The Hoof as Mediator Part
I
An imaginary starting place
If there are no alignment issues in the horse - no
bones out of place, no muscles knotted up and pulling legs
into the wrong movements, then theoretically, there would
be a perfect hoof at the bottom of the horse's leg.
Conceptually, you have a stack of things which
contact the ground in such a way that the forces are
equally distributed.
I'm going to use a cylinder to represent the
leg. Sections on the cylinder represent the different
bones in the leg. (I'm going to use the front leg
because it's somewhat straighter.) So here's
the hoof capsule, short pastern, long pastern, and cannon
bone stacked up like discs in a cylinder. The circles
are the joints. Ideally, everywhere the circles
connect with each other, there is even pressure or
contact. All around the bottom circle, which
represents the hoof making contact with the ground, there
is even pressure/contact. From the front it's a stack of discs evenly
contacting each other. The force up from the ground
is even all the way around the cylinder. The force
down from the horse is even all the way around the
cylinder.
What if the hoof is angled different from the rest of the
joints?
Bearing in mind this is theoretical, what would happen
if the farrier (accidentally, of course) trimmed a little too
much off of one side? Or conversely left a little too much. For example, let's say the
inside of the toe of the horse's left fore-foot is 'shorter' than the
outside of the toe. Looking at
the stacks from the front of the horse, you would have some thing initially like this:
The darker area in the left picture indicates more
contact force with the ground. You can think of the
horse as pushing into the ground more or the ground pushing
into the horse more. On the right side is the leg
'suspended from above' before it makes contact with the
ground. The low and high areas on the right show that
the hoof is high/short on one side and not making contact with
the ground and low/long on the other side and that side is
closer to the ground.
When the foot lands, the outside heel hits first, and
the contact travels across the foot (and up the leg)
diagonally until the horse's inside toe makes contact. If
you just look at in terms of sections that are stacked, you can
see that the entire column is going to be affected because the
support that is needed on the inside toe of the right fore
foot is not there. Everything above it in the column is
'hanging in space' and is unsupported. When the horse
goes to put its weight down, the ground will not be there for
it on the inside at the same time as it is on the
outside. The outside heel of the hoof will connect with the
ground first. Everything in front of that will start to
wobble sideways until it falls onto the inside toe. The
horse will do what it can to compensate by changing it's way
of going; however, there is still this imbalance because the
bottom 'disc' is the wrong shape and cannot provide equal
support as long as it's the wrong shape.
So what happens when something hits the ground harder by
itself without the support of the rest of the foot? I'm
thinking it smooshes together. It
compresses. And what about the stuff that's
flailing around out in space? It has been my observation that what
will happen will be that the side that hits first will compress and the
side that's left dangling will 'stretch' to fill in the space. This happens
in the foot and in the leg. The hoof 'rings' start to
slant and in the leg there
will be concussion problems where the foot hits first and
sprain type problems where there is no support. But the
basic point is, this isn't so good.
On one side you have bones running into each other and
on the other side you have tendons and muscles trying to hold
things together on their own. As muscles are overworked,
they will develop knots. As tendons are overworked, they
will lose elasticity. The small imbalance that started
at the bottom of the foot will travel up the column of the
leg, unbalancing all the joints in that leg and, eventually,
even the horse as that leg can no longer function as well as
the others. What I have seen is that the column and the elements
of the column shift in order to compensate. With
my horse, the leg swung inward, toeing in - I imagine because that's the
most stable configuration, but then the bones start trading
places inside and outside of the plumb line. The knee
turned outward. I found that she wanted to stand on
the compressed area, too. Maybe because it felt the most
reliable? How does this get better?
If the
hoof could magically grow back in in like half an hour, then I
imagine there wouldn't be big problems with this (unless the
horse immediately ran out and started bucking up a
storm.) Unfortunately, hooves take a while to grow back
in. Let's say this is only 'off' by 1/8
of an inch and hooves grow about 1/4 of an inch a month.
Theoretically, in two weeks the hoof would have
re-grown. But, has it caught up with the other
side? Keep in mind, the other side has been
growing, too! If the horse is barefoot and
travels over 'rough terrain' that can serve as an Emory board,
the longer bits will have been wearing off because they're
contacting the ground more so than the shorter, floating
bits. So the short side is growing unopposed 'as fast as
it can' and the long side is growing as well but getting worn
down. Will they meet in the middle -- the short side
growing down to the ground and the long side getting rasped
off to the same level, by the end of two weeks? I can't
really say. There is the possibility at some point that
they will. During that time, however, the horse's body
has made adaptations to the unevenness. The muscles
have compensated. Tendons have compensated. The
way the horse's moves is now different. What about
the horse that is in shoes? There is no way for the long
side of the hoof to 'rasp down.' Although it will
lengthen more slowly and be more compressed. What
then? Their only option is to start moving differently
to prevent damaging wear and tear. What if the hoof is
a teeter totter?
When my horses started having problems, I 'hit the
books.' I came across this curious disease:
"Right-handed disease." You may be thinking,
"but horses don't have hands" Which is
true. Farriers do. Apparently,
this was easier to find on the internet back then!
Here's what I was able to find now:
Heather
Smith:
Right-handed farriers tend to
leave the outside of the toe and inside of the heel on
the right front foot a little long. The foot becomes
unbalanced over time ... It is so common it is nicknamed
right front foot disease or right-handed
shoer's disease.
So if a farrier does this, then what? You have two
vertical lines of compression -- outside toe and inside heel,
and two lines lacking support -- inside toe and outside
heel. The foot is essentially a teeter totter and the
leg is... rather unstable. When the foot
lands, it breaks diagonally rather than forward, and also not
smoothly. This
alters the horses way of going, which alters the way the
muscles and the hoof grow. What about chips and
nicks and stuff?
I am inclined to think small things like that matter but
aren't as damaging as the hoof being unleveled - either as a
plane that is no longer parallel to the rest of the joints in
the leg or as a teeter totter. The unleveled hoof,
especially if it's kept that way over time, is fairly devastating.
You try it
Find a shoe with a wedge - like a wedge shoe or a
running shoe. Rather than slip your hand into it, hold
it so that the heel is to the outside. On all fours,
'walk' forward and notice how you instinctively toe in and
roll out. Now try it holding the heel to the
inside. On all fours, 'walk' forward and notice how it's
almost impossible!
For the next part, you need something that rocks but
along an edge. I used the bottom of the kids' play toy
where they stack the rings. Play with this putting the
'flat' area diagonally under your hand and notice how this
interferes with your ability to 'walk' on all fours.
The net
If by accident the horse's feet are not trimmed level,
there are columns of compression and columns of suspension
... too much 'support' and no support. While this
starts in the foot, it travels up the leg into the
horse. The only way the horse can correct
this is to modify it's patterns of movement while the hoof
grows. The hoof growth may or may not
happen quick enough to mitigate changes in
movement.
My next theoretical:
What if the leg, due to muscle injury, no longer travels
directly under the horse?
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