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RE: [RC] feeling depressed about underrun heels - Mary Krauss

Thanks for all the replies, public and private, to my whine about Leo's feet. I should have clarified a couple of things: 1) we've been trying to go slowly and let the foot come into its own through careful trimming--for two years! He wasn't handled enough to handle shoeing or riding for a long time--came to me as an untrained adult so we've been going slowly there too. His feet looked better but his first outing proved otherwise. Nerve blocks and a set of excellent x- rays later, we set about trying shoes. The farrier's been moving Leo's breakover back for a long time. Long toes are NOT the problem. In fact, his feet are now shorter than they are wide. (He naturally has a pretty round foot.) The vet said his biggest problem is that "he has no foot". There's very little sole between his coffin bone and the ground.

After seeing his x-rays, I finally got why pads and wedges would help. They would relieve every part of the structure. However, the farrier quite wisely said that "the problem with vets is that they don't deal with behavior. I have to shoe this horse for the next 20 years. If we make him stand here while I mess around with pads, we'll lose all the behavioral ground we've won so far." He also felt that the pads themselves would weaken the sole we'd been working so hard to "toughen" or "grow" or whatever barefoot life does for the foot. All that sounded convincing, so no pads. But then he also said wedged shoes wouldn't be any good--can't remember why exactly-- but much of the farrier literature out there agrees with him. When I asked, "so exactly what part of the vet's advice ARE we following then?" the farrier grinned and said, "well, we're putting shoes on him!" The shoes are not set back at all, again for rational sounding reasons. Leo has a terrifically short back and very long legs--he whacks himself a lot. Leo's been interfering less and less under this guy's care, but the farrier feels he still might yank his shoe off with a back foot and cause a real mess. He says he'll keep moving the shoe back as we go. All of this sounds reasonable.

Until I ran into a competent-looking endurance rider on the trail the other day.... She said quite cheerily, "oh, my friend had a horse with feet just like your horse's. Dr. Bryant (same vet) worked with {name of different farrier}--they used pads and wedges and fixed him right up in about 6 weeks!" I smiled outwardly and went away seething inwardly.

OK, here's the whine: How the heck could I have looked for a horse for over a year only to fall in love with this mess? *sigh* I want a horse that works. First Salima came up arthritic (grew old while I was busy having babies), then Bruiser developed EPSM. Now Leo has crappy feet. Benny the pony is great but kinda' unappealing as a partner--way too phlegmatic. I don't remember any of my horses having all this trouble when I was a kid/young adult. Whine, whine, whine.

A bit of good news--horsebuddy who came by today says she thinks I'm too close to the issue to see that Leo's feet are improving. Hmmmm. More good news, three of you mentioned Epona shoes which look like a really great option. I think they might even be the "interesting" shoes my farrier mentioned a bit ago. Gonna' call him tomorrow. Thanks ridecampers!

Mary K.



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