Posts filed under “Hoof form & function”
Navicular Disease – Part 1: Background
It’s a relatively small bone – about the size of a human thumb in the average horse. It bears no direct weight, doesn’t join any other bones together, and is rarely broken. And yet, it’s the alleged culprit in many, many cases of equine lameness. Without a doubt, no part of the equine hoof is […]
“The Lesson”
I had to laugh. One of my clients was recently recounting the resistance she faced from other boarders after making the decision to pursue natural hoof care with me. “And I hope you’re not paying extra for that ‘mustang roll,’” one woman said. “Any farrier can do that!” Her story ended up coinciding rather nicely […]
Unnatural Practices
The natural hoof is uniform in terms of its fundamental front and hind shapes throughout wild horse society, but it is also uniquely endowed with endless subtle variations in angle, size, and color that set the hooves of one horse off from those of the next. – Jaime Jackson, The Natural Horse Back in the […]
The Hoof Landings Tower of Babel
This isn’t even remotely what I expected to be writing about right now. In authoring my recent series on heel-first landings, I assumed that everyone likely to read them was familiar with the definitions of the various types of landings – probably because what the different landing types are called are, in themselves, accurate descriptions […]
The Myth of the Heel-First Landing – Part 3
Hopefully, Part 1 and Part 2 of this series have laid sufficient groundwork (no pun intended!) for you to now be ready to hear why the feral horse lands flat-footed at the walk. Let’s briefly summarize what we’ve covered so far: As a quadruped, the horse’s anatomy and way of going differs from the bipedal […]
How Much is Too Much?
Jared Lee’s cartoon makes light of what is pretty obvious to most of us: the horse is far better equipped to carry people than the other way ’round! And yet, as the size of our population continues to increase, the shrinking weight difference between horse and rider is definitely having an impact on the horse […]
Spring is Here?!
I know just how my horse felt when I took this photo many years ago. Following some surgery, he’d been stuck inside for a couple of weeks, so I carried a camera with me (pre-digital days, I might add!) as I turned him loose again for the first time. He was ecstatic! The weather here […]
The Myth of the Heel-First Landing – Part 2
In the first article in this series, I started us down the path to understanding why the proper landing for a horse at the walk has to be flat-footed by describing the anatomical differences between humans and horses, and pointing out the limitations of our ability to perceive fairly significant differences in how the horse […]
The Myth of the Heel-First Landing – Part 1
Yes, I know it’s been far too long since I’ve posted an article, but life seems to have a way of interfering with my writing! The good news is that I now have several articles well under way, and so will try hard to keep the gaps shorter. I had to laugh when I saw […]
Problem/Solution
It’s a constant struggle. The other night I gave a 2-year-old mustang born in a BLM holding facility his first real trim. I say “real” because he surely must’ve been trimmed at least once or twice in the holding facility, but almost certainly either in a squeeze chute, tranquilized, or both. As you can see, […]