All I know is What I read in the American farriers Journal, here are the highlights from the Sept/Oct issue.
The Veterinary Equine Podiatry Group (VEPG), a group of 30 plus vets have tabled their effort in trying to establish a board specializing in podiatry. Sounds like there is too much red-tape for them to unwind to get this done. This is too bad as the industry desperately needs a cohesive standard to evaluate feet by. Right now the group is going to be a society, dedicated toward podiatry education.
There is an article about support limb laminitis called “Mechanics that lead to Supporting Limb Laminitis”. This type of laminitis is from the over weighting of one foot because of an injury in the opposite limb. When the foot is fully weighted the weight compression forces blood out of the foot not allowing nutrient rich blood back in. this causes starvation of the soft tissues mostly laminar death hence founder. I have seen quite a few of these cases in my career and one thing they all have in common is that the foot that is low on hoof mass has the worst outcome. These feet are already suffering from circulation and compression issues and all they need is a little push to send them over the cliff. Again If the vet industry had a standard to evaluate foot health they would be able to recognize the disaster before it happens, possibly shore-up some of theses feet by adding ventral depth and reducing leverages. a lateral radiograph of the weight bearing foot would give a lot of information.
In an article ‘Shoeing from the Inside Out’, there is some good information but one misleading statement in which the author says “over time the use of graduated shoes or wedging of the hoof capsule can be detrimental to the overall health of the foot’. This is true in a flat shoe, no mechanics shoeing paradigm but not so when using proper palmarodorsal (heel to toe) mechanics around center of rotation of the foot. In fact these feet will grow heel when the mechanics are correct. One other thing; the industry needs to quit saying “Prolapsed Frog”, the frog is not prolapsed, the heels are too short. We need to say “lack of ventral depth in the heels”.
An article by Kirsty Lesniak on ‘How long should horses go between farrier visits’. is based on a paper she co-authored in Animals. This article has a lot of great information. The big deal here is that foot growth is determined by how it is weighted from the limb above center of rotation of the foot and the opposing ground reaction forces below. Combine this with the tension or lack thereof the deep flexor tendon and you can figure out why feet do what they do.
