Kid 

"Like Mother, like son... "

Dec 26 , 2008

Kid is See Me's son, a six year old quarter horse gelding also owned by Dottie. Kid's hooves are very similar to See Me's and had no real problems. The hooves look like I really didn't have to trim very much off at all. I did balance all parts of the hoof using the TFTT as well as balancing the heels and making sure the walls were all rolled nicely.

Kid's hooves are in remarkable shape after six weeks. You can see that some heel needs to be lowered and the walls shortened all the way around. The frog is nice and robust and do not apear to have any thrush in it. The ground where they pasture in has soft ground and it has been cold in the teens and twenties the last couple of weeks.

Kid's dorsal view after the trim doesn't look much different than the picture before the trim. I didn't have anything solid and flat to put his hoof on to take this picture. The picture is also not dead straight on either. Just poor picture taking on that one. The heels were lowered down to the seats of the corn just a 1/16 above the sole plane. The frog looks a little pinched in the heel buttress area but I think it will continue to spread as the heels are kept low. The cleft is open which is good.

This lateral view doesn't look much different than the picture before the trim other than the heels looking a little lower. Kid's hooves are in very good shape....we plan to keep them that way! The lateral view that shows the frog and oblique view shows the concavity of the hoof in the solar area. The bars are sticking up a little but I believe this is due to the snow we've had recently and the hoof trying to support itself better in the heel. I like to leave the bars alone unless they are laid over or higher than the walls/heels.

The oblique view also shows the nice concavity of the sole and how well the wall connection is. The frogs are very healthy and I did trim a few flaps off where the heel junction was pinching it. The solar view shows the bars and how they stretch over and blend into the collateral grooves by the frog. There is some small surface cracks of the sole to the right of the frog apex but I think this is normal exfoliation.

Kid's left hind hoof had an injury to the coronet band when he was a foal that creates a crack in his outside quarter. The first time I saw Kid there were two parallel cracks down the wall and they were about 1/16th open. Now since the last trim, the crack that is closer to the toe is tightly fitted together and will hopefully grow down to eventually eliminate the crack. The crack that is closest to the heel where the initial injury existed is no longer separated but actually pushed together and trying to overlap somewhat. How I treat this problem is to make the wall passive in this area so that the pressure from the wall hitting the ground won't spread the crack further apart. So far this has worked and Dottie thought that in time it may just grow down without the crack. I hope she's right. I will keep a close eye on this and continue treating it the same way until it all grows out. I think by bringing the toes back and decreasing the breakover at the toe as well as lowering the heels has reduced the stress in the quarters and allowed these cracks to come back together.

For a better comparison of the before and after differences here are side-by-side shots: