09/18/2022
We didn’t just wake up one day & decide open heel metal shoes were creating problems with horses feet!
About 12yrs ago I decided to buy Metron software to start evaluating the feet of my clients horses. This started me in a direction that I had no idea I would be heading in, nor where it would end up. We had no agenda, we had no goal, other than to try and improve as a farrier for the benefit of my clients horses.
On purchasing Metron (hoof measuring software) I was looking forward to measuring the feet of my clients horses to see if I could make some small tweaks to improve them. Boy was I in for a shock!
After a month I thought, based upon the objective data I was gathering, that I was the worst farrier in the world!
I could not believe the difference in how the foot looked to me standing above it & when I put the feet on blocks & took actual photos.
What looked quite acceptable from 6’ above the ground was not at all acceptable from on the ground.
The more of my horses feet I evaluated, the more I was disappointed in the look & proportions of the feet.
Everything, & I mean everything, was too low in the heels, had broken back alignment & what seemed like too long of a toe.
Many years ago I had a fair bit to do with the Cytek shoe, but quickly found this shoe caused more problems than benefits. But it did correct the long toe, sort of.
So now I went in the NB direction & read everything & anything on NB, which was very similar to much of the Cytek info.
I started trimming heels back & setting shoes back etc. Often the owners would say their horse is improving somewhat but we got very little, if any, improvement in the feet.
Infact, we often got quite a bit of distortion in the toe quarters & a few other issues as well. I was setting the shoes according to NB guidelines, but I now believe these guidelines & the shoe design was what was creating the problems.
I had started to look much harder at other owners horses feet & other farriers work & I found that no matter the farrier, the feet were all very similar. The heels were very under run, the hoof angles were low & the walls were rasped away (the same as my horses)
I asked so many people if i could take photos of their horses feet for my own benefit, to try to learn what I could do from supposedly better farriers. But on measuring these feet, they were just like my horses, and in many cases worse.
I even started asking a few farriers about what I was seeing, incl discussing it on forums online. Nobody seemed too concerned about it & the most common comment was ‘keep ur heels short, as a long heel is a weak heel!’
I started to ask some of the vets to X-ray my clients feet for me, with me paying for plenty of them, just to get more information. Sadly, a number of vets wouldn’t do it as they felt farriery wasn’t a reason to X-ray. The few that did the X-rays sent me the worst X-rays ever incl one set where the feet were held in the air whilst the X-rays were taken.
The reason being, vets as a whole did not take podiatry X-rays, they xrayed for pathology. This meant their blocks were not suited to obtaining good podiatry X-rays.
Thankfully things have changed & most vets take great podiatry X-rays these days & understand the value of them.
Also, the cost was huge & not many could afford it, the reason I paid for so many.
This prompted me to get my own X-ray license for taking podiatry X-rays only. I put my own conditions on my license, which is that I can only X-ray feet (I did this to seperate me from vets) & as per the regulations I am not allowed to diagnose pathology.
My business model at the time was to only work with farriers ie if a client contacted us we would ask them to get their farrier to contact us & we will organise the rads at a time that suits.
After 7mths we had over 30 horse owners contact us, but not 1 farrier follow up. We had a lot of calls saying they’ve asked their farriers to call, but the farriers had no interest.
So we decided to change tact & do X-rays for horse owners. This was met with immediate interest & the business started to take off as there were so many owners with horses that had problems with their feet. We were in demand & the business started to develop quickly.
Sadly, although we only took X-rays & marked up the X-rays, never judging the feet nor giving any direction about what should be done, we copped a huge amount of abuse from so many farriers.
We were a little shocked at this, as in our minds we were giving the farriers all the information they needed to do the best job possible, which is what we thought all farriers would want!
So we had to endure quite a lot of hatred by many vets & farriers, but our direction remained true as the horses welfare supersedes it all.
So now we were getting objective data from both photos & xrays & it made us realise that other than protection, traditional farriery & open heel shoes were just not working for most horses & their feet!
We had photos & X-rays from everything from national level horses down to low level pony club horses & from all environments & disciplines. All of the data showed a single ‘very obvious factor’, which was that caudal foot was failing ie the heels had run forward, the toe looked long, PA was low & boney column alignment was very broken back.
It was around this time I started taking an interest in barefoot trimming & urethane shoes. The results I had seen were much more positive than metal farriery. But my concern with barefoot was the pain & suffering so many horses were going through in their ‘transition’ stage. I personally, was just not willing to do this.
I was also quite put off by Dr Strassers methods, which again did not sit well with me due to the low angles & poor alignment. She also could not/ would not answer a number of questions I asked of her.
But I was starting to see some good results with urethane shoes, which was promising.
We actually became quite sort as a farrier after as we could do the analysis (X-rays) & we were willing to use a number of different approaches, other than steel, which was quite rare back then.
The concerns I had with the urethane shoes were around weight, nail holes & shapability. They fit ok shaped feet, but often we weren’t shoeing ok footed horses & this created problems.
And what did all this mean? Why was I now so confused? Why was the farrier industry opposed to so much when their open heel shoes seemed to create so many problems? Why was it that on my travels I was seeing the best farriers in the world shoeing horses with the very same problems I saw in pretty much every hoof, yet there’s no attempt to correct it or even discuss it as a problem? If traditional farriery was so good, why could we not prevent these problems?
My head needed straightening out so I sought out one of the best around, Sylvia Nemeth-Kornherr from EPC Solutions, to try & sought out a few of these things.
This was one of the best things I’ve done and Sylvia was so great with her time. I think we were meant to have a single 2hr Skype call each week for 12 weeks, but we ended up having 2 sessions each week that sometimes went 4hrs. I am very grateful to Sylvia & still call her one of my very good friends.
I was doing so many more X-rays & so many more requests for corrective shoeing at this stage, with people even travelling from interstate, which seemed crazy.
My thoughts now were largely divided between the differences between open heel metal shoes, designed for protection only, barefoot that was the most natural & altered the loading to the hoof in comparison & the urethane shoes I used that had more similar loading characteristics to the barefoot horse.
This prompted me to start looking at the back of the foot & was when I started to see the soft tissue displacement & prolapse of the frog. This was something I had never really noticed before, nor had I ever read anything about it. Obviously we knew about contraction, but this was totally different & sent me further into the direction I was heading.
This had me starting to weld ‘frog plates’ into my metal shoes for the first time ever, to better support the back of the foot, with almost instant results. I was also thankful for my time with barefoot trimmers & my use of products like Artimud & DIM.
I remember taking photos of the first cple of horses I tried them on only 12 weeks apart & seeing a more similar positive result with the urethane shoes, which also had caudal support.
This is how my focus on caudal support in shoes began, which was due to the positive results on those first few horses.
For the first time I was seeing & documenting the hoof going in a more positive direction.
From there I have tried a myriad of ideas & continued to increase my knowledge & data base of information (we have now take podiatry X-rays & assessed more than 2000 horses)
I have since constantly evaluated my work & results objectively using X-rays, photos & Metron mark ups. This has allowed me to refine my work & know what works best for most horses, the reason for our consistently good results.
The things we work on most, with very few exceptions, based off all of the data & experience gathered over the last 12yrs is;
- Caudal support is so important due to the load sharing & stimulation across the back of the foot.
- The collateal grooves are important to supporting the coffin bone so make sure to use DIM & a support package that includes these structures ie bar shoes & even heart bar shoes are less effective.
- Although I got excellent results using metal frog plates, especially in the hind feet, a flexible caudal support package seems to work best ie 3D pads or similar
- Creating comfort for the horse is most important for so many reasons, but especially improving boney column alignment & postural adaptations.
- Maintaining strength in the hoof capsule. I too have been guilty of rasping the hoof over the years, but these days I rarely rasp the hoof capsule at all. Maximising strength in the walls & toe are imperative to obtaining & maintaining good strong feet.
- The trim is what most people get wrong, so work on better understanding the foot & getting the most out of your trim
- The toe has been blamed for most things in farriery, but it’s the back of the foot that is the cause of most problems. Traditional farriery & open heel shoes do not maintain health & integrity in the back of the foot due to less than ideal loading. This has created a number of poor trimming ideals, which were mostly developed to try to prevent the caudal foot from failing.
So if we seem to get a little short at those who say, ‘I know ur wrong as I’ve been shoeing 20yrs’ or ‘ur wrong because I once saw this exact opposite thing happen’ or u want to tell us we are wrong, but u don’t take photos &/or have nothing to support your comments, this is why.
We have spent so much $$ & countless hours over the past 12yrs objectively evaluating not only our own horses, but 2000+ more horses in & around our area.
When u think there are a lot of peer reviewed studies completed on 10 horses, it shows that our data base is pretty extensive & comprehensive.
We still don’t have all of the answers, but we are definitely a long, long way ahead of where we were 12yrs ago & our horses & clients are reaping the benefits.
