Trixie

"My mare is foundered ... "

March 26 , 2010

Trixie is a Foxtrotter mare I've been trimming since September 2009. I have trimmed her a total of four times on a six week schedule. When I first met her she had large flares in the toe and quarters with heels that were also needing to be lowered. I always did my normal trim but never really felt like there were any serious abnormalities. The only feeling I had was that Trixie was overweight but with her age never thought that she may be metabolically challenged.

Trixie's owner, Susan, commented this last trim in early March that she had a young girl come and work with her in the round pen. The next day Trixie was lame but Susan thought that maybe she just had sore muscles from not being worked in a long time. Previous to this Susan was out of town and a barn door was left open and the horses helped themselves to some alfalfa cubes. This probably added insult to injury. She has been tender-footed for the past month.

Now after consulting with Dr. Mikos at Blair Doon Veterinary and seeing the x-rays taken we believe that Trixie may be insulin resistant and has foundered as a result of this. The rotation could have happened quite a long time ago and Trixie has just lived with it with occassional lameness. Its quite puzzling because there really aren't any significant rings on the hoofwall indicating laminitis. The veterinarian thought that the lameness may have been navicular pain because of how her hooves are shaped but upon further examination and x-ray discovered that the degree of rotation is close to 10 degrees. The other clue that completes the puzzle is the puffiness in the eye orbital area. Today is was very puffy and swelled out away from her head. So a grazing muzzle is on the way that she will need to wear a large percentage of the time until her weight drops to a reasonable number. Her diet will be greatly modified with brome changed to prairie hay and no more sweet feed or alfalfa treats.

Here are the x-rays taken yesterday. I am glad I was able to obtain these since now I am able to see how much further I am able to bring the toe back. There is adequeate sole depth. The heel is not extremely tall but it can be slowly lowered over the next several trims. I plan to take it down as the hoof allows me. My initial plan is to bring that toe back.

The initial dorsal wall angle is 30 degrees on the left hoof. The right is 35 degrees.

This is the dorsal view of before and after the trim. On the left is before trim where you can see the large mustang roll I always put on the hoof. Notice how base-wide the hoof is. I was hoping over time as I continue to roll the walls this would reduce. In the beginning Trixie did have toe cracks as evidenced by a remaining slight crack in the middle of the dorsal wall. It was stress induced from having too long of a toe. In the after trim picture you can see how radically I brought back

This view is where you can see the changes I was able to make. I aggressively brought the toe back. I did take away a bit of the heel also but nothing extreme. I put my protractor on these two pictures and in one trim the dorsal wall angle relative to the ground changed 5 degrees. The toe wall is steeper now than it was. However the hairline angle is now sloping down to the ground at the heel moreso than it was befor the trim because I was able to lower the heel slightly. No huge change really to all angles involved but this trim changed the overall shape of the hoof and reduced the leverage on the toe since the wall is not so long.

The heel view shows how I slightly lowered the walls. A bit of frog on the right side of the heel is blocking the view of the heel but you can see that I have lowered them.

The oblique view shows there's a lot of bar material the popped up in two weeks time. I always clean out the bar but in Trixie's case it came right back up to support the area of the hoof that needed it. I cleaned it out with my knife and lowered the heels. There is a slight bruising in the heel indicating they have been too longl.

The solar view shows a hoof with a lot of excess sole material with overgrown bars. I was pretty conservative forward of the apex of the frog. I don't want to take away any sole material and allow that area to become weak. I just barely scratched over that area and cleaned the dirt off. I did clean out the bar beside the frog and tapered the bars down. The frog did look a bit diseased so I trimmed away the neucrotic areas. I brought the toe back by using the trim from the top technique but decided against rockering the toe too much this trim until I could study my pictures more and ask questions.

This picture of Trixie's head shows her swelling above the eye indicating high sugar levels. The second picture shows how she constantly tells us that her hooves hurt her. She has always done this but we thought she was just being a bit defiant. I think once her hooves improve her who demeanor will improve as well.

Her is Trixie after the trim with Susan. I had her walk around and she did show marked improvement right after the trim. She is even standing a little better but still has her knee bent in the front. I go back to trim Trixie again in two weeks.