Hooves, more hooves!!!

This is more trimming pictures of Dandy. I'll do two feet today... since the other front looks a lot like yesterday's post... but here we go!So... this is Dandy's left front foot before trimming. It is a little long, but it looks good overall. The frog is nice, wide and healthy, no thrush in sight. She had a bout with thrush this summer when the weather was so wet and humid that the horses never got dry land to step on. Quickly cured it with a home recipe and she is back to normal! This is also the foot that abcessed.

The first thing I notice when looking at this picture is a little ridge between the sole and the wall on the right side. There is good concavity in this hoof too, I am thrilled about that! The heels are long and the bars are slightly laid over.

After: I did trim the end of the right bar after the pic was taken. The little ridge is about gone, but this will grow out, since this is a point were the abcess broke through (coronet and white line... yeah it was a big abcess!). Looks pretty good now, everything seems back to normal on the bottom side of the hoof. I apply a good mustang roll (see "Mustang Roll" in links on previous posts) to all hooves, this helps lessen the pressure at the breakover and makes walking and running painless and fun for your horse. Otherwise, Dandy's walls would be about half an inch thick! I will try to take more pictures to see the roll, the concavity, the height of the heels and the white line strategy trim when I fix the right front.

This is Dandy's left back foot before trimming. You can see that this hoof is not really long and in very good shape the only thing to do with this hoof is trim the heels, the bars (a bit over the level of the sole), thin the walls and bring everything to the level of the sole. Dandy has wonderful back hooves that practically maintain themselves. You can see that there is a longer point on the lower left part of her hoof. This is causing her to stand splay footed. After removing this and trimming, Dandy stood pretty square. These hooves are practically self cleaning once they are trimmed right, the pump action of the hoof when weight bearing (expand) and not (shrink back) gets rid of all the dirt.
The back hooves are also always oval in shape as the front feet have a rounder shape, this helps with traction.

So, stupid me forgot to take an after pic of that back foot... all I have is this mid-trim pic...

So, as you can see, I used the nippers to shorten the left heel, I can't use the nippers on the tip of the hoof since it is too hard. I had rasped all of the right side but I didn't apply any roll yet I hadn't rasped the left side yet. Naturally, the left heel is higher since I didn't get the chance to rasp it yet. After the roll, the walls should be left thinner and only the water line (the white line you see) will touch the ground.

I NEVER trim sole from Dandy's feet or any other horse's. The only time I will remove some sole is if there is dead chalky sole in the seat of corn. I believe that the thicker the sole, the better. I do not want to thin it more in any way, shape or form. You cannot carve you horses hooves, you need to work with them to build them. The sole is only about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch thick, if you take away from it, you risk damaging the soft tissue. On top of that, your horse's sole will never build up and be strong and concave, because it will spend 4-6 weeks trying to recover and heal from the trim... after 4-6 weeks, the farrier is back and still trimming sole and the circle starts all over again. I was told never to trim the bars, but Dandy's are laid over, which can cause other problems in the internal structure of the hoof, so I trim them a bit longer than the sole (since bars are made for traction) to try and get them straight... they would only end up breaking and creating more imbalance.

Just for fun... Sunday, when I was trimming, a snow storm started... This is Dandy after all her feet are trimmed, she's standing tied (not to her usual post, because there was too much snow there for trimming hooves) in the snow. She loves snow. I had wiped a bit of it off of her back before taking the pic, but it was nearly filled back when I took the picture! She is standing pretty square (if she wasn't trying to look at what I was doing!) plus, there is something under her left front, either a rock or a ball of ice... Her coat seems to be doing the job, unlike mine... lol