the problem with measuring heel height

I recently had quite dramatic events happening to me and Molly. I try to summarize them here, as far as I understand everything right now.

About 3 months ago, I started to trim Molly according to the HGM method. HGM stands for "hoof guided method". More information about it can be found here. The reason why I wanted to do something different as I always did was because I just could not get Molly to walk comfortably on concrete or asphalt. This statement is not completely true, as Molly usually was comfortable walking on concrete at the end of a trimming cycle, especially when I had been away for a few weeks and did not do anything to the feet. Not even pick them out. Every time when I got back and had not interfered with Molly's feet for several weeks, Molly was cruising over concrete, but when I finished trimming, she did not, but was stiff and careful again on concrete. So at this point I knew that I was the problem with her walking on concrete!

For the longest time I thought this was simply because I trimmed her generally to short. However, as it turns out, this was not the case, I simply trimmed her in the wrong places, and as I know now, I trimmed her lateral heel too short.

The way I fond that fact out was the following. I had started the HGM trim, which basically does not do anything else than beveling the toe, but leaves the heels alone, unless the wall is more than 3-5mm above sole. That was not the case on Molly and so I left heels alone for at least 2 months.

On July 22, Molly had this FL foot:

I liked this foot a lot. Molly and I were riding and riding, for the first time in 2 years she was sound on all surfaces!

Then I made a mistake. I had no experience with this new HGM method and I was too much influenced by other trimming methods, and my feeling was that the heels were becoming too high and needed a trim. The HGM method would still not have trimmed those heels, as the sole was right up there at heel level. And as I said, Molly was as sound as never before. Nevertheless, I decided to shorten them. In hindsight, it was stupid, BUT I learned a lot from this mistake! And that really is the important thing, learning from the mistakes.

Since I did not really have any indication from the sole how to trim the heels, I resorted to my "heel gauge", that I still have from the times when I followed the ABC trim (which I stopped doing a long time ago, for many reasons I don't want to go in to). However, that little heel gauge I still had used even though I had updated it to incorporate a larger heel height than originally recommended.

This is an example of how this tool works:

 

The little L-shaped tool is held against the heel (red line) and the tool would then indicate a vertical heel height of 3 cm (in my case).

So I went ahead and marked and trimmed the heels as I used to do, using that gauge on both sides of the hoof.  The tool indicated to me that the lateral heel was higher than the medial one. It also looks like that, when looking at the picture above, and I was convinced that this is what needed doing, shortening the lateral heel to match the medial.

The next morning, Molly was very sore. And I had absolutely not done anything else than shortening the lateral heel, to what I thought would match the medial. She was way worse on her FR than FL. The FR has large ossifications of the lateral cartillages, which the FL does not have, and thus the FR can cope pretty much not at all with an unbalanced foot. And lowering that lateral heel must have seriously unbalanced the foot. I could hardly believe how dramatic the effect was.

The next thing I did then is cut Molly a pad and glued a piece of firm rubber mat under the lateral heel, lifting the lateral heel up to what I thought it may have been before I lowered it. Molly went from looking almost like a foundered horse to walking 99% normal on pasture. Incredible effect, of simply raising the lateral heel. So that confirmed to me that I lowered Molly's lateral heel too much. Unfortunately I don't have a picture. Molly did not want to lift her feet and I was devastated thinking about other things than taking pictures.

Luckily, during the last couple of months Molly had grown rather high heels and I was now in a position to remedy at least some of my mistake by lowering the medial heel too. But I did not have any good trimming guidlines from the hoof, so the whole thing was kind of a mess. Nevertheless Molly was ok with the lowered medial heel, which kind of restored the heel proportions to before I did anything to them. After 2 weeks I started to ride again and Molly is almost back to what she was before the mistake.

But for the last weeks I have been trying to figure out why this heel measurement does work so badly on Molly and why my visual judgement of the heel height also failed me. Many people trim the heels back to the widest part of the frog, and Molly's lateral heel was definitely ahead of that landmark, and much more so than the medial.  I was by then pretty convinced that this must have been my problem all along, unbalanced heels after my trim.

The explanation I came up with is shown below, as a model. What I realized is that the lateral heel is different from the medial in the fact that it grows at a more shallow angle. The medial and the lateral side of Molly's hoof (and almost all domestic horses) are not identical. The medial wall angle is usually more upright. I think as a consequence, the medial heel also grows at a steeper angle. I have never read about that fact, but I am pretty convinced it is true on Molly (and also on Gus), and I had actually noticed that phenomenon earlier, just never realized what it means with respect to shortening the heels using a measurement.

What happens to the heel height, when the gauge is applied to heels that grow at a different angle, is shown above. Of course the tool is supposed to be hold vertically, but in reality, this is pretty much impossible with the hoof in hand, nor is it emphasized anywhere in the ABC protocol. In my case, I just held it to the medial heel as I did hold it to the lateral heel.  But this procedure leaves the lateral heel with a too short vertical height, IF the heels grow at a different angle, as is the case on Molly.


Since I am always studying the hoof wear patterns on Rockley Farm horses, I began to notice that the same phenomenon, as I observe on Molly, happen to the Rockley Farm horses, when they are allowed to self trim and grow their feet as the like. Below is a picture of Paddy, taken from the Rockley farm blog.

This is Paddy's front left foot, after 8 weeks at Rockley farm, self trimming. What I noticed is that the lateral heel, just like in Molly's case, grows forward. I have marked the heel purchase in green on the right side of the picture. Yet, when sighting the hoof from behind, if anything, the lateral heel is lower than the medial. This is because of the shallower angle it grows at.
Again, my observation is that when Molly's lateral heel has grown forward, in a similar way than Paddy has grown his heel, she is SOUND, when I take the heel back, to the widest part of the frog she is stiff on concrete. That must mean something, I would think! And obviously, Molly is not the only horse who grows her feet like this.


In any case, I am back with the HGM, now waiting patiently until the heels show me any indication for wanting to be trimmed.

Question for Maureen

click on picture to enlarge

Molly and I are riding and riding and riding... Making up for 2 "lost" years of figuring out hoof trimming

Bitless and barefoot!

Mustang hooves

Here some pictures of mustang hooves, with my comments on them.


The first 5 are from the same horse, a 2 or 3 year old young stallion. It did not have any sign of injuries, thus, the hooves most likely are "as good as it gets". Click on the pictures to magnify.

I numbered the horses so that it is obvious which horses are the same.

 

My visit to the Onaqui Mountain mustangs

My husband and I had a chance to visit the Onaqui Mountain mustangs last week. It was soooo exciting. We attended a conference in Salt Lake City, and I emailed the BLM about the best viewing opportunities for wild mustangs. A friendly lady actually responded and directed us to the Onaqui herd.

I must say it was quite an adventure. This is a very isolated place, the only human habitation within 40 miles radius is a military base, Dugway. As I have only found out afterwards, there is a good reason for the location of this base in the middle of the Utah desert. This base is designed to test chemical and biological weapons and at this location there are so few people that in the event of an accident human casualties would be limited.

At 5 am in the morning we took our tent down, left the beautiful camp side in the nearby mountains and headed towards the Pony express road, where the BLM woman told us the horses can usually be seen. We drove for about 40 minutes on a dusty dirt road and saw nothing but two pronghorns. Then the road divided and we headed towards the right, towards Simpson Springs. 10 more minutes of driving and THERE THEY WERE!!! Around 80 horses gathered around a big trough filled with water. This water source must have been put in place by the BLM. I think if it would not have been there there would not be any horses. July is the hottest month of the year, temperatures approached 110 F and we did not see any evidence for any water other then the well that was artificially dug. Horses must have just arrived from the night of grazing, it was around 6:30 am when we reached them. They had all drunk and assembled in small groups of 4 to 5 horses that dozed together in the sun.

The mares of the Onaqui mountain herd are supposedly treated with the fertility drug ZP3. Nevertheless there were around 6 new foals. It seemed to me that the sex ratio of the herd was quite skewed with many more males than females, but I did not properly quantify this. There were several dominant stallions at the water station, but no fight erupted amongst them. It was all very peaceful and we could approach the horses really quite closely (maybe within 10 meters). The horses were curious, at times it seemed that the younger ones would have liked to approach us, but then they decided to stay away.

The main reason why I wanted to see the mustangs was off course to see their hooves. And their leg conformation. I made a lot of observations but unfortunately not enough. I will document what I saw in the next post. Here just a few general observations.

1) There really is not ONE mustang hoof. Each and every horse had different hooves. Some had very steep dorsal wall angles and some much more shallow. Some had rather massive hooves and some had short hooves.

2) Only two horses had obvious pathologies. All other horses, despite their wide range of hoof forms, seemed perfectly fine.

3) I did not see any evidence for laminitis, excessive flaring or pronounced rings in the hoof walls. This is not to say that all hooves were "perfect". I could see small flares and sometimes small rings. To me this indicates that the hoof is not a static organ but a dynamic one, that allows for small, short term, adjustments.

4) Given that this was the very dry season, hooves were generally "filled" out with callused sole, leaving just a narrow collateral groove.

I may finally know what Pete Ramey is talking about

I think everybody who is seriously interested in hoof care has studied Pete Ramey. The one aspect he is most often cited for is: "if some part of the hoof that has just been trimmed grows back quickly, the hoof needs it and should be left alone".

For me, this principle was, and still is, hard to apply. Since everything on the hoof grows, how I am supposed to know which growth is important for the hoof and which one isn't?

In any case, I have described in my previous post how I used to trim the bars. I basically forced them to merge with the frog at the bottom of the collateral groove. The problem for me was always how to treat this transition between bar and sole. In order for me to trim the bars such they would meet the frog at the bottom of the collateral groove, I really needed to thin out the area at the end of the bars. My horses always developed cracks and holes there, I think as a consequence.

Now, just accidentally, I took a picture of Molly's feet 4 weeks after I had trimmed that transition between bar and sole. The picture below shows how Molly grew her bars, and the area of sole just in front of them, within 4 weeks. She has grown the sole up straight from the bottom of the collateral groove to meet the bars in one long and straight line. There is no crack, or no bar "migrated" or overlaying, the collateral groove side of the sole just grew straight up. Importantly, this is how Molly is sound on hard ground, and this is also how she can maintain a stronger heel (I used to also often have cracks in the seat of corn). And this is pretty much the only significant change in 4 weeks.

So maybe this satisfies Pete Ramey's definition of a structure that is needed for comfort, at least at this given time and stage the hoof is in. I have now, for the first time NOT trimmed that extension of the bars off and will see how the foot develops. For some reason all this looks much more natutral to me than this sharp transition between bar and sole as one can see on the left part of the picture, which is how I had left the foot 4 weeks before.

I should point out that my horses do live on soft and (often) wet ground. Maybe this has something to do with how the bars, and the sole in front of them, grow. Gus grows his bars and sole in exactly the same way.

I will wait and see what happens next.

Molly has a bitless bridle

And it is wonderful! I decided to get the BBB (Barefoot Bitless Bridle). It is made in the Netherlands, I had it shipped to Germany and then on to the US for EUR 3.45.- (shipping).

I just tried it and Molly LOVED it. It was funny, when I used it just so slightly, I noticed how Molly was getting ready to put in some resistance, but then she realized it was only the soft noseband that gave the signal and no metal in the mouth and she relaxed. It was just like a reflex to show resistance at first. I had to hardly touch that bridle, I do hardly have to touch the bitted bridle, but I definitely feel more resistance in the bit than without. Molly collected just the same as with the bit, only for short stretches at a time, but she is not used to work collected for more than a few minutes at a time.

I like the design, the noseband is soft and broad, it has a nice padding between two sheets of leather and the chin piece is made of some sturdy rubber in a double layer, so also has a "give". Overall, I am very happy and probably will never use anything else. It just feels so good to not have to put a metal piece in the mouth.

questions and more questions

Molly has learned the pleasures of sharing

I must say it is such a joy to see my two horses together. It took them soooooo long to really become good friends and partners in good and bad times. Molly used to be very protective of her food and also would not let Gus come close to her. Instead, she would threaten him to bite or kick. But she is actually pretty harmless when it comes to really going through with aggression. Just in contrast to Gus, every time when Molly did her little scary behavior he totally over-reacted and went straight into fight mode, scaring Molly. So there was always this tension between them. He does, however, absolutely not mind sharing food with her. So here I had this weird set of horses, that just did not seem to understand each other for almost 1 year.

Luckily all this is over for some years now, but I do still remember the first year, when nothing really seemed to work between them. Gus is now just ignoring Molly's little attacks (which she hardly ever does anymore) and Molly has understood Gus will share anything with her. She can even eat the hay out of his mouth if she wants to. She is imitating Gus in a lot of ways and Gus gets the "quiet vibe" from her allowing his mind to settle down. For example, she never used to drink out of puddles, since Gus likes doing that, she does that too now.  They have become such a perfect couple, complementing each other in every respect.

first day on pasture

This was an exciting day for me and my horses. My friend and neighbor made it possible: my horses could go on pasture!! On my sand dune, there is not much grass growing, plus the ground is so sandy and I wanted my horses to experience clay soil. So today was the first try. I was a bit nervous because it requires to walk the horses for about 5 minutes on the road, which is a very quiet road but still some car comes once in a while. It also requires them to pass lawn mowers, garbage cans,  mail boxes, windmills and my other neighbors 13 horses, etc. On the way there we did not encounter a car, Gus walked swiftly ahead and Molly followed a bit slower, but not less excited. When we reached, there was all this grass. Gus, being a Texan boy, has never seen so much grass in one spot. It reached to the horse's bellies. However, interestingly enough, the horses had not so much interest in the grass, but the neighbor's horses. They all came cantering lining up on their part of the fence and mine on our part of the fence. Next thing that happened Molly showed she was in heat and would have SO much liked to go over there and see if there is a nice little stallion for her. So for the next hour or so, she just stood right there at the fence ignoring the grass for the most part, and Gus could not go away, because he had to protect her. I don't think he quite understood why they had to stay so close to the fence, instead of eating all the nice grass!

Roughly 4 h later, it was time to go back. Horses had given up their position on the fence, though were still very close to he neighbors horses. We were worried about too much grass on the first day, though the grass was passed bloom and stemmy. Still my horses are not used to so much grass. It was easy to catch Molly but Gus did not want to be caught at first. Unfortunately for him, we had Molly so he could not go anywhere else. Then something interesting happened. I finally reached him grabbed his halter, which we had left on (wisely :-)!) and I wanted to attach my white rope. When Gus saw the rope, he jerked his head away and ran. This is exactly the reaction I had gotten 3 years ago when Gus came new to me, he was deeply scared of that white rope. I had spent about 6 months desensitizing him to that rope, and for the past 2 1/2 years he had never been afraid of it anymore, we use it every day. But today, he had a short blackout when he saw the rope. I also know why, at least I think so.

When he was in so called "training" (4 years ago, before he came to me), the trainer had tried to force Gus into submission by tying his legs (Gus was a difficult horse to train, because the trainer misunderstood him totally). I did not whitnessed it, nor did his previous owner, all I know is hat when his previous owner realized what happened during his "training", and took him out of there, he had rope burns on his legs. I think Gus, today in this short moment of being in a new unfamiliar place, with unfamilar sounds, he had this flashback of the rope incidence 4 years ago in Texas. There is just no other explanation why he behaved like this. Of course right after he ran away he realized his mistake and came straight back (to where Molly was) and let me put the rope on without any problem. But this shows just how long horses remember bad things happening to them.

But anyway, on the way home, we even encountered the UPS truck! We managed to get into a drive way and let it pass without any incidence, I distracted Gus with a carrot and had his head facing away from the truck. This way he hardly noticed. And Molly does not do anything anyway, as long as the other horse does not do anything.

Once reaching home, the horses were so tired within one minute they placed themselves in their sleeping corner and fell asleep. They did quite a bit of running on the pasture, with all the new sounds and the other horses in particular! Horses are just so highly social animals...