HealthyHoof.com

Hoofcare & Information for Barefoot Soundness

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

Rosey

Club Foot Turn Around

5/22/2008 - Remove Shoes & Setup Trim

8/12/2008 - Wall Flare --->>> Tight Wall Connection
11/26/2008 & 5/12/2009 - Making Progress
7/21/2009 & 8/11/2009 - Major Changes!
11/3/2009 - Real Results 18 Months Later

Also On This Page:

What Are Club Feet?
Club Foot Management
My Approaches for Re-Balancing
Toe Wedges
Why Not Wedge Pads & Shoes?
Resolving Asymmetry Naturally
Dealing With Club Feet & Thrush

November, 2009

Rosey was a four year old Al Marah bred gelding when he trotted into the hearts of his owners, Jennifer & Robin, in 2008. Jennifer was so taken by him that she bought him in spite of his unbalanced feet, figuring that I could easily fix them.

Jennifer saw him in Tucson AZ, fell in love, and came back to Northern California to fetch Robin and the rig to bring him home.

Their good friend, Diana, an equine body worker, took one look at the feet and asked the rhetorical question "Can you return him?"

I heard that before I even saw the feet! At the time, Diana was VERY skeptical about barefoot having seen many horses who were sore on all four feet from being over-trimmed. I had been waiting for an opportunity to work with Diana, or at least demonstrate what I could do to her... would I get my chance?

When I first met Rosey, I was naturally struck by his young-Arab beauty... he's a sweet horse, easy to handle and very gentle and willing. As my gaze hit his feet, however, I was stunned... how could feet on a 4YO be that out of balance??!

His right front foot with its extreme under slung heel was almost an inch longer than his left club foot! While the club foot looked tall, the right was the foot that would be changing the most.

About this case study...

Some very odd things happened with Rosey's feet as the months went on due to his Before and After Diet... he arrived a thin skinned youngster out of a show barn. His club foot looked laminitic, almost foundered, and the amount of wall flair in the right front also reminded me of horses with laminitis.

His right front, the long toed/ under slung heeled white foot, was the hoof I focused on, not the club foot on the left. The under run heel persisted for months and still is not completely resolved. I wish I has X-rays of both feet so that I could see the differences between one coffin bone and the other!

As new tighter wall grew out in June, July and August, the differences between his old wall and the emerging tight wall were exaggerated. The old wall looks puffy and bloated. The more I learn, the more questions I have.

Taking shoes off and trimming

I'm conservative when I take shoes off, and in this case I beveled the heel on the club foot and brought the toe back on the low heeled foot. It was a tense time, but Robin and the dog gave me an all-out-effort keeping the mood relaxed as I worked....

When examining these feet I made notes that the walls had been thinned during shoeing and to try to bring the toe back.

What Are Club Feet?

I see two types of club feet. Most club feet I see are in horses whose neck-length to leg-length ratios result in the horse having to stretch their legs far apart to graze, and they develop a habit of putting one foot forward and the other foot back. The foot that is always put forward ends up with a low heel and long toe, the foot that goes back ends up with a taller heel. This ratio of leg to neck length starts in-utero, so the babies come out balanced and but start changing over time. If a horse has had a chronic high heel, the coffin bones on both front feet change to accommodate their differences.

The other time I see club feet is when there is a shortened tendon, an injury, or severe thrush.

Club feet result in imbalance throughout the body... the implications of imbalance are relative to the degree of difference. Severe imbalance results in one shoulder being higher than the other. This can cause significant saddle fit problems.

Club Foot Management

Sorry for the shadows on the pictures... I sometimes get so focused on feet that I don't "see" the photo. I have had a lot of luck getting heels to be closer to the same size, even when the horse is older.

My own club-footed Arab, Shatirr, was a saddle fitters nightmare for years. When still shoeing my horses, I had high-heel / low-heel experts Dr Kerry Ridgway DVM and Moses Gonzales work with him, and the wedges and shoeing didn't make a difference so I stopped it.

Taking him barefoot, I was able to keep him balanced, initially by trimming the club foot on a 3 week cycle, then moving to 5 weeks, but he goes out of balance easily. At 26 years of age, Shatirr's current job is to be trimmed by trimming Trainees, giving them a chance to trim club feet.

These pictures are of Rosey after his first trim. The difference in their angles are obvious. The feature that concerned me the most was the dramatic arc in the coronet band and the under-run heel, below;

My Approaches to Balancing

I suggest that clients make changes in how they manage club footed horses to see if we can get the feet balanced.

One technique is to create a feeder which forces the horse to stand square as they eat. These are typically a corner feeder that includes a solid piece of plywood that extends straight to the ground. Frequent trimming (every 2 to 3 weeks) helps keep club heels low and long toes short. The third technique, toe wedges, is shown below.

Toe Wedges

Toe Wedges can help reverse club foot conformation if you are really persistent AND consistent! What I do with Toe Wedges is take a 2 to 4 degree wedge pad, trim it so that the wedge is under the toe, the opposite of normal wedging. Owners to use two or three strips of brightly colored duct tape to temporarily tape this wedge on the club foot at meal times. The taped pad falls off in an hour or so, or as soon as the horse makes a sudden stop, start or turn. Yes, its hard to do this in wet climates! Not impossible, though. I use bright duct tape to help locate the wedge when it falls off.

Why wedge the clubby toe? Clubby horses put the long toe hoof forward as they eat, and the club foot goes back. When the club foots toe is wedged up, it's more comfortable to place that foot forward, changing the habitual eating behavior as well as the pressures on P3 in both feet.

The guy at the right is the Key to this working. He, or one of his fellow horse feeders, are the saints who take these wedges on, and are usually the wedge finders when they come off. He also has helped keep Rosey's long toe back by trimming it in between my regular trims.

The pictures to the left show how this horses "toe wedges" were taped on... again, they are meant to stay on a short time, an hour or so, to encourage the horse to balance his own body, use both sides the same way.

In Rosey's case, it appears to have worked.

Why Not Wedge Pads & Shoes?

I have taken a dozen horses out of shoes who were shod by a local farrier who made a name for himself internationally by shimming heels to change shoulder angles in order to make horses saddles fit.

If you look at the shoulder pictured below, taken of Rosey on July 21, 2009, you will notice the asymmetry. The club foot is on the left, the low heel is on the right. When we started the asymmetry. was MUCH worse... I foolishly didn't take the picture, though.

So when I took the shoes and wedges off these horses shod to resolve imbalances, I noticed a few things. First, the heels were extremely low on the feet that had been wedged, they gave me the impression that P3 had actually remodeled, adapting to the wedge by decalcifying. I talked to several researchers interested in this area and was told that bone that is putting pressure on the circumflex artery will decalcify to remove the pressure.

Resolving Asymmetry. Naturally

The picture to the left shows Rosey standing "square" with his wedged left foot still slightly forward. Over time, this along with regular trimming, has played a part in his rehab.

In the pictures below, you can see Rosey carrying more weight on his clubby left foot in the angle of his shoulder as well in his biceps; his right biceps is more relaxed. When we started, the differences between his shoulders and chest were much more exaggerated.

When we check these horses digital cushions, the one on the club foot is thicker, denser...

I may try casting and padding the "long toe" foot to see what happens.

Dealing With Club Feet & Thrush

I trimmed 4 years for a client with a stallion who had an extreme club foot, as extreme as Rosey's but with much more heel contraction. I began trimming his very clubby yearling son at the same time.

A while later, a daughter was born, and I got to watch her develop. While built like the son, because we trimmed her from birth, her feet stayed very similar until she starting gaining weight and got severe thrush as a 18 month old. From that point on, the thrushier foot became a much clubbier foot. This owner insisted on feeding oat and grain hays and feeding many extras like lots of cookies, apples and carrots. Her clubby stallion stayed clubby and contracted no matter what I did, and because of his diet and management, he always had extremely bad thrush in that clubby foot,

The son that was started as a yearling developed a better shape, and his heel angle changed with the amount of thrush in his foot.

Diet is always important... Rosey's feet had "out of control diet" written all over them prior to his being bought by these folks... his diet is excellent now. A good diet won't reverse a club foot, but it may help transition it to a better shape..