In this, the third of a series of three promised articles – about no topic in particular! –, I shall be looking at the follies of the farrier.
What do I mean by that? Farriers consider themselves charged with treating ailments of the legs and feet – indeed, may jurisdictions consider that to be the case too. The strange part is that the farrier is not trained in medicine (a vet may be trained in farriery but that is another proposition), and yet he has a statute accorded no other lay person except in emergencies. This aberration has lead to a wide variety of misconceptions and poorly thought out actions practised daily in the ‘art’. That these actions are often sanctioned and rarely questioned by that group of professionals that should know better – the veterinary surgeons – is even more incredible.
Here are three cases where ‘the farrier knew better’!
- Chios
At 21, not the youngest of horses, Chios had been shod from very early on in his life. At the moment I encountered him, the farrier had been shoeing him with a special kind of shoe on the front right hoof.
Here we see the adaptation made by the farrier, for reasons unknown to the owner! The ‘heels’ have been flattened out over a large area and we see also that the hoof appears to be considerably wider than its left counterpart (the view retains the position of the shoes relative to each other thus the right shoe is on the left).
That the owner does not know the reason for such an adaptation always amazes me – I would always want to know why somebody had done something outside the norm; but on reflection, those brought up in a traditional riding school environment are very often discouraged from asking questions…
On examining the horse, it was found that the front right heel was underrun, while the front left was normal. It is worth pointing out here that at least the farrier had only applied his ‘treatment’ to the one affected hoof, and not both; this is often not the case as we shall see later on.
At first glance, it would appear to many that the farrier was being astute by putting into place some sort of support for a hoof that is clearly not as it should be. All the more so when I recall the view of a major Dutch horse trainer that one of his horses had ‘low heels’ when they were clearly very seriously underrun and the resident farrier had done nothing about them. However, underrun heels do not require protective orthotics, they require active intervention to draw the level of the heel back to its correct location under the back of the hoof and here the actions of the farrier were seriously lacking. This seems to be a regular occurrence that rather than to actually intervene and eliminate the problem altogether, the farrier prefers to ‘protect’ the hoof while maintaining the status quo.
Chios is currently at three months post de-shoeing and just six weeks since beginning actively to bring the heel back to its correct location and yet the improvements are already visible.
- Nikola
When I first met Nikola, he was ten years old. His owners are an Italian couple living on the outskirts of Brussels and they have had Nikola since he was three. A Freiburger, he is not the lightest of horses but Nikola’s general physical condition was good when I first saw him, however, he had been limping badly and ‘navicular syndrome’ had been diagnosed. As usual, the whole panoply of tricks had been called upon by the farrier but all this and four visits to equine specialist clinics had only resulted in relieving the discomfort for short periods. Each time, the problems rapidly returned and by the time I saw him, Nikola was clearly a depressed horse. There was no spark in him and everything seemed an effort.
The latest treatment was not really any more than a displacement of the shoe from the previous intervention by the farrier but the most remarkable in my eyes was the application. Navicular syndrome had only been diagnosed in the front right leg and yet the farrier had applied exactly the same treatment to both front legs!
My standard de-shoeing technique is to remove the rear shoes first, wait a week to ten days for the horse to acclimatize and then remove the front shoes. I proposed this technique to the owners but the husband immediately went into animated discussion with his wife who explained – or rather implored – that I should remove all the shoes now. The husband could no longer bear to see his horse depressed like this and, although it may be difficult at first, he would prefer his horse uncomfortable and recovering rather than depressed and waiting.
The initial de-shoeing was uneventful and Nikola managed the first couple of weeks with little or no problem – and his depression was lifting with every day; clearly any discomfort he may have been suffering without shoes was better than the discomfort with. He was being taken for short periods of exercise on the tarmac roads to help toughen up his hoofs and this he seemed to relish too.
But then the problems hit… A few days after my third visit, Nikola refused to move. I did not find out until my next visit when I asked what they had done… Apparently almost literally drag him out and around the roads for a ten-minute walk every day. For eleven days… I had warned that he might have some difficult moments but to bite the bullet and keep him moving. This they did religiously and on the twelfth day Nikola felt well enough to go for his exercise without being dragged.
Interestingly, Nikola also suffered from an untreated underrun heel which we very rapidly managed to bring under control. And he has gone from strength to strength. His exercise became long rides in the forests around Brussels and his owner reports back that Nikola is a completely different horse; he is no longer tired after a short canter – nor even a long canter –, he shows no signs of depression, just curiosity (he loves going past the shops and attracting attention…) and his navicular syndrome? The question is really whether it ever existed as such. It is really a catch-all term for limping horses with no clear diagnosis. X-ray photographs are open to all sorts of interpretation and it seems that anything unclear in a diagnosis will be explained away by the merest foggy trace of nothingness on an X-ray photograph.
- Maréchalerie Collange
About six years ago, I came across a film by the French farrier Jean-Michel Collange about his treatment of a split in a hoof-wall. I was struck by three things in particular by this film (apart from Collange’s apparent pride at being so innovative).
Firstly, a lack of realization of why there was a split;
Secondly the method being used to ‘correct’ this split which itself weakens the hoof-wall and, still, does not attend to the initial cause of the problem;
Thirdly the need to hide everything as if the hoof is completely normal.The video is ten minutes long – you may wish to speed it up in places…
Taking these points one at a time:
- If we look closely at the video, we can possibly identify the split as rising from a clinch-hole. This would suggest that the hoof-wall has been damaged from below and it is quite probable that this split actually extends right down to the bottom of the hoof-wall and could be extrapolated to a now non-existent clinch-hole, one that has long grown out. Whatever the case, our farrier must be dealing with a split that rises from the ground upwards. If he is dealing with a split that descends from the crown, then he is not only deceiving the owner, he is deceiving himself. Descending splits can only be resolved by surgical intervention where an attempt is made to repair damage to the crown itself.
- The correct way to deal with rising splits, is to relieve the hoof-wall of excess pressure around the contact-point of the hoof with the ground. A simple v-shaped cut will suffice and should generally need repeating on no more than two successive occasions in a period of 12 to 16 weeks. The split itself is not dangerous to the horse and very rarely goes more than a few millimetres deep, it is therefore an absolute nonsense to start routing out grooves in the hoof-wall – creating potential new weak points – tapping in clinches, which always risk entering soft tissue, and wiring together the split. If it is such a dangerously large and flexible split, the relatively fine wire used by Collange will hardly be sufficient to hold the hoof together under full strain (a horse at gallop creates over 20kJ of kinetic energy which has to be partially absorbed by the hoof at impact).
- Collange finishes off his masterwork by applying a mould and injecting resin. Once cured he then rasps the resin neatly to the form of the hoof. This gives the hoof the appearance of being unadulterated, particularly when, after a few days, the resin will have adopted the colour of the hoof, and is – no doubt – to please the eye of the now proud and happy owner. However, from a truly professional point of view, it would be greatly preferable to be able to access the ‘repair’ to ensure its integrity and to allow replacement of the wire if needed.
A carry over from the military era, correcting the conformation of a horse by the application of shoes continues to this day. Unfortunately, by the time the horse receives its first horseshoes, the growth plates – or more correctly centres of ossification – in the leg bones have long hardened and the conformation of the limbs is already decided…and fixed. If we now apply torsion to the leg in an attempt to ‘correct’ the conformation, all we are doing is increasing the stresses placed upon the joints.
By no means an absolute rule, but it is notable that the majority of injuries and the majority of early deaths (before 20) are in shod horses. To be absolutely clear, this does not exclude completely the unshod, and does not include all the shod – exceptions abound (Red Rum was thirty when he died; Aldaniti twenty-six…) and the emphasis is on early death, not on longer lives and exceptions. We should not be questioning the statement, we should be questioning the risk. Yes, even shod horses can get past twenty-five; yes even unshod horses can die or have to be put down at fifteen… but the risk of injury increases with shoeing and there lies our question.
An interesting aside to this point, many trimmers – frequently schooled in the now well-known, often American, schools of barefoot trimming – also see a necessity in correcting conformation. This is no doubt a throwback to the origins of their instruction, many of these schools being run by former – or in some cases, still practising – farriers. if we consider the situation scientifically, we will realize that this is a pointless practice. If we are able to ‘correct’ the angle of the hoof-wall with a few simple passes of a rasp using our relatively feeble muscles, what effect is several hundred kilogrammes of horse walking a couple of hundred metres on a hard surface going to do to this bit of keratinous nail???
An area where farriers are very often loathe to intervene is the ‘double’ or false sole. Surprisingly, the internet talks only of the hard false sole seen during the summer months. This is not truly a false sole being more a calcic layer rather than a keratinous growth. This summer sole is fairly innocuous, often creating an effective barrier against hard arid ground, and chips off relatively easily – at least through wear by the horse itself. Not to say that this layer never causes problems but it poses less than the keratinous false sole.
The false sole we are concerned with appears mostly in wetter periods of the year. It is essentially the result of insufficient hoof maintenance – often allied to insufficient wear – but can surprise even the most conscientious of hoof care specialist. The part of the hoof-wall that returns to run parallel with the frog, forming the lateral grooves, can grow flattened over the sole and this growth can at times be missed even at the most scrupulous inspection. When this happens, the bar grows out and forwards covering the entire underside of the hoof. It is this second layer of overgrown bar that is known as the false sole.
Forming an anaerobic region, the ideal environment for the proliferation of bacteria such as Fusobacterium necrophorum is created. F. necrophorum is a ‘carrion’ bacterium feeding upon dead tissue; however, in the absence of dead tissue, it will feed on any other tissue it encounters, in this case the encapsulated sole. The sole is not living tissue (nor is it dead tissue being as it is a keratinous epidermal extrusion) but this does not protect it. F. necrophorum will etch away at the surface, thinning and softening this part of the hoof capsule and making the sole much more sensitive.
Theoretically, overgrown bars should be relatively simple to correct. In practice, the situation is less simple. In many cases, the farrier when confronted with the problem prefers not to intervene and suggests calling the vet. This reticence arises due to the farrier knowing the probable—initial—outcome of his intervention – a footy horse; he fears getting the blame, despite his intervention not being the root cause, and he therefore refers the owner to a vet. The vet, upon seeing the overgrown bars, similarly will not intervene because he considers it the job of the farrier.
That the horse is liable to be footy, is unavoidable. But it is essential to intervene. In fact, a farrier that does not intervene could be considered professionally incompetent and guilty of malpractice. If there is no intervention, then the damage being caused to the underlying sole will continue leading to considerable discomfort even without intervention and the probable development of abscesses making treatment yet more difficult and prolonged.
The farrier needs to swallow his pride, explain the situation clearly and just get on with the job.
The owner need to understand that this is something that can happen from time to time, that must be treated and that the horse will have a period of discomfort. The farrier should also explain clearly how to pass through this period – essentially frequent short walks, building up from 10 minutes at time to as long as the horse can keep going…
Once again, food for thought. Sadly, none of this is made up; it all comes from real-life situations. And it will continue to feature in real-life situations for years to come. Education enriches us and yet many feel that tradition is more important than education. ‘We have always done it that way, and we will continue to do it that way…’
No questions asked!