Top pictures taken from AANHCP website.

These pictures are of the wild mustang, and this is what we are aiming for all the time.  The relationship between the bone and hoof wall, as you can see in picture ‘a’, how the bone is straight with the blue line, there is no flaring or ripping of the laminas, this is what we are looking for in a healthier hoof or foot.  Now looking at picture ‘b’ you can see how the hoof wall and the coffin bone should be.

So why should our horses go barefoot you ask?  It is far healthier for the horse to go barefoot, the hoof is supposed to flex when it impacts the ground.  When the shoe is attached to the hoof there is no flexion to the hoof.  There is no good supply of blood flowing through the foot when contact to the ground with a shoe on.  The foot is basically a foot pump and is supposed to flex, so how can it with a shoe on?  It can’t, it is robbing the horse feeling the ground and is making the horses foot flat and not adapting to the ground floor.  All of the foot should touch the ground, sole, bar, frog and the hoofwall should take the horses weight at some point during locomotion.  When contact to the ground is made it builds cavity to the sole pushing the coffin bone up so that there is a thick layer of sole protecting the coffin bone.  Barefoot is so much more than a good looking hoof or foot.  We look at the diet, surroundings they live in, what are they doing, e.g. What are they ridden on and what are they used for?  It also helps the horse move so much better through the gaits.  There is a great deal a bare foot trimmer can help you with.

Before 1st trim	6 months later

This is Mo, one of my clients’ horses. He was not doing well at all when we first saw him, he was lame on all 4 feet and was in pain. The farrier was doing his best for Mo, but when we got our hands on Mo we took his shoes off! He was so flat when we saw his feet properly for the first time, the lateral cartilage and the digital cushion were like mush, that saying you could move his entire frog from side to side with hardly any thumb pressure, it felt like a bag of rice pudding, sounds mad I know. He had very narrow frog and heels (contracted heels). We could not get x-rays of Mo’s feet at that time, and as you can see 6 months later looking a lot healthier and sound now and that is just one growth cycle, we can only get stronger and healthier.