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Linda Cowles Hoof Care - Serving the greater SF Bay Area and Northern California

Paradigm

Navicular Success Story

10 year old Arab gelding

I remember the day Paradigm's owner first called me. I was driving and as she started explaining her story, I pulled off the road so that I could focus on what she was telling me.

Paradigm had started showing signs of lameness, her vet felt it might be navicular, and she took him to UC Davis for a soundness work up.

Davis took x-rays and found navicular changes. They said that corrective shoeing might help but that the long term prognosis wasn't good, and eventually she should consider retiring him or having him nerved.

Cindy loves this boy very much, so after a lot of thought, she decided to contact me to see if I thought I could get him pasture sound so she could retire him.

I assured her that he was young, and that I couldn't guarantee anything, but that I had gotten several long term navicular horses sound again and that there was a good chance he would be sound for riding, too.

She said fine, but she really didn't expect that, that she didn't want to nerve him or put him down, and really just wanted to get him comfortable again.

ASSESSMENT

When I met the two of them, I noticed that Paradigm definitely had a toe-first landing. She hadn't opted for special shoeing so he was still in keg shoes, (pictures to the left) but his heels were landing far forward on the shoes.

I pulled his shoes I was shocked; his feet looked fine. I did a very basic trim, rockering his heels, beveling the wall at the base and clearing the soft shedding sole and frog,,, he was a little contracted, but had good wall, good frogs and a great heel buttress. His concavity was super. He had a very mild case of thrush.

In the picture below, the right fore (on the left) is untrimmed, and the left fore (on the right) is trimmed.

Untrimmed right forefoot

Trimmed right forefoot