01/09/2023
Quality farrier work is #☝️
Have you all noticed that kissing spine is being diagnosed more and more frequently in the past several years?
There are many many reasons for kissing spine to happen but in this post we are just going to talk about one very obvious one that for some reason fails to get considered in the diagnosis.
If we go back to the analogy we posted a couple weeks ago about the pillars on a bridge, and how important getting the foundation right is to the integrity of the deck of the bridge,
Your horse's hoof angles are the foundational pillars of the integrity of the spine (the deck of the bridge).
Negative palmar angle and long toes are becoming an epidemic in the current horse world. This changes how the horse is comfortable holding his legs.
How he holds them changes the support and the alignment of the spine.
Tie a string to two long sticks. Have one person hold one stick and another person hold the other stick. Stretch your sticks out so the sticks are perpendicular to the ground And the string is basically level. Now, start angling your sticks towards each other and away from each other and watch the changes in your string.
This is a simplistic representation but it should give you the point.
Your horse's feet and the angles they are maintained at are Vital to the integrity of your horse's body and function.
If your horse is newly diagnosed with kissing spine, and there is not an obvious, glaring reason why, Get x-rays of all four feet and find someone who actually knows how to plot out the angles of them.
There is a pretty decent chance that if these are found to be off, the kissing spine can be made to go away in time, with help from a competent farrier and likely some chiropractic work.
