heel height and volar balance.

WARNING: This post is an extremely, EXTREMELY long post. You need to understand it implicitly before making your comments. If you just want to shout at us then you will look silly if you haven’t read this entire thing from top to bottom - you may even have to read it twice - but read it you must in order to make any valuable comments.

Yesterday, HM was publicly ‘outed’ on an Australian farrier’s page as causing harm because we, according to him (and subsequently his patreon followers) are taking heels down too far when we trim, well beyond natural parameters, and so we must be causing all horses everywhere with our trims to be suffering from negative palmar angles (NPAs) - and a host of other problems, including dreadful behavioural issues.

This assessment of his was made after observing a 2D volar image of a freshly trimmed cadaver hoof.

Well as 1000s of horses are testament to our services, we make horses better, not worse - depending on whether the owner is actually going to take on board their part to play in the soundness of their horse and change the diet and management too. The health of any horse is never just down to HM, it is always down to the owner too.

We digress…

So said farrier then proceeded to show a tiny snapshot of this cadaver hoof trimmed by one of our students as the basis of his assumption. His assumption that we are harming horses by trimming to the horse’s natural hard sole plane. This snapshot was taken from a post on our page. He then used images of a hoof not trimmed by HM (obviously as we have no trimmers in Australia - yet), and made it appear that he was constantly correcting trims like ours, and saving horses everywhere from the damage that trimmers ‘like us’ cause. The images of the hoof in question, and x-rays, were not from any one of our clients in any way, virtually or in person (clearly) - we had no contact with the horse in question - absolutely nothing to do with any of those images in any way whatsoever.

We hope that has made that clear.

So that portrayal was a little misleading to say the least.

However, as he felt the need to use those images to discredit us by saying this is the sort of trim we do, we thought it only fair to try and enlighten everyone about something called BALANCE - and specifically VOLAR BALANCE - by using those images in question.

Volar balance is defined as balancing the heel correctly to the toe when looking at the underside of the hoof of the horse - something that takes a long time to truly master on all hooves, and something that frustrates our students as they attempt to master it. You have to have a very good experienced eye, and learn to look beyond pathology, damaged frogs, heels etc, from the heels to the toe, so that all is in perfect balance - ie the toe is not sticking up above this plane when viewed caudally (from the back) from heel to toe.

Equally, correspondingly, the heel should not be above the volar plane when looking at the hoof from toe to heel - something we see a great deal of.

It sounds simple, but it is in fact quite a ‘thing’ to master; and all good trimmers and farriers should have volar balance truly sussed - sadly not all do - hence the reason that we do indeed see a tremendous amount of hooves, particularly hind hooves, and particularly in shoes, with negative palmar angles of P3.

Incidentally, P3 can become too unnaturally positive too, it works both ways.

This farrier in Australia we are sure, doesn’t understand the relevance of this with regards negative and positive palmar angles, or if he does, he never mentions it. He says that correcting the angle of P3 is all about the height of the heel ALONE; or at least this was his perspective on outing HM to the world as trimmers harming horses.

Not only that, he attributes this horse’s entire change in behaviour, soundness etc to him and his trim - you won’t often hear him talking about the changes that diet and management can and do make. We looked, we took a trip down his public business page, we couldn’t find much reference to diet and management at all.

So what about human perception and interpretation?

So the theory is on the HM bashing about trimming to the hard sole plane, is that unless the horse has heels at a height which the human deems acceptable, then this is going to cause NPAs - that is an incorrect theory - and one we disprove constantly. Heel height, unless you follow the horse’s hard sole plane, is made entirely arbitrarily by humans - it is their own personal choice. This desired height can change from human to human, from trim to trim… some saying it should be a credit card thickness above the sole - a finger thickness above the sole (which finger?), or just “above the sole somewhat” - it really depends on the human and that human’s perception and interpretation of what heel height really means.

The only thing that is constant between trims and humans, is the horse’s own anatomy - eg the hard sole plane. If you decide to trim away from this, then what is left is YOUR interpretation of what heel height should be - not what the anatomy is telling you it should be.

And not, as is often taught the widest part of the frog as your judge - why? Because frogs are often very pathological in domestic horses, and can be contracted and atrophied, so not a good benchmark to always trim to - the hard sole plane however, is always there, present and correct. Thin the sole might be at times due to pathology, but it is always there where it should be.

And a human’s personal interpretation is what gets horses into hot water all the time.

There are trimmers (and methods), and farriers, and vets, and friends and trainers, and just anyone with an interest, out there right now telling owners in person and on the internet that their horse’s heels need to be higher - with more support - more substance - more foot…

… but exactly HOW MUCH MORE HEEL are these people telling you to grow (or leave)?

We at HM cannot deal with personal interpretation because even between us trimmers it could vary wildly as to what one trimmer would think is right, compared to what another trimmer would think is right; and for those of you reading this who say it is all about the angles - those vary too. Horses have a perfectly normal bell curve range of angles, and toe lengths, it is about what is natural for that particular hoof on that particular horse - not about personal interpretation.

So for all those out there who call us ‘dangerous’ - it is not us, the ones trimming to the horse’s anatomy, who are dangerous - it is those who arbitrarily tell you a heel should be longer, higher… bigger… that are dangerous - because that is all just subjective rather than objective.

Sorry we keep digressing… let’s talk more about volar balance.

You can take a perfectly balanced hoof - in fact best to think about using a cadaver for these purposes. You can take this perfectly balanced hoof, and you could keep removing more and more heel… and toe at the same time… remember you have to keep it in perfect balance as you take more and more sole and heel off. You could keep on going down and down through the hard sole plane, into sensitive sole, and eventually through the heels, toe and sole until you reached the corium of P3. As long as you kept the foot in balance at all times, you would NOT change the angle of P3 - it would remain constant. Going well beyond the lowest of the lowest heels - actually into the corium itself.

As one of our students said to us once, “it is a bit like if you take a 3 legged stool, like a milking stool, and you kept taking the leg length away, but keeping all the legs and seat in balance, til eventually the seat would be sitting on the ground - all nice and level - but no legs”

Now, of course, HM wouldn’t go beyond the natural parameters of the hoof, no matter how it might look on 2D images that have been freshly trimmed to expose the natural very white looking, waxy, hard sole plane that we regularly post on our pages. This misleads people to think we have gone way beyond what is natural, and that we have somehow not learnt through years and years of our experience to understand when to stop when trimming horses. So much so, that we clearly must make all horses sore, cause soft tissue damage/inflammation, amongst other issues such as behavioural ones.

Well, HM have been around for a long time. For many years before barefoot trimmers were really thought of much especially in the UK, and for years we have had 1000s of clients and horses that have been extremely sound or healing, the majority of them would happily attest to this if asked. There have of course been occasions when trimmer and owner don’t meet eye to eye, and the owner not willing to accept their own responsibility in the soundness and the health of their horse, blaming their horse's decline, or footyness, or crippled state on the HM trimmer, sacks the trimmer and moves on - hoof care hopping.

As much as we try to help heal horses everywhere, the trim is only ⅓ of the problem, we cannot do it without the owner doing ⅔ of the job by changing the diet and the management. Our clients know that, and that is why we get a bit of a reputation as ‘our way or the high way’. Well, yes it is a little bit like that, because we have seen the devastation that incorrect hoof care AND incorrect non-species diet and management can do to an equine, horse or donkey, mule or ass. We have been there at the rock face with a failing horse, trying to convince an owner to change their horse’s diet and management, only to fail dismally as they move on to another hoof care provider, exclaiming that we have caused their horse to be a cripple - without telling the full facts of the full story - and without accepting their part to play in the health or pathology of their own horse.

We digress again…

Ok. So for those who are still with us… in order to further explain about volar balance and about how careful you have to be when you start making assumptions when discrediting people, and garnering a mob of willing followers to help further discredit, we thought we would take a couple of the images that this farrier used (remember not and never was our client) and assess them as carefully as we could to illustrate our point about volar balance further. Yes this could sound a bit tit for tat here, but when reputations, businesses and livelihoods are at stake, you need to really be able to defend that reputation with good solid explanations and evidence - and this is what we always teach our students - don’t post anything on social media, unless you are willing and able to fully back it up when scrutiny comes knocking.

Now this horse in question was apparently in great discomfort and had all sorts of issues including behavioural, supposedly because the heels on his hinds were too low, and this was causing a negative palmar angle as you can see from the x-ray 1 on the left. Very low heels actually do exist, we come across them fairly regularly, mainly in shod hooves and mainly on hinds, it is truly a real thing - it happens (we don’t do it, but it happens).

But what is ALWAYS concurrent, too low heel or not, is that when there is a negative palmar angle issue, there is always an incorrect volar balance issue too from heel to toe (as we illustrated earlier with the milking stool). The toe is always out of balance with the heel. Now we cannot say whether this horse in question indeed did have too low heels beyond his natural parameters because we haven’t been shown any sole shots; and many, MANY horses (especially some hot blood types like TBs) have very low heels on their hinds NATURALLY. No matter what the latest new trimming methods tell you, or farriers, or vets etc, or friends or foes, a heel above the hard sole plane is indeed an underrun heel - and for saying that, watch the comments fly below like…

“you are crippling horses trimming so badly like this”
“you need to be locked up causing harm like this”
“you need to go and learn how to trim a hoof and give it some more heel”
“you need to learn what underrun means, and that is a low heel”

We have heard it all and much, much worse; and so much of it is based on misinformation and not actual facts from the horse’s anatomy and physiology.

But as we said earlier, HM would not be around today, nor would we have full to bursting client lists, if we were screwing it up this badly. We wouldn’t have horses on our books that could compete to high levels, we wouldn’t have horses on our books that could go out and do miles and miles cross country, endurance race, jump high fences, and we certainly would have been run out of town years and years ago.

Digressing again…

Back to the images. What we can say is too low heels or not, on x-ray 1 it is not a significant player in the cause of NPA. What is significant is that there is an imbalance between heel to toe, and this is causing P3 to be in a negative palmar angle (slightly - not as much as is claimed).

Let’s go through the x-rays bit by bit.

We are told that it took 12 months to achieve a positive palmar angle for this horse. We could have achieved it in one trim. Not magic, not wild claims, it’s just about volar balance.

However, we definitely couldn’t have achieved the change in heel height in one trim obviously, as you have to allow the heel to grow over time - sometimes a little tricky to do with some horses because they just won’t grow heel at all beyond what they naturally need, and that really annoys a lot of people (especially those darn TBs with their low heels)…

“my horse just won’t grow heel!”

So one of the things you can do in this situation if a longer, higher heel is really what you want, is to, a) allow the horse to grow heel above the natural parameters of the foot, or b) wedge those pesky heels up because the horse just won’t grow that heel that you desire (you can see many wedged hooves on a quick trip down the said farrier’s page).

Anyway, back to the x-rays.

He is saying the cause of the negative palmar angle on the first x-ray is caused by low heels, but the problem isn’t the heels, as we’ve already established, it is actually the toe. The horse could have been trimmed with too low heels, that is true, but if the volar plane had been balanced correctly, there would have been no NPA.

However there are so many errors with this assessment on both of these x-rays if you look VERY CLOSELY - which of course most people don’t and they take what is being fed to them as verbatim, because on first appearances it doesn’t look good at all.

So let’s point them out.

2nd WARNING: You do have to exercise a bit of caution when comparing x-rays, as they are never as accurate as each other due to variables such as the machine, the person taking the image and the position of the hoof - and x-rays themselves are not the most accurate of images anyway, MRIs and CTs are far more accurate for true detailed assessment, particularly when you want to prove points with lines and angles etc.

Nevertheless… look specifically at the toe depth indicated by the first orange arrow on the left (from his little red arrow at the tip of P3), and then compare this with the green arrow on the right (and again from his little red arrow at the tip of P3). You should be able to clearly see there is a disparity in depth between the two. This is not the depth of sole we are talking about here, just the depth of the toe area. There is more toe area on the left than there is on the right image, so this is your first indication that in order to correct the palmar angle, they have indeed had to remove more toe in the first instance. X-rays may not be accurate in terms of lines and angles, but they don’t lie in terms of how much of the structure is actually there.

You may be thinking that the difference between the toes isn’t that significant, and we wouldn’t blame you, but we can tell you that even leaving a little bit too much toe, causing an error in the volar balance, can be a big difference to the horse and its angles (as we said, something we show on our workshops).

Secondly, his gauge of sole depth at 1.14cm on the left compared to 1.15cm on the right is flawed because the arrows are not measuring the exact same spot, the first arrow is not in the same position as the second. This small error can could easily make the difference of 0.01cm. But either way, solar depth is not significantly different from one to two - and this solar depth would not have been compromised by taking more toe, as you can clearly see in the second x-ray - more toe was taken - no significant difference between the two.

Now… look at the heel bulbs on the second x-ray compared to the first. You should clearly see that they have significantly raised the heels. Another way of gauging this is to look at the height of the navicular bone - we have indicated this on the x-rays with pink arrows. The arrows we have drawn are the same length. Also look at the shadow under the heels on the second x-ray compared to the first, you can see it has increased, indicating that the heel bulbs/frog are no longer in closer contact with the ground as they were before - therefore indicating raised heels.

The plot thickens… the green line drawn on the first x-ray along the base of P3 is not running as closely to P3 and is lower towards the palmar processes (back of P3) than they have drawn it on the second x-ray. This has resulted in the NPA of P3 being exaggerated on x-ray one - it is in fact ‘just’ negatively off ground parallel - which would have been corrected with correct volar balance from heels to toe, and would indicate slightly more heel might (and we say might) have been taken on the first x-ray, but certainly not enough toe - the imbalance is through heel to toe. Again to be sure about the heel height, you would have to see sole images and caudal images to assess the depth of heel to the hard sole plane.

We have drawn lines and copied them exactly at the same angle on both and we cannot get our lines to line up to his, mainly because firstly the green circles are not quite in the same place on both x-rays, and because for the lower lines he appears to have used somewhat arbitrary parameters to further make his point - but either way, the accuracy of the lines between the two is flawed. These differences can make something look far more significant than it actually is.

Please, please don’t take our word for this, just screenshot those original x-rays yourself, put them side to side and compare - that’s simply what we did.

For reference, our lines are all the ones that aren’t green, and ours are exact copies from left to right, no angle changes between our lines at all.

We have taken a long white line across both x-rays, a little tighter to P3 than his green line on x-ray one, and you can see that his little red arrow showing depth from the base of P3 to the ground would have been only marginally different had he put his green line in the same tight position to P3 as he had done on x-ray two. Errors like this can make big differences to the eye and measurements.

The last couple of points we want to make (and there are actually so many more that we could indicate here for you) is that, due to the increase in height of the heel, you should see that the surface area has been reduced indicated by the orange lines which are the same length on both x-rays. This incidentally was the subject of our original post, which is the one which caused the said farrier to ‘out us’ on his page.

The very final point, and the one we are most concerned about, is to observe on the x-ray the area of tissue behind P3, between the bulbs and P3. In x-ray one, where the heels are lower and more likely closer to how that horse naturally needs his hind hooves, the shaded area is fairly smooth looking, it doesn’t really look that unhealthy at all.

Compare this now with the image on the right, where the distance between the plantar side (back) of P2 (short pastern), indicated by the horizontal pink arrow, is less on x-ray 1 than on x-ray 2 - the supposed healthier foot. Please observe carefully the shape of the bulb area, the look of the tissue. Can you see in x-ray 1 that the bulbs look more ‘relaxed’ and in a good normal position, and yet on x-ray 2 the bulbs look quite different - not in a good way.

This right here is when people’s eyes will deceive them, because no matter how obvious this is, they will say that it isn’t a problem and that it is better for the horse - it isn’t.

Inside that area that you are now looking at is a very important structure called the digital cushion, this is rarely discussed in great length at all but it is a truly VITAL part of the horse’s suspension mechanism at the back of the foot. It needs to be healthy, and have just the right amount of natural ‘bounce’ and yet be tough enough to withstand the force from the ground up, and the force of the limb and the body down. It gets sandwiched between the two, along with the frog, and it needs to be very healthy in order for the whole suspensory apparatus and mechanisms to work as they should. Basically the anatomy (structure) of the back of the foot has changed between the two images quite markedly. Ignore P3 for a second, squint your eyes and quickly look from one image to the other and you should see exactly what we are talking about.

Many people will tell you, “THE HORSE NEEDS MORE HEEL” - but when you artificially give the horse ‘more heel’ by either wedging or allowing them to grow under (higher) then this is the result. The anatomy changes and then the physiology, how it works, changes too - form is always hand in hand with function.

Go beyond the horse’s natural parameters to arbitrary ones, or fixed angles, and you will always affect the structure and physiology of the horse - without fail.

So thanks if you have managed to reach this far; and we do apologise for this exceedingly long post - but short of putting on a free Barefoot Live show for everyone (which we would be happy to do if enough people wanted it), it was always going to be a long one.

If your head is hurting now, imagine what ours feel like after discussing this and putting this monster of a post together!

We wonder how many people who will negatively comment, actually read and really understand what we have said here - and we wonder if their cognitive dissonance will allow them to ‘get it’ (oops that will cause ruffles).

So in conclusion… the lines and circles are drawn differently on each x-ray, so they are not consistently accurate, and this can make all the difference when you are making judgements on lengths and angles.

X-rays are not accurate enough for true angles etc just because of the variables we noted earlier - but they are cheap in the great scheme of diagnostic testing, and so they are what people tend to use for hooves.

There is no doubt that the first x-ray shows a hoof with P3 which is slightly off ground parallel, and in a slight NPA, and that would not have been good for the horse at all; but this small difference could have been adjusted by correctly balancing the foot along the volar plane. This would have immediately increased the hoof angle to a steeper angle above the 47 degrees stated, into a more natural range.

We do this all the time at our workshops to show this difference to our student and clients. When you have a long toe on the volar view, from heel to toe, poking up above the plane, you end up with it tilting the hoof capsule back and making the angle lower (as in x-ray 1).

When you correctly balance the volar plane from heel to toe you end up with a steeper angle.

However, it looks like they have gone beyond this and have increased this angle even further, beyond this foot’s natural parameters, by allowing the heels to grow longer. Now we cannot tell if the toe to heel is balanced properly here either, but we suspect by close observation of this x-ray that the heels are indeed too long and above the natural parameter of this foot. Unnaturally longer heels, and unnaturally longer toes, affecting volar balance ALWAYS affect the structures within the hoof and the angle of P3 - to the positive and to the negative - not withstanding the effects of laminitis on the structure of the foot - a totally different post is needed for that.

We’ve drawn lines all over these two x-rays, and the differences are definitely there between the two, but they are not as drastic as this farrier is making out, and these changes could have been achieved in one trim, with a balanced hoof - not 12 months.

Because, and here is the final, FINAL, point, going back to something we said at the beginning of this long text: if you lowered the whole hoof capsule with the raised heels on the x-ray 2, keeping the toe and heel exactly as they are now, you just keep lowering even beyond the hard sole plane, it would NOT affect the position of P3 - debunking their whole theory that it is the low heels that have caused the problem in the first place.

It never was the low heel - when it comes to NPA, it is always the extra length at the toe and the fact the foot is not balanced correctly along the volar plane - something which is actually quite challenging to master.

So why did it take longer to achieve a better position of P3 in the hoof capsule than x-ray 1, eg it took them 12 months? Because they had to wait for the heels to grow. However, at any point they could have reassessed, if the foot was properly balanced on the volar plane, and they would have seen that P3 was indeed already in a better position.

IT IS ABOUT VOLAR BALANCE - nothing more.

Thank you for reading. Nice comments only please - we took a bit of a bashing yesterday, and that is never great for anyone’s mental health. Let’s have a kind discussion about this if you want it. It would be our pleasure to respond calmly and professionally to any questions, and confusions, we just want to educate, not irritate.

Thanks, HM

Photos credited to Progressive Equine Services & Hoof Care Centre