08/17/2024
Corrective hoofcare is not miraculous. This is a controversial take, I’m sure, but those of us that do it…we know.
These photos are of a podotrochlear case I recently began managing. The horse had been intermittently lame since the spring. He was diagnosed with navicular by his veterinary team in July.
Navicular is a generic diagnosis. There are many ways heel pain presents. In this guy’s case, there were some moderate changes to the navicular bone, but the real underlying issue was inflammation, changes and chronic strain to the collateral ligaments. How you address one is not how you address the other.
And how you support injured collateral ligaments requires a significant adjustment to the balance of the hoof capsule. This is easily 3/4” of toe removed. It’s a 3° wedge shoe. I machined out 1/2 the width of the footbed to accommodate for the sole over P3. This is not minor work.
When the work is not minor, the horse is GOING to be sore. Often the first-cycle trade off is 7-10, sometimes up to 14 days of bilateral foot and body soreness, in exchange for long term relief on the chronic issue. Sometimes, it can’t be avoided.
So what do you do?
You interrupt the pain cycle. NSAIDS, deliberate, structured movement, bodywork, PEMF, laser…I have used them all. But the pain cycle HAS to be soothed and then interrupted so that the new neural pathways can start to myelinate.
And…you trust your farrier. Management of pathology requires a team, and the hoof-care expertise part is theirs. If they say what they’re seeing is normal/expected, it probably is. Those of us that do this stuff, do dozens, if not more, tricky cases a year. If we say “expect soreness”, expect it. If we say “keep the horse moving and as comfortable as possible”, it’s because we know it helps. If we say “Call the bodyworker to work at week 2.” It’s because the timing is important.
Corrective hoofcare isn’t miraculous. It’s tedious, it’s gritty, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s not without predictability. And we beg of you to trust that.
