Tuesday 21 February 2012

Do the twist

I posted last week about Georgia, who has now been here nearly 3 weeks.  This first photo of her LF was taken the day after she came out of shoes.  
The lower photo was a week later...
and this was another week further on. 
The photos show an apparent shift in the orientation of her frog, which is often a good indicator of changing medio-lateral balance. Looking at the photos again, her frog appears to be twisting, with the apex turning inwards (medially) - making her caudal hoof turn outwards (laterally).
Jen asked about why this might be happening, and for me its one of those things which is more obvious when you see her standing in front of you.  At present her toes turn out, but ideally you would want them straighter - with the caudal hoof shifting laterally and the toe turning medially.
...and I think its a good example of why hoof photos can only ever give you one tiny piece of the jigsaw (even though it can be a very interesting piece!).
For fun, here is the same photo with lines drawn from roughly the centre of the top of each limb to the ground.  Its not an exact science, of course, because camera angles distort, but it gives you an idea of why the medio-lateral balance of the LF might be changing more radically than the RF, and why that hoof might be twisting, with the toe moving medially and the caudal hoof laterally - in other words, to put her base of support underneath her limb rather than out to the right.

5 comments:

jenj said...

Thanks, Nic. It's totally obvious why her frog looks like that when I see how she stands. So interesting!

Nic Barker said...

Glad it has helped :-)

amandap said...

Trying again to leave a comment.

Just shows how much I have to learn because to me it looks as if the hoof capsule has moved rather than the frog. Doh.

Nic Barker said...

Sorry you had problems commenting Amanda :-( I thought I had made things easier, but maybe I didn't...

Anyway, you are right - the frog will take the hoof capsule with it, so the whole thing will shift over the next few months.

amandap said...

I think it's my google account that was playing up Nic so no worries.