01/09/2025
Excellent…..
I first became aware of barefoot loading patterns about 20 years ago from looking at the wild horse studies done by Jamie Jackson and Gene Ovniceck that showed us how mustangs develop ground contact points. This establishes a series of points and arches that suspend the horse over 3-4 ground contact points per foot. These contact points are created from miles of daily wear over varied terrain.
I quit using steel shoes years ago and since then I’ve been working on BUILDING contact points on domestic horse hooves by simulating adequate miles of wear. This isn’t just carving the feet to preconceived contact points like the “4 Point Trim” suggested. If you just don’t let dead wall, frog, and sole accumulate, the hoof capsules eventually conform to the internal structures without deviation. This establishes a fully live undeviated hoof capsule within a couple of years, no matter how much movement the horse gets.
The pillars and arches are natural structural components in every hoof. They just collapse and disappear when the hooves get overgrown and retain dead horn. If horses can wear and build their hooves on their own, given enough acreage, then that wear can be simulated by trimming that respects the individual anatomy and stage of development of each individual hoof.
When this type of trimming is done accurately over time, the result is a fully live well developed hoof capsule with the arches and points in the right places. No movement needed. That’s the part that people get hung up on. I’m not saying that horses don’t need movement. I’m saying that their biomechanics don’t require movement to build their hooves from flat to concave, and it should never be carved.
The horse’s posture improves when you take the correct amount of dead horn off in just the right places. The improved posture sets the weight bearing more accurately over the digital cushion, which thrives from use ( weight bearing ). As the horse shifts more weight back over the heels that are now supported by the DC, the weight comes off of the sole…the sole thrives on suspension. That’s how you use the horse’s weight for them instead of against them to build soft tissue and live sole and that elevation is how you improve their PA and HPA sustainably.
If you try to improve the posture by improving the angles first, there is no digital cushion to support the horse so the joints, tendons, and ligaments have to compensate. That causes irreversible damage that shows up months or years later. This is why I’m against flat trimming for angles, steel shoes, and/or wedge pads.
After almost 20 years of restoring live internal elevation to flat dead footed horses ( all ages, breeds, and sizes ), these are the common issues that I’ve noticed:
The drawing on the left shows the damage that I’ve observed on the inside of a hoof that’s been trimmed flat, steel shod and/or wedged. Horses with better conformation resist the damage better, as do horses that aren’t subjected to these practices.
- lower position of extensor process
- bone erosion commonly seen in these 3 areas ( dotted white lines )
- jammed up frog and digital cushion from dead heel buttresses ( correlating to bone erosion at the back of the palmar processes )
- withered lateral cartilages
- jammed up bars ( not shown ) ( correlating to bone erosion on the middle of the palmar processes )
- jammed up solar corium ( correlating to bone loss along the tip of P3 and the Coronary Band / Extensor process relationship )
The drawing on the right shows how the internal structures should look when the arches and points are respected and built over time.
