the perfect toe rocker

I just watched this documentary:

It concerns the Marwari horse in Southern India. The Marwari horse is the Indian equivalent to the Arabian. They were bred to live in a desert habitat, traveling for hours and hours through sand dunes. According to the commentator of the documentary, they have very hard hoofs. I also noticed that they have very upright hooves.

This picture gives an impression of the habitat. It is just like my sand dune, at least how it is in the summer!

And this is a picture of how the horses wear their hooves: in a perfect toe rocker!

 The picture is not the best quality, I had to take a picture from the computer screen. But I think one can see that this horse has pretty much no hoof wall support at all, apart from at the heels. It seems it walks entirely on its sole and frog otherwise. Also, the heel angle looks really steep. This must be very upright feet, maybe important for the horses to not flex the deep digital flexor tendon too much in the deep sand.

These horses walk hours and hours through the deep sand and go on races with hooves like this. I have to wonder if that toe dish may actually give them some grip in the sand. It certainly does not seem to be causing them any problems. A hoof formed by traveling for many miles on the sand dune. Amazing.