[DangerRanch]

Hey, ACC, don't beat yourself up too much those are pretty nice hooves. Just try to get them done more often, learning to do a quick touch up trim might be a good idea.
JB what kind of roll would you put on?
I allways keep the roll outside the waterline and maybe 55 degrees at the steepest. After trying a bazilion different tricks to get flares grown out I have finally settled on the very simple solution of making sure the hoof is perfectly ballanced and being very careful not to change the new angle, in addition to a normal roll and following the sole at the quarters. Trying to rasp the flares off or roll more or "relieve the presure" just made the hoof weaker down the road . and SOME QUARTER FLARES ARE NATURAL. The outside flare on a hind foot is perfectly normal. I have one mare whose bar, wall, sole and everything on the outside of one front foot sort of wing out wider and lower than the other side of the hoof. Makes for an awefull time ballancing (sharpies are very handy!) but it's related to an injury and no amount of rolling or rasping is going to make it match the steeper side. She's perfectly sound on anything.
As for the question of tenderness on large gravel, it's just a matter of conditioning if the trim is good. Mine are a bit tender on gravel if they haven't been on it for a while, they can walk and jog on it but can't extend or really move at speed untill they've been working on it for a bit. 2 weeks a few minutes several times a week works most of the time ont he ones that have been conditioned before. After that they can fly. The average flare wont have an effect on ability to ride on gravel, usuallly it's the frog being soft and tender that is the issue.

[accphotography]

As far as the gravel, she is gimpy just being led across it at a walk.

DR I didn't know you posted here. :-)

Do you see separation in her walls? I can see visible separation on the left hind flare that looked REALLY bad from underneath yesterday. Sigh. I just can't help but feel like something needs to be done about this.

Unfortunately getting them done any more often than 5 weeks is not going to happen unless I do it myself.

ACC

[denraydar]

There is a product that is good for sore frogs, and tender feet that is recommended even for horses freshly out of shoes and going natural, as well as for thrush. It is called Durasole. My TB is a tenderfoot and lives in Quarterhorse country here in Texas so I have to be surrounded by horses who hardly ever get their feet picked out between trims and still are healthier than my poor baby.

Durasole is available online through Jeffers Equine Supply.

It is made by a Farrier supply company and like any other product may not work the same on all horses.

It would be worth a try though if your horse has tender feet.

[JBandRio]

Originally Posted by DangerRanch

Hey, ACC, don't beat yourself up too much those are pretty nice hooves. Just try to get them done more often, learning to do a quick touch up trim might be a good idea.

The problem is that she can't get them done any more often due to the demands of her trimmer And, the issues that we see here have just been going on for far too long

JB what kind of roll would you put on?
I allways keep the roll outside the waterline and maybe 55 degrees at the steepest. After trying a bazilion different tricks to get flares grown out I have finally settled on the very simple solution of making sure the hoof is perfectly ballanced and being very careful not to change the new angle, in addition to a normal roll and following the sole at the quarters. Trying to rasp the flares off or roll more or "relieve the presure" just made the hoof weaker down the road .

Not sure what you mean by "what kind". But, in the areas of the flare, I would be beveling back to the edge of the white line. If it were some honkin' flaring, I'd go to the edge of the sole. If it's a minor flare, I'd do a very strong (ie steep) bevel to the edge of the water line/inner wall, maybe a smidge further. Maybe. But actually, with these quarters flaring like they are, I'd be more inclined to just scoop them.

and SOME QUARTER FLARES ARE NATURAL. The outside flare on a hind foot is perfectly normal. I have one mare whose bar, wall, sole and everything on the outside of one front foot sort of wing out wider and lower than the other side of the hoof. Makes for an awefull time ballancing (sharpies are very handy!) but it's related to an injury and no amount of rolling or rasping is going to make it match the steeper side. She's perfectly sound on anything.

Can you please explain your definition of a flare, and why you think some of them are normal? IME, no flaring is ever "normal", but then again, I define flaring as a stretching of the white line (the lamina), and that never leads to good things. Now, if a foot isn't symmetrical because of a conformational issue, with one half wider and more "flared" than the other, but no stretched white line, then that might indeed be normal and necessary for *that* foot. But that's not what I call a flare. And you can get that sort of "flare" by having an imbalance to start with - if the inner wall is higher, it will start to straighten and push the outer wall out, making it look "flared", and that is not normal or desirable either.

[Suzannah]

ACC, have you thought of asking your farrier to be more aggressive with toe length and flaring? Say something like, "I love what you're doing (small white lie), but I know how busy your schedule is, and they are growing so fast! I would love it if you could back the toe up/take the flare off a little more aggressively so she is completely comfortable for all five weeks." Butter him/her up a little. Slather on the honey. Watch flies alight.

Also, by far the easiest thing to start with (for me) was rasping from the top down. This website, http://www.ironfreehoof.com/, is very, very helpful. Look under "Trimming" and then "Trimming from the Top." She has a TON of good feet/bad feet pictures, and excellent, not tremendously convoluted, or overly technical explanation (which I didn't get at first, and I needed simple instructions to just get started, learning the degrees and percentages later). It takes time, and effort, but even if you are just trying to maintain it is very helpful!

[Dawn]

I have to just point out that I agree getting a good pair of gloves if you're going to start handling a rasp.

Not long after I started trimming my guys myself, I was at the barn (by myself) trimming Rusty. All of a sudden, there was blood gushing everywhere. In my state of extreme panic, I thought that I'd cut an artery on his leg. After a few frantic moments, I realized that the blood was coming from me. Now don't ask me how I managed to cut myself that badly with a rasp, but I did.

I had to go pick someone up. So I wrapped my hand in a washcloth, put pressure on it, and got in the car. (Yep, good idea to drive while you're losing large amounts of blood.) After several hours of keeping pressure on it, the bleeding slowed considerably, we doused it with peroxide. And I kept it bandaged for several weeks. If I'd had insurance, it would definately have warrented an ER visit and probably 5+ stitches. I've still got a very visible scar to remind me.

Now, that's not to scare you off learning how to use a rasp. It's to scare you into wearing good gloves

You're being faced with the situation that a lot of horse people are eventually faced with. The one that either causes you to start not caring what your horses' feet look like, or start doing them yourself. There simply is (from my experience) a severe shortage of qualified and caring hoof care professionals out there. It's doubly bad when you're located in such an equine oriented part of the country, and still don't have access to good pro's as a general rule.

I also love the site linked to in the post above mine. I don't follow that protocol 100% when I trim. But there is a lot of it behind what I do.

Some people learn best from reading, some from watching, some from listening, and some from doing. You have to know your own personal learning style, and use a combination of all of those things to best educate yourself.

[IIIBarsV]

Here are my "good feet"- they are on my 5 yr old barrel horse, and yes, she's running with those. (She ran a 22 in Poles last weekend, and other horses couldn't even hit a 23 at the same show). She does not slip, hasn't stumbled, or overreached. Sound on everything.

This is 24 hours post-trim. She is on a 4 week trim schedule.

Here's the album:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v1...e%2025%202008/

[Sheza_Angel]

Rasping can be scary without gloves. I learned it the hard way by not wearing a pair. The most I've done is even out a slight flare between trims, but it's still a good chance to cut yourself with the rasp. I second getting a pair of good 'ole gloves!

[DangerRanch]

Yeah, I post here some. I lurk a lot more than I post though

I know where you are comming from JB because I have been there. And I have abandoned it as causing a lot more harm than good.

The difference in arguement here would be wether you want a natural trim or a barefoot trim that is based on some vague ideas of how to fix problems (same boat as shoeing really). The natural trim allows the horse to grow a good hoof by takeing off what a horse would wear off on his own, the same way the wild horse gets their super feet.

Rolling back to the white line or sole or thinning the wall too much is in violation of the wild model( what a horse would wear on his own)

OK flare.... there are 3 differerent things that can be called flare.
1. a thick spot on the hoof wall
2. the wall separated from the sole by a gap where the white line should be or a laminar wedge
3. "belling" where there is what looks like a flare from the top (the quarter wall apears to curve outward) but there is no gap or wedge.

In the context above I was using it in both the last senses because they end up being trimmed the same. The first one is the only thing that requires extra work as the wall is too thick and needs to be "worn" to the same thickness as the rest. So natural flare doesn't have the gap or wedge, we're on the same page there. Overgrown, compacted sole can give the illusion of a gap when there really is none though, also some unatural flare the sole is displaced and growing foreward at too low an angle and there will be no gap or wedge visible on the bottom. Which is just fine with me because I trim it all the same Wall down to just above sole and rolled to the outside edge of the water line and well sanded.

Perhaps the hardest part of the aanhcp trim to get into my thick skull was "Ignore all Pathology". But really, it works. All that is required for the hoof to grow correctly is to have excess growth taken off and the diet and environment naturalized. The trim is the easy part and when you stop trying to think you know better than the horse things go a whole lot smoother.


Maybe I should give an example of why I will never thin the wall less than the natural thickness again. Also a disclaimer that transition from backing up a flared toe to letting it down again is VERY VERY ugly at the outset, but it must be done.
This horse's wall was headed out into space from the hairline down when I got him. He was trimmed really well for a few years but at far too long intervals so he never really improved. Then I had the brilliant idea to trim him myself with instuctions from the internet help from a local barefoot trimmer.
"Back up the wall to the white line"
Great idea!()
Several months in and I was continually chasing that wall. But I was stubborn and sure that that had to be done. I didn't even realize that dumping him on the sole is what was causing the frequent painfull abscessing.
Then the splits showed up, dead center on the toe.
What to do???!
"Relieve pressure" - So keep on with the backing up.
Stubborn, stubborn split and stubborn stubborn flare and stubborn stubborn me.
Then through a combination of events (talking to a very experienced trimmer, getting ahold of the aanhcp guidelines, and an excellent article in The Horses Hoof) it dawned on me that maybe I was going about it all wrong and had caused the splits. Obviously the thing to help with the splits wasn't going to be keeping at what had caused them!
So he started getting an aanhcp trim. And as I had been warned something very ugly happened allong with something beautiful.
The wall that he had grown in during the agressive trim was junk, weak stuff that continued to split for a long time. But when I finally let it stay active on the ground and started trimming to the healing angle I got my first sight of straight line growth ever. It started growing down and I couldn't wait for the new growth to get down and end the split.
Then one day a large chunk broke off around the split. The only thing to explain that is that the wall there was pure garbage, just a cruddy gap with a thin shell of outer wall, eaten away by bacteria. The straight line growth continues, the thin wall broke back once more right to the edge of the good growth and the split and all has stopped dead at the junction. the new growth is full thickness.
It will be on the ground in 2-3 months.
I am extemely happy despite the break looking awfull, 2 inches already of straight line growth and the only abscess he's had since I let the wall down is a tiny one from bruising his frog on a rock. He wasn't even lame and the only reason I know at all is the little busting out spot on his heel bulb.

OK back the AAC's horses
If she is gimpy just walking on the rocks you want to make sure she has no thrush and get her as much exercise as possible on what she can handle. All my horse that ride on gravel grow enough sole around the frog so that it is protected in a shallow "canyon" (the top of the frog is level with the sole or only slightly protruding). This is hard sole build up that comes with conditioning, not dirty old growth.

The reason I would argue frog tenderness rather than pain from flares is simple:
If flares were causing the pain than the horse would be more lame on a hard flat surface suck as concrete or pavement when the hoof is periferally loaded on the wall. You would expect the horse to be LESS lame on gravel where a lot of the load is born by the center of the hoof. When in fact the horse that is lame on gravel is often fine on a flat surface. So it is the center of the foot that hurts, not the edge.
Going back to my gelding, he would have taken a whole minute per step to negotiate a gravel drive when his flared were backed up while now he can at least walk comfortably on it. I just killed the thrush in his frog while soaking for the splits (trying to keep the bacteria in check untill the junk is gone) and I can see the sole starting to look good and healthy now that it isn't forced to deal with abscesses and too much weight.



An extra note as I mentioned earlier, the trim is only part of getting a natural hoof. If you continue to have problems like a flared toe or abscessing or a flat sole you need to evaluate the diet and any medications, wormers, vacines and such. Sometimes a reaction to any of those can thwart your best trimming efforts by continually disrupting the laminar connection. I tend to avoid corn, molases or complicated comercial mixtures(most of which have both anyway lol).


Ouch, sorry. never let me at the keyboard this late at night. I talk too much. Tell me on the head if I said anything stupid...

[accphotography]

Too tired to cipher through all that now, but I just wanted to tell you they are on 24/7 turnout on lush grass and 1lb (yes I know the minimum is 1.5lbs) of Triple Crown 30%. They both look and act fantastic... to me. :-) I don't have them on any types of supplements or anything. They get wormed every 6-8 weeks and we alternate between panacur and ivermectin.

Ok... you've seen the pics. Does she look thrushy to you? Beth doesn't see or smell it, nor do I. Should I Clean Trax her anyway? I really would like to understand why she's lame on these rocks.

Will think more on this... not now... lmao.

ACC