Collateral grove measurements and retained soul
- After first trim
A few months ago I was asked to look at some horses of a friend of one of my clients. These horses had been receiving Natural Hoof Care but the owner was concerned that the feet and toes were being left too long. After checking on the horses and agreeing with the owner, I asked her what her Practitioner had to say about her trim and why she left the foot so long? She told me that the Practitioner told her that it would be unethical for her to take the foot back any further, because of the depth of the collateral grove at the point of the frog. I had never herd anyone use the term unethical in relationship to a long toed horse before, so I did some checking and found the source of the term. Wanting to understand why this practitioner thought this horse should not have its retained or false soul removed, I looked further into the training that this practitioner had received and talked to some practitioners that have had the same training. The Ramey model and guidelines are what these practitioners are being taught, so why the long toe and retained or false soul on these horses, I’ve read Pete’s guidelines on the depths he considers adequate for the collateral groves, it all seemed very streight forward to me, and then it hit me. If you follow this blog at all you know im very interested in Asymmetric horses or as some refer to it High Low syndrome. The long toe underslung heeled foot on these horses is the perfect example of retained or false soul in the toe. When the foot grows forward as in the case of this horse and others with long underslung feet, the point of the frog goes forward with it. When the frog and the soul come together in this calloused retained soul, there are no collateral grooves to speak of, only hard welded soul and frog. If you don’t see this as false soul, I can now understand why someone would say that they could not take anymore soul out of the foot. If you think what you are looking at is calused soul, and there is no depth in the collateral grove, and you’ve been taught to leave it alone because it needs more depth, then I can understand why that person would leave that soul alone. So what we need is some more training on recognizing retained or false soul. This can be a challenge for any Farrier or Practitioner, and I think for most of us it is experience that gives us the knowledge and skill to see and understand the foot well enough to make those dicissions. Also Id like to say that this is erroing on the side of caution, which I think is much better than cutting and lameing a horse in the name of Natural Hoof Care. I will be adding this subject to my clinics in the future, in hope of giving our new Practitioners a better understanding of how to identifie this problem.
- Bottom left front before trim
- Left front, toe too long underslung heels, right front toe to long heels too high
Left front after last trim
Right front after last trim
Right front last trim
Right front bottom
The winter was very hard on these frogs, they were very thrushy when we started and it actually took a change of stables to get the horses frogs healthy and ready to support. If you have a horse like this in a stable with only limited pasture time you may have a real problem growing a healthy frog. We moved this horse to a ranch close to me where she could run freely on very sandy ground. It took only a month for her to start growing heathy frog, sand is a great surfice to make frog contact when booting is not an option. If you have horses that you are not sure about, send me a pic and ill try and help you threw it. Until next time remember No Hoof No Horse.
