N-S > Stevens, Sally (14)
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Right Front Pre-shoeing
Sally had just bought Tory and this was his first shoeing with me. This is his right front, quite an upright foot but with good horn quality and plenty of foot to trim away.
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Left Front Pre-shoeing
This is his left front, a much flatter foot than the right. You can see how his heels have got long and run forward. When the heels get long and run forward like this it can have quite an affect on the way the horse goes often causing pain in the heel region. It is very common for horses to have miss-match sized feet. This can be caused by a few things but if each foot is shod as an individual and has the shoe size fitted that it needs the horse will be just fine. Problems occur when feet are made to try and look a pair when structurally there not.
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Right Hind Pre-shoeing
This is his right hind, this foot probably has the fewest distortions out of the four. It is just pretty long, he was only shod 7 weeks ago but obviously grows a lot of foot.
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Left Hind Pre-shoeing
His left hind is a little more upright than the right. It is interesting how diagonally his right front and left hind are smaller more upright feet. This is quite commonly seen.
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View of Frog
Looking down a front foot I'm looking at how much distance there is between the frog and the ground with the shoe on. Ideally the frog wants to come into contact with the ground even with the thickness of the shoe there. This will enable the frog to function properly and maintain good health within the foot.
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View of Frog on Hind
Again on this view of a hind foot you can see there's about a distance of 1.5cm between the frog and the ground. I'm hoping over the next couple of shoeing's I can get the frog to be contacting the ground which will help these feet enormously.
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Solar view
On the bottom of this hind I've marked the widest point of the foot. You can see about a 1/3 of the shoe is behind this line to 2/3 in front. For the foot to function optimally there should be at least 1/2 of the shoe behind this line and just less than 1/2 in front so as the horses weight is supported evenly.
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Right Front Post-shoeing
If you remember this was his more upright front foot. Now trimmed to the functional sole you can see how much heel I have removed. It is still a smaller more upright foot (that's not going to change) but it will function better having been trimmed in this way. Ignore the black pen lines on his foot I was just drawing on him to better explain what I was doing to Sally at the time.
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Left Front Post-shoeing
This is the left front after shoeing, you can see the heels are a lot straighter than before.
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Right Hind Post-shoeing
On this picture unfortunately he was just starting to lift his foot so the heel is slightly off the ground, but never the less you can still see the comparison from before.
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Left Hind Post-shoeing
Here is the left hind after shoeing. Look at the difference in the angle of the foot from before. Tory had such long toes and high heels he should really benefit from his new trim and shoe placement.
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Solar view 6 weeks later
Look how healthy his frog looks like on his second shoeing with me.
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Front 6 weeks later
This is Tory's frog 6 weeks later. It has widened and developed so much and is a lot healthier.
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Hind 6 weeks later
This is just how you want a frog to look from this view. I'm surprised we were able to achieve it within just 6 weeks. If you compare it to the pre-shoeing picture above you'll see a big difference.