Riddler 

"I just want my horses feet to look better... "

March 21 , 2009

I met Riddler's owner, Loren, through Dottie when he came over to check out the work I was doing for her horses. He said he was having trouble having a farrier come out on a regular basis and his horse's hooves were cracking and flaring really bad. I told him I would go over to see what I could do later on that afternoon.

Riddler is a 6-year TB grandson of Seattle Slew. He is 17 hands and is a pretty big boy. This first picture is before the trim and he didn't really want his picture taken. He wasn't this way for the trim...but I wanted to show he just wasn't happy about his hooves. He's kind of standing camped up underneath himself here also. As I went around to the hind hooves I did find that he had a lot of frog that needed to be trimmed away so I think that alleviated that issue.

This dorsal view shows a very large overgrown hoof that is breaking and self-trimming. The hoof is very flared as most TB hooves are if they are not properly maintained. The after trim picture shows a much smaller hoof with a nice rolled wall. There is still quite a bit of flare especially on the lateral side of the hoof in the quarter area. As it relaxes it won't appear quite a prominent. Some of that wall isoff the ground a bit but will relax in a few days as the foot gets used to its new shape.

The lateral view shows a hoof that needs the toe rolled back and the quarter relieved. In the after trim picture you can now see there is quite a bit of quarter relief (almost too much) but as the hoof relaxes over the next couple of days, Riddler will be walking on a much different looking foot than before. The heel was taken down some but only to bring the heels back to the buttress of the hoof.

The heel view shows just the small bit of heel that needed to be trimmed. I did not take it all the way down but left a bit of heel there to support this large horse's weight. His front hooves also showed a bit of bruising in the heel area telling me that the toes were too long and were forcing him to use his heel more than he should. And now that I look at the pictures closer I believe the bruising is from the flaring at the heels as well.

The oblique view shows a very large amount of wall that has to be removed and rolled back to the white line. The frog was pretty tattered this trim and I did nipper some of the edges and tags but there will probably be more work to do on it the next trim. On the after trim picture you can see that I rolled the wall back into the white line. There is still an enormous amount of flare left to remove from this hoof but that will have to wait for another day. If I were to take the flares away all in one trim I would be weakening the walls and that would be very counterproductive.

The sole view of before the trim shows crushed heels that are trying to run forward and a very large flare on the medial side of the hoof. The bars are laying flat to the sole. So in the after trim view you can see that I rolled the walls and also took back the heels to the heel buttress. Both heels don't match at this time because of the initial imbalances but as trimming progresses this issues should disappear. I also trimmed the bars this trim since they were laid over. I have a feeling they will be right back standing up tall for the next trim.

Here is Riddler after the trim. He is very magestic. Notice his expression is much happier and his stance is more out behind him now. We led him over a small path of gravel and he was not gimpy at all. I think with a few more trims he ought to be just fine.