Horse Health
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This conference
was co-produced
by Equinalysis and
Stromsholm Ltd.,
two British
companies owned
and directed by farrier entrepreneurs.
SPORT SCIENCE IS A TERM BANDIED ABOUT LIKE A BADMINTON SHUTTLECOCK.
It's not really verterinary medicine; veterinarians tend to see the horse when sport has tested a joint or a tendon or a bone. It’s not really farriery, though the most successful farriers concoct creative combinations of art and science under the pressure of helping a horse meet the demands of sport. And is it really therapy, since the therapists are acting on clues to how a horse’s musculature is handling the rigors of sport ?
Sport science is like a cousin that the horse
health family didn’t know it had. He appears at a
family reunion, and is simultaneously embraced -
of course he belongs at this party - and yet eyed
with suspicion. This party was doing just fine
without the cousin; what effect will he have on the
party and on family dynamics?
The farrier-vet-therapist trilogy of guardians for
the horse’s soundness holds frequent reunions
around the world. Praises are sung to new
diagnostic equipment, new support shoes, and new stimulating/shocking/massaging or soaking
machines, as well as to the virtures of each other.
The trilogy is ready to receive the injured horse
when he limps off the trailer after a show or event,
and they will roll up their sleeves, do their best
work, and drink a toast to each other for a job well
done.
And, thanks to improved family relations in the
past 20 years, they have done it together, and no
blood, at least of the professionals, was shed.
But here comes sport science, galloping in from
the human athletics field, where exercise
physiology, biomechanics, and ergonomic
equipment and clothing design have revolutionized
the way that athletes train and perform.
While the equine side has nodded
appreciatively and respectfully to the efforts of
Hilary Clayton, Doug Leach, Willem Back, and
Jean-Marie Denoix over the years, it is a hollow applause: Only about 150 professional and
academic delegates attended the International
Conference on Equine Locomotion when it was
held at Michigan State University in 2004—hardly
an enthusiastic turnout for the latest findings on
how horses move, perform, and metabolize energy.
In preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games in
Athens, the British Olympic Committee offered
grants to fund sport science research in each of the
disciplines. Swimming, track and field, sailing, and
gymnastics had no problem organizing their
proposals on how to spend the funding. But what
about the equestrian sports?
A grant of horse sport money went to a farrier
and a veterinarian. Haydn Price DipWCF and John McEwen BVMS, MRCVS set out to see if
they could possibly determine which horses were
sound enough to compete, or which horses would
likely stay sound, or which horses would need
shoeing, veterinary, and therapy assistance. They
would use high-tech tools from the human sports
science field. And they would see where it would
go.
One of the products of the work that Price and
McEwen did (in addition to their regular jobs of
serving as team farrier and team vet for Great
Britain at several World Equestrian Games,
European Championships and the Olympics) was
the software program and horse movement data
collection system now known as Equinalysis. The
product has become a corporate entity since the
Olympics ended, with Price as a director of the
company and McEwen, who recently was
appointed the FEI’s worldwide chair of veterinary
affairs, serving as veterinary advisor. Professor John
Davies, a human sports medicine doctor with ties
to Rugby Union in the UK, joined the company as chairman .
Equinalysis might have been operating in a
vacuum, and enjoying the rarified air of
international horse sports except for the inevitable
question of how science can be applied to a
subjective “art”-based task like farriery. No
quantitative system appears to have been found in
the world to judge how the trimming and shoeing
of a horse affects its performance. A farrier is still
judged by how well the horse performs and if the
shoes stay on, the horse doesn’t slip on the arena
surface, and limbs don’t touch each other in flight
or landing.
The vacuum of elite equine sports farriery is
leaking. But instead of leaking answers and
solutions and formulas and shoe specifications, it is
leaking questions. Equinalysis was a catalyst for
change, and became a crack in the mirror into
which many in Great Britain gazed with varying
degrees of aversion, curiosity, and awe.
ON APRIL 12, 2006, A CONFERENCE OPENED AT
the National Agricultural Center in Stoneleigh,
Warwickshire, England. “Maximizing Equine
Performance” was a rare privately-sponsored event
in Britain. The venue was backed by Equinalysis
and Stromsholm Ltd., a leading UK-based
supplier of farrier goods.
Did anyone show up for a seminar on sports
science? The theater was filled to capacity. The majority
of attendees were farriers, with a demographic
skewed to an average age of about 30. And instead
of carrying bags of handmade fullers, creasers, and
hammers, many carried laptop computers, digital
computers, PDAs, and the ubiquitous cell phones
with creative ringtones.
The conference unfolded quite naturally in the
way that speakers complemented each other’s
comments and suggestions in how to define
farriery’s place in the larger picture of equine sport
science. There were no answers at the end of the
day, but the questions asked and the enthusiasm of
the audience guaranteed that more of these
conferences will take place.
Professor John Davies
Professor Davies began the day with a correlation
between the relative recent development of a “science” of rugby as a sport and compared its early days to the present status of science-poor
equestrian sports. Rugby is the type of sport that
seems chaotic and without much finesse; the
players are tough and strong and flushed with
adrenalin. Until recent years, no studies had been
done of how rugby players are injured, or in what
types of plays or what segment of a game. Davies
detailed how data on certain types of injuries had
been painstakingly collected and analyzed, with a
goal of preventing injuries but not limiting or
decreasing the highest levels of skill and
performance. He suggested that equestrian sports
had a long way to go in this area.
Richard Davison
British Olympic team dressage rider Richard
Davison gave background of his evolution as a
rider and trainer. He explained the process of
customizing a horse, and the difficulty of a top
horse changing hands and having to adapt to a
new rider, and vice versa.
He recalled the evolution of his interactions
with veterinarians over the years; he had been
terribly frustrated by veterinarians who assumed
that since the horse performed dressage, any subtle
lameness would be in the hock. Davison explained
that recent sports medicine research has shown
that grand prix-level dressage horses do carry more
weight on the hocks, but that the same is not true
of warmblood-type sport horses coming up at the
lower levels nor in other types of horses that are
working on the forehand.
Davison recalled an international-level horse
that had been put in his stable to ride after being
bought in the US. The previous trainer advised
Davison to continue with Dutch farrier consultant
Rob Renirie to manage a crack as it grew out.
At Davison’s suggestion, Rob was brought to
England by the attending team of British
consulting vets and farriers. At a special meeting to
discuss the horse, Rob and his previous shoeing
were ignored. The British experts advised Davison
and the horse’s owner to take their advice on how
the horse should be shod. Disappointed in the
way that the Dutch farrier had been treated,
Davison decided to stay with the services of the
farrier who had kept the horse sound, and
competed on the horse for three years.
“Experts must work together, and not make the
owner or rider decide between them,” Davison
advised. “There are always many experts, but there
is only one horse. A consensus is needed.”
Davison admitted that he was very defensive
when Haydn Price wanted to start videotaping his
horse before the Olympics. “I refused to let him
video my horse,” he recalled. “Then I went to a
presentation of his and it made me think that
video was a brilliant idea.”
John McEwen
“What is the difference between a medal
performance and an also-ran?” began FEI
veterinary chairman John McEwen. “We need to
develop systems to monitor fitness, to monitor
response to training stress, to monitor recovery
time, and to monitor the effect of foot balance.”
“What is needed is to create a team of the
physiotherapist, the farrier, and the veterinarian.
And,” he continued, looking around the room, “We have started with the foot.”
McEwen conceded that it is not possible to
impose the same training on different horses, but
he criticized the way that many horses are
negatively trained, and that it can lead to injury. “If
the horse can’t piaffe,” he explained, “people spend
most of their time on that movement. That may
not be the best thing to do.”
He explained principles used in Great Britain’s
World Class Performance cross-sports program,
which encourages long-term fitness evaluation and
training of athletes (humans and horses) who may
represent their nation in international sport.
He gave examples of how hoof, hock, and pelvis
problems in performance horses are inter-related. “We need to think in terms of prehabilitation,” he
stressed, borrowing a term for human physical
therapy, “rather than rehabilitation. Injuries will of
course still exist but we must do everything in our
power to prevent them. One of our problems is
that of maintaining peak performance for a long
time. Tomorrow’s competition always seems the
most important, but we must have the long view.”
McEwen’s suggestions for prehabilitation included
• involve the veterinarian in the horse’s training
schedule, methods, surface;
• keep a close link between the horse’s
veterinarian and coach;
• consider the impact of travel stress, and the
importance of protecting the horse during travel;
• riders must have faith in the ability of their
horses and they must have faith in their team of experts.
He said that veterinarians must be prepared to
provide options to clients and that veterinarians
must be knowledgeable in aspects such as nutrition.
“Think laterally, think outside the box, to
produce that extra percent of performance,”
McEwen continued. “I mean to stimulate debate
on what we can practically use of recent scientific
research. Science trundles away on its own because
it is grant-based or funded by drug companies. We
need to be more pro-active about research, but
researchers are not practical people. Sport should
have more input into what studies are done. We
need to be ahead of the game. No, rather, we in sport should be running the game.”
“There is no such thing as a sound grand-prix
horse,” he concluded. “A horse’s career creates
injuries. A horse’s career depends on how we
manage those injuries.”
Rob Renirie
The next speaker was Rob Renirie, farrier
consultant to the Dutch international equestrian
teams. He was introduced as “the leading
performance horse farrier in the world.” His topic
was “Shoeing the Competition Horse”.
Renirie began with an image of the horse as a
machine. “If the horse was a machine,” he said, “We would all do the job the same.”
“Some people make the excuse that the horse’s
legs are too weak for the job,” he began, “but that
is not true. Dressage is all about the exterior of the
horse, the way the horse moves, the right choice of
materials and supported and balanced, well-shod
feet. It is most important to understand the
materials and what they do.”
“The horse needs the toe,” he stressed from the
start. “I see square toes, shoes set back, rasped toes.
I believe that the horse needs the length of his foot
to absorb shock and to load energy for his muscles
to make the next move.
“Think about the horse after a jump. He is
landing on one foot,” he showed a slide of a horse
descending from a jump, “but the rider is already
turned, looking across to the next fence. He is
changing his weight before the horse has even hit
the ground.”
Renirie took some time to reflect on the spate
of injuries suffered by show jumpers in Athens in
2004. He blamed the injuries on the loose grass
footing, and remarked, “I saw horses with four
studs in each front shoe. Some countries really did
that to their horses. The horses landed. But they
could not turn.”
One of Renirie’s prime messages was to condemn the over-use of hoof repair materials.
“In the case of extremes in equestrian sports,
when excessive demands are made of the horses,
injuries occur more and more frequently, and
solutions or stopgaps are sought to cope with these
extremes (by farriers),” he said. “And the
manufacturers have not been slow in responding!
The market is flooded with all sorts of soles,
artificial horn, adhesives, and other curiosities.”
“Take more time to learn about the horses,” he
advised. “Don’t just go looking for solutions when
it is too late.” Renirie went through his own
routine of evaluating a horse, watching the horse
move. He stressed the importance of the exterior
of the horse, matching the proper materials to the
horse, and the process of achieving a supported
and balanced, well-shod foot.
He also said that he thought that the frequency
of shoeing was a critical element in successful
farriery, and that it is an individual variation
between horses. If a horse is shod more frequently,
he contended, then fewer drastic changes were
required.
“What is the point of a wedge or egg-bar if it
has completely disappeared into the heel after
eight weeks?” he questioned.
“I look at the shape that a farrier makes of a
foot,” Renirie intimated about his evaluation of a
new horse to shoe, referring to the effect of
repeated shoeing by a single farrier on a horse. “A
good farrier will create a good shape but some
farriers create an odd shape. My advice is to keep it
simple, use good materials, and stay close to the basics.
“Once you start to add fillers, the basic skill is
gone from the job,” he commented. “Try to follow
the coronary band. A horse with flares on the sides
of his feet will collapse. Rounded, underrun heels
cannot support a horse. Use small nails; most
farriers use nails that are too big. Try to nail one-
third of the way up the wall.”
He showed a photograph of a horse taken at the
Olympics in Athens; the heel of the shoe was over
the frog, and obviously pinching. “I took the shoe
off, ground down the heel to fit,” Renirie recalled. “Everyone could see the problem. But still, this
horse was at the Olympics and he had been shod
that way.”
He then showed the foot of an Irish horse that
had won at the World Equestrian Games; the foot
was badly broken back. “Why did such a great
horse have such poor shoeing?” Renirie wondered
aloud. “He won, but he never performed again.”
Renirie criticized the choices that many farriers
make, both of shoes and of nails. “They are very
important,” he stressed. “It is not true that
Thoroughbreds have extra thin walls. Race plates
create thin walls!”
Renirie mentioned that some people select a
shoe that is too fine for a horse with a thick wall. “Some people file away the wall, while others nail
outside the white line. In both cases, the wall
deteriorates, leading to crumbling hooves, loose walls .
“But is that a problem?” he asked the audience. “No, of course not. There are plenty of synthetic
resins or other adhesives for sale. Where is the
limit for these stopgaps? It is fine that these
materials are available to use in emergencies, but it
was surely never intended that they should be used
routinely for shoeing horses.”
“Is there an ideal way of shoeing?” he mused. “
Some of the things I do: Not too much extension
outside the coronary band, please. I like flat steel shoes. I hammer (thin) the toe until it is wider by
about 3 mm, and then I lift it a little bit. Not
always clips for dressage horses. I want the wall to
stay nice and straight.
“On the hind feet, I leave only 4.5 mm over the
shoe. I do not bring the toe too far back. I hammer
the toe of the shoe so it rolls easily. I like a
rounded toe on a hind shoe.”
“The coronary band usually makes the shape,”
he said of his shoeing. “I like a slight rolling toe for
jumpers or dressage, with one-third of the hoof
wall rolled. Some German horses have the rolling
toe more on one side than the other. But I
normally would not do that.”
He advised the farriers in the audience to be
careful with the use of studs. “Studs will change
the foot. Be careful,” he warned. “I tell my
customers to use studs only when necessary. And
use the smallest possible studs on dressage horses
because of loss of movement. In Athens, though,
our horses needed the biggest studs.”
With a bow to the British shoeing styles,
Renirie commented, “I never use concave steel on
dressage horses. I want my horses to be able to
pirouette. I always use flat shoes on the hind feet
so the shoe stays more on top of the surface so the
horse can easily turn without so many injuries.”
While Renirie claimed to keep to the basics, he
did mention some support shoes that he approved, such as the full rock-and-roll shoe, although not at
the higher levels of sport and not for soft footing.
He said that he will modify one side to be flat and
one side rounded to help a horse turn in a given direction.
“The Germans still like egg-bar shoes,” he
smiled. “But I think they do more damage than
they help. The bar really eats into the frog. The
horse may not be lame, but he will compromise
somewhere in his body for that shoe.” He warned
that a long-heeled egg bar will move pressure back
and cause more palmar pain, not less. However, he
did clarify that an egg bar for a stall-resting horses
is different than an egg bar on a performance
horse.
Renirie is a big fan of the frog. He likes to leave
it as large as possible and went into detail about his
ideas on the frog’s role in traction and in shock
absorption. He warned that many commercial
products used on frogs will cause a horse to test
positive under FEI drug rules and that some
farriers will routinely treat the frog without
thinking of the absorption possibilities.
On the Natural Balance shoe, Renirie
commented that he did not see them at the upper
levels of sport but that the theory behind them is
not bad. “Like anything, it can be overdone,
though,” he said. “But in some horses, it is the
shoe that really helps.”
Digressing again to criticize the over-use of
repair materials, Renirie also blasted wedges on
horses that are in training. “The horses become
tender in the soft tissue, shorten their stride, and
put more stress on the extensor branches of the
interosseus (muscle). This tends to encourage
them to land more on the heel area. If we instead
move the shoe back under the hoof, this seems to
encourage them to extend their stride and so land
on the entire ground surface of the foot.“I roll, or at least break over, the toe of most the
shoes that I fit,” he continued. “In some cases, I
will use rocker toe shoes.”
“It all has to do with comfortable shoes,”
he concluded. “And the farrier must know what he
can do and what he can’t.” In Renirie’s paper in the proceedings book, he
wrote: “I hope with all my heart that this
exceptional animal will be treated with respect and
know-how, and that absurdities in trade and sport
will not gain the upper hand. “Make sure there are specialists who want to
become farriers because of their love for horses,
and the job. “Make sure there are farriers who have common
sense and use it. Set high standards in this field. (I
must) emphasize the importance of calling in
appropriate expertise….Colleagues should not
hesitate to consult each other in the case of
problems and difficulties. This can help prevent a
great deal of misery, primarily for the animal but
also for the owner.”
In the discussion period that followed, Richard
Davison and John McEwen engaged Rob on his
experiences in international competition and drug
testing. Davison said that he is very careful about
all products that he uses on his horses. He said
that, in his opinion, most people are far too lax
about the products used topically on horses since
so many contain carrying agents and contaminants.
He told of testing an aloe vera product before
using it, only to find out that it would have tested
positive at a competition.
Chris Pardoe BSc., AWCF
Following Rob Renirie’s micro-analysis of
horseshoeing fashion, researcher/farrier Chris
Pardoe of the Royal Veterinary College’s Structure
and Motion Laboratory headed in a new direction.
He is pursuing a PhD in farriery and biomechanics .
Pardoe’s presentation, “Equine Locomotion: A
Research Farrier’s Perspective” was informative
and challenging. While he began with the
obligatory review of terms and “what is
biomechanics”, the presentation turned into a
raison d’etre for a new kinship between farriers,veterinarians and the world of biomechanics.
“Why do farriers abhor science?” Pardoe
pondered. “We actually use it for x-rays and other
related things. We don’t need to fear it.” He
showed --a slide of Austrian researcher Christina
Hinterhofer’s images of finite element analysis of
a horse’s foot, which are stunningly beautiful and
full of color but showing the stresses as the hoof
wall loads and flexes.
A few problems in the perceptions of farriers
were key to Pardoe’s presentation. One was how
he has learned to think of the horse as a dynamic
object (being) that is constantly shifting its center
of mass and thus adjusting the load on the feet,
and that small subtle movements cannot be seen
with the naked eye.
Basic definitions used in Pardoe’s lecture included:
• kinematics is the study of movement
• kinetics is the study of the forces involved in movement
• “point of zero moment” is the theoretical
point at which all forces balance.
• Stance phase is the time the foot is in contact
with the ground
• Swing or aerial phase is the time spent in the
air between ground contacts.
• the ratio of stance to swing is known as the “duty” factor
• definition of breakover: At about 85 percent
of stance (phase), peak force in the deep digital
flexor tendon is reached. This causes the heels to
lift and as the animal moves forward, the foot rolls
over the toe, eventually lifting away from the
ground.
Pardoe’s research has tested the effects of
different shoes on breakover in the horse. But he extrapolated interesting points to pique farriers’
interest in biomechanics, for instance:
• Because elephants are so big, they cannot trot.
Their fast gait is actually a very fast walk. They
need to keep a foot on the ground.
• Heavy draft horses lean on farriers because
they have to. They cannot adjust the center of
mass enough because their chests are so wide.
A dominant area of Pardoe’s research has been
slippage, and particularly the difference in slippage
between materials used in shoes. He described slip
as nature’s way of lessening force.
Using slides of force plates and pressure mats,
Pardoe showed how horses load their feet, and he
showed that in a hind foot, the center of pressure
moved medially toward the center as the foot made
ground contact before moving forward as the foot
rolls over and eventually slightly lateral again as
foot off occurs.
To test shoe materials, Pardoe together with
Dr. Alan Wilson, built a force plate covered with
tarmac, so he could simulate roadway conditions in
England. For comparison, they also topped a force
plate with concrete and have located plates under
soft indoor arenas. Pardoe tested materials on feet
to measure the distribution of pressure under the
foot during stance, and then compared it with
measurements from the force plate when the horse
was moving over the plate. He can also link the
force plate to three-dimensional video gait analysis
systems and high speed video cameras for indepth
analysis of equine locomotion.
Not only shoe materials but studs are of interest
to Pardoe, who suggests that much more research
is needed into types, sizes and how they are used in
the shoes of horses to give either grip or prevent
slip. He said that improper use of nails and studs
with tungsten pin inserts (road nails) can cause
point loading which overloads the structural
integrity of the hoof wall and can create instability
and imbalance.
For American readers who may not be familiar
with the term, a “pin” is the central hardened core
in some studs and nails; they are also available
separately and can be placed anywhere on the shoe
by simply drilling a hole and tapping in the tapered pin .
“People are often confused between slip and
grip,” Pardoe claimed, suggesting that too much of
either can be harmful. “A stud can also be driven
right through the shoe and injure the foot.”
A problem in Britain is that so many people
ride horses on paved roads. A new, cheaper surface
is in use there, called stone mastic asphalt. It is
dense, and low noise. The former procedure was to
put tar down, and then top it with gravel; the new
surface is pre-mixed like a pudding and applied in
one coating. However, under high point pressures
it can liquefy and lubricate the surface between
steel shoe and roadway. “And then a horse slips,”
Pardoe warned.
Pardoe admitted that he sees lots of new shoe
designs and materials, and that he is asked to
consult on or test the slippage factor on two or
three new designs each year.
In Pardoe’s research, plastic shoes slip the most.
Among the shoes he has tested are plain steel, steel
with carbide traction, Ollov plastic shoes, and Ibex
plastic shoes.
Research by colleague Dr Tom Witte had
found that carbide not only prevented slip but also
kept the foot on the ground slightly longer at foot
off, but Pardoe admitted that he did not know the
long-term consequences of this finding.
Forces on the navicular bone are a subject of
research in Dr. Alan Wilson’s lab. His group has
reported that horses with navicular-type pain try to
minimize pain by altering the loading pattern of
the foot. He said that the horse will trade off potentially more painful parts of stance by altering
the loading in a less painful area.
One new product shown by Pardoe was a
carbon-fibre heel support patch, the ‘Smart Patch’.
Developed by colleague Peter Day, the RVC
clinical farrier, and the locomotor research group,
it is currently undergoing practical trials in the UK.
Pardoe showed how the application of this small
patch may have the potential to support and
redirect the loads encountered by hooves that are
predisposed to collapsed heels. A thoroughbred
racehorse ‘Chancellor’ who had been out of the
winners’ enclosure for sometime recently won a
valuable handicap race at the Epsom Derby
meeting whilst wearing the patches.
Mark Caldwell FWCF
“The Shoeing Process: The Practical Use of
Evidence-Based Evaluation” was to have been the
topic of farrier instructor Mark Caldwell, who
threw his topic to the wind and declared that there
was no such thing as evidence-based anything in
farriery and that the audience may as well have a
good laugh at his expense.
Caldwell launched into an existentialist
monologue of all the contradictions that modern
farriery has inherited both from its traditional past
and its budding scientific side. In particular, he
noted that in farriery “one learns much more from
one’s failures than the successes” and that farriers
need to have special mental attitudes that allow
them to view failures as positive learning
experiences, quoting “the definition of experience
is the culmination of a life time’s mistakes”.He lamented that except for some materials, the
theory, the process and the techniques of shoeing
are quite unchanged from Victorian times. With
candor he announced, “We are looking down the
wrong road! Today’s modern equine athlete is a
completely different animal from the Victorian
draft horse.”
He condemned the way that farriers and
veterinarians look at diagnostic tools with
admiration, yet ignore the cause of the injury. “Oh
look, the leg is definitely broken,” is heard more
often than “why did the leg break?” in Caldwell’s
experience. “A successful prognosis is based on
treatment of the cause and not the symptoms,” he
emphasized.
Another shortcoming, in Caldwell’s opinion, is
that two people look at a horse completely
differently. “There are too many variables, but
some of those variables have always been there,” he
said, and with regard to there being such a thing as
evidence-based farriery.“We need to establish a working model for the
normal range of movement and loading
throughout the axial skeleton during locomotion
and through the various gaits against which, that
which we consider abnormal can be compared,” he pronounced.
Caldwell showed a slide that was nothing but
charts of numbers, data from a collection done
with his Equinalysis system. “What do these
numbers mean?” he wondered. “I don’t know. I
have to be able to compare these numbers to
something else. I have to be able to pool it
together, with lots of horses, to establish what ‘normal’ is before I can ever compare a horse to
anything. Normal does not exist yet.”
Caldwell used a video interface to show
numerous high-speed video clips of horses in
motion, with close-up footage of the feet landing. “Why video?” Caldwell asked. “You can speed it
up, and you can slow it down. The human eye sees
a certain range of motion, capturing it at less than
15 frames per second, but it can’t see it all.”
He showed a particularly graphic clip that
detailed in slow motion the descent of the fetlock
on a hind foot; the fetlock descended directly over
the medial heel until the heel was obscured.
Caldwell pointed out that any shoeing plan for this
horse must not only include a method of relieving
the lameness but also account for the
biomechanical impact of asymmetric force and
consider methods of re-establishing concentric
force through the limb and ground-bearing surface .
Was Caldwell suggesting that the traditional
tenets of farriery be discarded? He stopped short of
that but quoted veterinarian Stephen May, from a
paper in 1989: “Most of the claimed treatments of
conditions of the foot are based on empirical and
anecdotal evidence.”
“Has anything changed since then?” Caldwell
mused.
Caldwell said that he experienced an epiphany
one day while looking down at the sets of shoes he
had prepared for the horses to be shod that day.
He had laid them all out on the floor in pairs.
“There wasn’t a normal shoe there,” he shouted. “Am I doing something wrong?”
Caldwell then switched to a more constructive
mode, calling for reform in the education of
farriers, so that it would be a combination of
biomechanics, physiology, understanding of
diagnostic techniques, adaptability, common sense
and blacksmithing. In time, perhaps a term like “physiological shoeing” would describe a more
ideal approach to the farrier’s task.“Currently, we are teaching and doing business
based on a set of guidelines handed down from an
era when a horse cost more than a house,” he
pointed out. “Before we conduct an in-depth
diagnostic analysis, we must understand both
normal anatomy and biomechanics.”
According to Caldwell, working with video has
changed his view of static hoof balance
(“concentric” force loading) in favor of
appreciating the dynamics of the horse. “The horse
must collect itself to sync itself for the next stage of
movement,” he remarked as more slow-motion
clips moved across the screen. “I used to use static
balance (to shoe the horse) even though I watched
the horse walk.”
Caldwell gave an example of a horse that he
thought needed a lateral extension shoe. After it
was nailed on, the horse lost all flexion in its knee
and winged out.“Incorrect (concentric) load affects the
capabilities of the foot and limb to function within
acceptable limits. Keep in mind that all
components of the limb act together as an integral
unit; the mechanics of the locomotion system
require that the limb must realign itself to keep
pace with the beat of the individual gait,” he
expounded, bringing the use of video-based
observation into a practical light for the attendees.
A final case study from Caldwell detailed a
horse with collapsed heels, weak wall, a flared
quarter, prolapsed frog, deficient bars. His video
analysis indicated that the horse was loading
medially. The horse was shod to land more
acceptably.
However, looking at the horse and the video
made him examine the shoulder, and notice a
difference in muscle mass there. What Caldwell
finally determined: “Whilst the limb appeared to
present straight and as such it should land flat, it
was actually impacting (landing on the) lateral toe
and loading medial heel quarter.
“Closer inspection showed that when examined
from an eye-line view through the carpus, there
appeared to be a moderate fetlock varus deviation,”
he continued. When he experimented by placing
wedges strategically under the foot in order to
elevate the lateral plane of the hoof capsule, he
watched the shoulder muscle mass fill out and
eventually ended up shoeing the horse with a
lateral wedge to return the foot axis to its true
conformational stance whilst compensating for the
defect rather than trying to correct it. “Shoeing the
limb to appear straight by aligning the hoof to the
long axis had actually been causing the horse pain
and discomfort, by tying in the elbow and
constricting the range of movement through the
shoulder muscle mass,” he concluded.
Caldwell’s presentation was an eloquent call for
change in the perception of how farriery is taught
and how the farrier’s role affects the whole horse. “If we don’t do something serious soon, we’ll go
another 20 years,” he said, referring back to
Stephen May’s dire observation. “We, the farriery
profession, need to participate in the science by
conducting, with others, the relevant research that
accounts for both the art and the science,” he finished.
Rob Renirie
In a practical session after lunch, Dutch farrier
Rob Renirie returned to the stage and detailed a
case study.
“It may not be what you do, but how you do it,”
he began, showing a horse that had been imported
from the USA. He had been shod for five weeks,
was nailed outside the white line with an egg bar,
and had brittle walls.
Regarding Caldwell’s revealing slow-motion
videos, Renirie scoffed, “I am glad I can’t see everything!”
Amanda Sutton
Working on some of the world’s most valuable
performance horses is all in a day’s work for
physiotherapist Amanda Sutton. Observing sore
horses and watching the way they move and stand
have lead her to make many observations about
how farriery affects a horse, for better and worse.
Sutton refers to the secondary effects of foot
pain or imbalance as “compensatory” problems.
She mentioned that the top of the poll, shoulder,
and withers are three places on the body where she
sees horses adjust their stance in reaction to foot pain.
“Whatever its cause, pain in the feet will result
in an abnormal gait, and will eventually lead to
lameness,” Sutton wrote. “It will affect the horse’s
whole way of going and will severely compromise
his muscle tone and fitness, and his ability to work. ”
She suggested that farriers spend more time
observing how horses stand both before and after
shoeing. “They re-balance themselves,” she assured
the audience. “You should report what you see to
owners, involve them more in observing their
horses. Pelvic instability is a particular problem
that farriers become aware of.”
She noted that the position of the horse’s head
and the length of stride affect the back.
She admitted that she wants to know all about
how a client lunges a horse, but she does not like
certain lunging harness rigs. She recommended
lunging because it enables the horse to be schooled
without any weight on the back or any interference
from the rider, and because the horse has to find
its own balance. It is also easy to notice when the
horse starts to fatigue.
An interesting topic touched on by Sutton was
the horse’s proprioceptive nervous system. She
showed her method of proprioceptive taping, and said that when the muscles are overworking, the
brain does not tell the muscles to stop. Therefore,
it is important to teach the horse to move correctly
and efficiently, and the taping process helps the
horse learn to bend, and identify which muscles are weak..
Andy Bathe MRCVS
Andy Bathe is a lameness-specialist veterinarian
with a specialty in consulting on obscure or subtle
lamenesses. He is a partner in the practice of
Rossdale and Partners in Newmarket, England,
His topic was “Assessment and Treatment of
More Subtle Causes of Lameness and Poor
Performance” but his presentation was a more
casual run-through of cases.
Bathe is fortunate to have access to every high-
tech diagnostic tool, including both CT and MRI,
and his cases revealed how those tools can
sometimes supply too much information, or
distract the diagnostician away from the actual
problem. Keen observation is still a primary asset
of the veterinarian aspiring to Bathe’s level of expertise.
Bathe’s first case was a valuable Thoroughbred
filly that was exhibiting a gait abnormality.
Evaluating the filly with the Equinalysis system in
use at Rossdale’s pinpointed the area of
asymmetry, and an area of scar tissue in the gluteal
muscle was discovered.
Bathe mentioned his use of the technique of
drilling into the navicular bone to relieve pressure,
as developed at Tufts University in the USA, on a
9-year-old jumper. He also showed a case of a 12year-old high-level show jumper with intermittent
severe forelimb lameness that had been treated
with an infusion of the new bisphosphonate drug
Tildren for navicular disease.
Other impressive techniques on Bathe’s list
included injection of the sacroiliac region, dorsal
spinous process resection (“kissing spines” surgery),
shockwave therapy, scintigraphy, and
thermography.
In the end, Bathe showed a slide of what he
said were his three most important tools: a syringe
for nerve blocking, a flat surface for trotting up,
and his watch.
Regarding shoeing and the practice of
shortening the toe, he mused, “Load does not
disappear. It is re-distributed.”
“Advanced imaging techniques give us new
insights into causes of lameness,” he said, reading
his slide. “And also the ability to charge the client
more money for having a lame horse,” he quipped
to the audience. “Basic techniques are still the
mainstay, but advances in treatment will allow us
to keep high-level horses competitive longer.”
Conclusion
Co-organizer Haydn Price summarized the day
with a few words after Andy Bathe had finished.“Farriery is a key element in equine performance,
not just because of what we do to the foot,” Price
said. “We have more contact with the high-
performance horse and with the trainer than the
other professionals on the team.”
On the down side, Price criticized his
colleagues, and himself. “We try to cram too much
into our day,” he said.
“We are the custodians of our profession,” he
closed. “Twelve months ago I’d have never
believed that we would have farriers turn out to
look at performance-level shoeing. This day has
been diverse, but it was meant to be. Farriery has
had a wake-up call.”
Right on cue, a cell phone rang.
AN INTERSTEING ASPECT OF THE CONFERENCE
was a large room of exhibits. On close
examination, what might have looked like a small “trade show” was actually a freeform
entrepreneurial laboratory of farriers with new
products, albeit serendipitous that the exhibits
were all manned by farriers.
Andrew Poynton FWCF displayed his Imprint
thermoplastic shoes, which have now been
enhanced with new, more sophisticated designs.
Co-organizer Carl Bettison AWCF displayed the
latest in educational and shoeing products
imported or manufactured by his company,
Stromsholm Ltd.
Several Equinalysis “business partners”, or
franchise holders, had exhibits showing how they
are using video analysis and developing ancillary
businesses outside their shoeing or physiotherapy practices.
Throughout the conference, question and
answer periods were scheduled and during breaks,
speakers kindly made themselves available for
private conversations with attendees. Most of the
speakers supplied papers for a proceedings book,
which was distributed to registrants.
Things may be changing quickly in Britain, but
one thing that does not change is that people learn
differently. Some listen and watch. Some must ask
questions. Others go home and study their notes,
or the proceedings book.
One by one, each will decide whether to answer
or ignore the conference’s wake-up call, each to his
own vision of his or her role in the farrier
profession and the care of the horse. This
conference should have widened that vision in
most of the attendees; if not, the re-dial will be
coming up.
The text of this article appears in an illustrated format in
Hoofcare & Lameness Journal. For more information, visit http://www.hoofcare.com.
TO LEARN MORE....
Visit the web site of Equinalysis:
http://www.equinalysis.co.uk
Visit the web site of Stromsholm Ltd Farriers Supplies: http://www.stromsholm.co.uk
Further reading:
The Dynamic Horse by Clayton
Equine Locomotion by Back and Clayton
The Horse in Motion by Pilliner, Elmhurst
and Davies
The Injured Horse and The Injury-Free
Horse by Amanda Sutton
Physical Therapy and Massage for the
Horse by Denoix and Pailloux
Shoeing for Performance in the Sound
and Lame Horse by Price and Fisher
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