Beckie Mabbutt

This Monday I'll be heading off to Cincinnati-Ohio for 4 days of lectures along side another 800 or so farriers from all over the world. I'll also be representing the Equine Lameness Prevention Organisation by working on their trade stand whilst I'm there. I look forward to returning with some new information and ideas.

Here's the link if you want to see what the programme is click here

Here are a sequence of pictures that are a bit tricky to explain but here goes.

This is Pete a Lamanitic miniature shetland. Firstly he has grown very long feet, been on box rest and has been so sore he couldn't walk the width of his stable. An important part of his history is he also had locking stifle surgery on both hinds a few years ago.

Since his lack of exercise he seems to have lost the tension in the flexor tendons (tendons that run down the back of the leg) on his hind legs and worse on the off hind. He ended up not being able to put his feet flat on the floor his toes were off the ground and he was walking severely on the outside of the hind feet too.

I was all ready to try gluing a shoe on to help him but when I arrived the laminitis had hugely improved and he was a lot more mobile his hind legs had started to strengthen so I ended up just trimming him. I did take a lot off though.

I've added red arrows below to make it clearer the gap between the ground and foot.

Here is the leg after trimming looking quite a bit straighter.

Below is a hind foot of a dressage horse that within 5 weeks grows excessively and really distorts. Despite being sound he has an ongoing abscess problem at his toe. Initially he was lame and puss pored out of the sole and coronary band, but now roughly 10 months down the line there is still puss lingering and his dorsal wall (Toe) keeps doming and it looks pretty horrid. Here are before and after photos showing the change made with just trimming, but in another 5 weeks that nice looking foot will be no longer!

This is a great example of Lamanitic growth rings. With Laminitis the heels of the foot tend to have accelerated growth and there for growing at a different rate to the toe you get these rings. Here is a before and after showing how much heel was needing to be trimmed off.