Lameness and landing change

I've got more new rehab horses to post about this week but first I wanted to talk about a couple of contrasting photos which I have lifted from video footage of Darcy.

Darcy arrived here about 7 weeks ago and is a good example of the fact that how a hoof looks can't always tell you much about how well it is functioning. I could point you to a dozen horses with apparently worse looking feet who were nevertheless far sounder than he was.

Darcy had feet which didn't look bad at all, with a palmar hoof, frog and digital cushion that looked well developed, as he had spent most of his life barefoot. 

Despite this, he was definitely one of the lamest horses on arrival, graded at 6/10 lame by his vet and with a visible unlevelness even in walk.

Edited to add: Darcy was about 1-2/10 lame when he had an MRI which showed navicular bone bruising and related soft tissue damage (impar ligament and DDFT). He was remedially shod and his lameness worsened to 6/10 lame; this lameness persisted when the shoes were removed and at this point he came to us. 

Although his feet looked strong enough, there was definitely something wrong has his landing was clearly toe first and he struggled on turns. 

Darcy is still far from being fully sound but in his last piece of footage, taken a week ago, there are signs of improvement which are encouraging to see. Its all about movement, after all. 

Finnick's first photos

Another day, another new horse, this time an Irish sports horse called Finnick. I'm behind with uploading footage but he is landing flat and intermittently flips to a toe first landing on his LF.

To my eyes he has a medio-lateral imbalance which is borne out when you look at the caudal hoof but its not a terrible foot by any means.

Finnick is only 7 years old and was bought to event but has been diagnosed on MRI with pedal osteitis and navicular damage. He came out of shoes while his owner was waiting for him to come down here.

His age and the fact that his feet are reasonably strong and well developed are in his favour and it will be interesting to see how his feet rebalance during the course of his rehab.

Apologies for the blurred shots - Finnick is a charming boy but a fidget when it comes to hoof photos, and poor January light is also unhelpful...

Norman's first day photos

Norman is our next new arrival and unlike Josh arrived in shoes. As ever with bar shoes, you are left to guess what the frog underneath is really like but I will post "naked" photos of his feet soon.

Like Josh, Norman has been diagnosed on MRI with DDFT damage to the LF and also like Josh, remedial farriery had not resulted in an improvement in his lameness so now its up to us to see what we can do - no pressure then! 

 From this angle though there is an interesting twist in the shoe which I suspect was not there when it was put on but as hooves grow and shoes don't, mismatches are quite common a few weeks after shoeing.

There is quite a shunt in the hairline on this foot, although I accept that the camera angle and lack of light don't help - taking photo and video at this time of year is the bane of my life to be honest. 

On this foot the medio-lateral balance when he walks is much better and its probably this which has left this shoe much straighter than the LF. Overall not a bad heel and digital cushion and Norman was landing heel first in his bar shoes so we will see what the next few weeks hold.

New Year, new horses...

The New Year is already a week old and I am already behind on the updates for new horses, as we are steadily filling up at Rockley. These feet belong to Josh, who arrived last week. As you might guess from his hooves, he is an ex-racehorse who has been diagnosed with DDFT damage.

This is his better foot but both are weak, relatively flat and under-run. Although Josh arrived without front shoes he only lost them a few days before and he had previously had remedial farriery which hadn't solved his lameness problems. 

This is his worse foot - ironically it looks less under-run than the right foot from this angle, which just goes to show that appearances can be deceptive!

However from this angle the contracted heels are clear and you can also see the collapse in the digital cushion which is typical of a horse with palmar hoof pain, as well as being common in ex-racehorses. 

You see worse feet all the time so I am hopeful that Josh will look a lot tougher in a few weeks time. 

Darcy's 5 week update

Darcy has been here since the end of November and despite dire weather has at least enjoyed being able to move about on the tracks. He was recently out of shoes and was clearly unlevel on the RF both in a straight line and on a circle. 

This is his better foot, less upright than the right and as you can see he has produced a reasonable amount of hoof growth in his first few weeks and his toe has shortened.

He had quite good frogs on day 1 and so there is not a dramatic change in this foot although the frog and heels have broadened slightly. 

Stupidly I didn't get his right foot from this angle on day one so these comparisons are from 2 weeks ago (above) and today (below).

A slightly more functional frog, though it was in reasonable shape to begin with. 

To me there is an improvement in the hairline over the weeks but he is still not comfortable enough to land heel first on this foot. 

On the left foot we see a similar picture - again, his landing needs improvement on this foot too though its better than the right. 

One vet's view of the self-trimming horse

Today I want to post a guest blog - an email from vet Chris Tufnell MRCVS of Coach House Vets which he has allowed me to post here. Chris has sent a number of horses here over the years and he is one of a handful of UK vets who is extremely well-versed in how a healthy bare hoof functions.

"I'm fascinated that we have ignored the back part of the foot for so long.  

Again and again I see narrow contracted frogs and heels in shod horses with long toes and short shoes.  I also see a few horses and ponies that have, delightfully, been left unshod and they have a lovely wide, equilateral triangle shaped frog with strong bars and heels.  Their frog clefts are much shallower than the shod horses and they are clearly engaging a large portion of the back of their foot when bearing weight.  This is not the case with shod horses and it is somewhat inevitable that, when faced by side on xrays showing poor hoof balance, vets and farriers tend to want to extend the shoes out backwards but still disregard the frog and bars.  

When observing all the 'self-trimmed' horses that have been through Rockley it is refreshing to see that they sort themselves out and don't necessarily deal in symmetry or correct angles but with good function.  

In a shod horse it is easy to obsess about the hoof/pastern axis when, if they are bare foot, I think it is probably irrelevant.  So many barefoot horses have a broken back HPA (although I accept some of these may have developed them when shod) and yet it is what the bottom of the foot is doing that is so much more important.

It is worth mentioning though that we all need to go gently on the vets and farriers that espouse shoeing all horses.  It is very difficult and goes against human nature to reject long-held belief systems, particularly if they form the basis of your life's work.  

To those of us who've been enlightened it seems like common sense and we can't understand why they can't see it but the more understanding we are, the more people we are likely to convert.  

One major missing piece in the puzzle at the moment is scientific evidence.  Many people who have seen the benefits of 'self-trimming' (so much better than 'barefoot' which is saddled with negative connotations for so many vets and farriers!) with their own eyes will struggle to appreciate why anecdotal evidence is not acceptable to scientifically minded people.  

For those that want to understand it better I can recommend 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre which explains the scientific method and interpretation of evidence very well.  For others I'd suggest that far from being obstructive those that insist on scientific evidence are the most likely to sweep away the old dogma and bring about the paradigm shift that we would all like to see.  

For me it is crucial that not only do we look at horses that have had injuries and are recovering but we look at healthy horses that are either shod or unshod and compare them.  I'd be fascinated to know the difference in forces up through the foot and leg, tendons, bones and ligaments between shod and un-shod horses.  

My hypothesis is that these are very different and that the problems that shoeing causes extend right through the horse.  However we need to do the science to know this.  The huge explosion in mobile technology is bringing us very close to being able to do some brilliant science here and we are in exciting times.

Apart from the conformation of the hoof capsule, the two other areas that need exploration are weight and traction.  

I'm convinced that shoes, particularly metal corrective ones (bar or heart bars) change the flight of the foot due to the weight they add.  This will alter landing and put forces up the leg during flight.  

Also, just as I think that it is probably 'unnatural' for our legs to be stopped dead when running on the road in trainers, I'm not convinced that the jarring grip that shoes/road nails/studs provide horses doesn't do damage to the structures in the foot and leg and possibly beyond.  

Again, studying videos of hoof flight and landing in shod and unshod horses over different surfaces would start to tell us if there was a difference.  However that is just scratching the surface and we must be careful not to extrapolate.  The work will still need to be done to see if these differences contribute to the problems that we see all too commonly.  

As you know I'm an convert and do my small bit to try and improve the welfare of the small number of horses and ponies that I see by discussing these things with their owners.  But to improve the lot of millions of horses around the world we need to take vets and farriers with us.  We need to convert horse shoeing professionals into hoof care professionals."

Advent for hooves

Appropriately enough for the first week of Advent, here are some hooves looking for a new beginning - and they are new to me, too.

They belong to an Arab called Mr Darcy who arrived here at the the end of last week and these are his first photos. He is at the moment quite dramatically lame on his RF, less so on his LF and our first job has been to get him off box rest and gently  - and calmly - moving on good surfaces. 

His feet don't look too bad which is a compelling confirmation of the fact that you can't really judge hooves from photos. I could show you lots of uglier feet on sounder horses!

However, what is nice is that he has basically good structure to build on which I hope will help in his recovery. Its very early days yet for Darcy but there will be more on him very soon.