Beckie Mabbutt

I've been involved in a research project recently to try and prove another measurement we're taking on the foot to help accurately find the tip of the pedal bone so we can place break-over accurately.

We used 24 legs for this study one front and one hind from each horse of all different sizes and foot types.

Between myself, Chris Wiggins and Richard Lovejoy (two other highly skilled Farriers) we exfoliated, measured, mapped out and placed metal markers in various places on the foot to get the feet ready to be radio-graphed. We kindly had the assistance of Kelly from Bell Equine Veterinary Hospital for taking the radiographs.

We were trying to confirm that the accurate length of the central sulcus of the frog is the same length as from the widest part of the foot forward to the tip of the pedal bone.

This is only the start of the study and I will add some of the radiographs shortly, but what we wanted to show from this came out spot on. Here are some pictures of the process.

Just to show that I really have got the shoeing bug badly here is a picture of one of the pony's loose on the New Forest that I saw the other weekend. Although the feet are long I didn't see any with really long feet.

Today I shod Gambler a young horse that does a lot of road work and also drags his feet quite considerably. Look how warn his shoes are after just five weeks! I will do him in four weeks next time and hopefully I'll find the whole shoe on there, but really he needs doing every three weeks if you don't want him to skate around all over the place.

Dolly is a miniature Shetland with feet less than 3" wide. From a foal she developed contraction of the Deep Digital Flexor Tendon (the main tendon down the back of the leg), this tendon attaches to the solar surface of the pedal bone. Due to this pull on the tendon the result is club feet.

To add to this Dolly recently suffered from an acute onset of Laminitis. Here are the before and after trimming pictures of her feet. Notice the angle of the hoof wall at the coronary band that wants to grow at a 90 degree angle to the ground.