Enlightened Equine

The path we follow through life is a funny thing. And it’s been on my mind these past couple of weeks with the very unexpected news that my father had been taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a rapidly-progressing terminal illness. And so I went to New York to see him one last time, and he passed away peacefully just 4 days later.

My dad’s road was different from mine – his was straighter. Although he had no formal education past high school (he’d received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, but his family insisted he go to work instead), he had a voracious appetite for learning, far more common sense than most, and a genuine talent for mechanics, electronics, and photography. And so he spent his entire career working for the same medium-sized newspaper in southwestern New York, in spite of job offers from around the country.

Growing up with him was a real experience. He surrounded me with opportunities to learn. The house was full of not only tools and equipment – we had a well-equipped wood and metalworking shop, an electronics shop, and a darkroom – but of publications such as Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Popular Electronics, and Science & Mechanics. Family vacations nearly always consisted of trips to science museums – the Ontario Science Center, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, the Smithsonian, Boston’s Museum of Science. But more importantly, I lived with a man who took my frequent “whys” and “hows” seriously, and made every effort to give me complete and accurate answers regardless of the subject.

Perhaps the best lesson of all, though, was his general outlook on life. My father never spoke of “success” as having anything to do with how much money or property someone had. For him, it was a combination of love for what you do, pride in a job well done, and a willingness to share what you have with others. And according to that definition, I have to say he was the most successful person I’ve ever known.

My father also loved poetry, so it seems fitting to finish up this very brief tribute to a fascinating man with one of Robert Frost’s most notable poems –

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

You, indeed, have made all the difference for me, Dad, and I am eternally grateful for it. You never took the easy road yourself, but you paved the way for many others to have a safer and easier journey. You inspired and equipped me to pursue my own path, and I am the better man for it. I’ll miss your smile, your generosity, and your wealth of knowledge on a great many subjects you were always so willing to share. I truly hope we’ll meet again some day – perhaps on the other side of Frost’s yellow wood…

One of the interesting things about managing a blog is the sense of frustration that occurs when you can’t find exactly the right tool to do what you need. That was the case when, a few months ago, people started asking for copies of my blog articles to hand out to their fellow horse owners. So I’ve been searching for a tool that would allow me to automatically format blog posts in an acceptable format for printing, but, alas, all of the add-ins I could find either wouldn’t generate an acceptable layout or  required the reader to jump through too many hoops (like sign up for the service or endure endless ads).

And so, I finally decided to give up the search and start formatting them to my liking as printable PDF files, available on their own page on the site. That way, I’ve got absolute control over the layout/formatting (I value nice & neat!) and can maintain the continuity of the article as posted. A link to their page now appears in the sidebar under the heading “Printable Article Archive.” I’ve started with four popular ones, and I’ll continue to expand the offerings as time permits. Please share them with your friends!

Exciting news coming soon…

A very quick estimate reveals that I’ve now spent well over 10,000 hours in university classrooms over the past 34 years, teaching a wide variety of technical subjects to students of all ages and backgrounds. Those teaching experiences, along with my other parallel careers/passions – electronics engineer, hoof care professional, recording engineer, and jazz musician – have indeed given me a very rich and full life. And while I’d be hard-pressed to pick a “favorite career” among them, I have to say that I truly enjoy sharing my knowledge with others.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly rewarding, because in addition to my usual classes, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching some basic hoof theory and trimming to the Horse Health & Disease class in our Horse Production and Management degree program. I’m a big fan of such two-year programs, because, depending on your career objectives, I believe programs like this offer students the best return on their investment in terms of practical, real-world experience coupled with relevant theory and some broader liberal-arts education. Most of these programs have a particular focus; in our case, we have an emphasis on reproduction and genetics, and students gain considerable experience in both live cover and artificial insemination in our 46-stall barn, breeding shed, and laboratory. And Dr. Karen Wimbush, the program’s Technical Coordinator, is to be commended for her dedication to continually improving our course offerings.

This three-week series of lectures and laboratory experiences has been designed to equip the students with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions about hoof care based on science, and not on the hearsay, speculation, and out-and-out incorrect information so often offered up by well-intending but misinformed horse owners, farriers, and veterinarians. And so our first class concentrated on examining the characteristics of both a correct and incorrect landing, the factors that determine the form of the hoof and how it lands, and the short- and long-term movement and health consequences of proper and improper landings – a great start for any horse owner!

Then, this past Thursday, we gathered at the barn to brave the cold and do some hands-on trimming of cadaver hooves. “Sounds gruesome!” you might say, but there are some important advantages (as well as a couple of disadvantages) to using cadaver hooves to teach trimming. First and foremost, it minimizes the risk to the student. It’s enough of a struggle for a beginner to learn to use the tools correctly, so complicating the situation with trying to properly hold and safely manage a horse at the same time is, in my opinion, not in everyone’s best interest. I once heard someone liken hoof trimming to trying to carve a duck out of a flying piece of wood, and, believe me, that’s very close to the truth! And second, it also minimizes the risk to the horse. After all, it’s pretty hard to lame a dead horse. So I generally prefer to begin any hands-on instruction using cadavers.

The lead-up to the cadaver trimming class got off to a bit of a rocky start, though. The short version of the story is that the frozen hooves were delivered on Friday while I was in Massachusetts visiting Annie. Trouble was, they couldn’t find them to get them into our big walk-in freezer. And so the hooves ended up sitting in my office all weekend, thawing and smelling! And then Hurricane Sandy caused my return flight to be cancelled, so instead of teaching half the class Tuesday and half Thursday, per the original plan, we had to group the entire class together for our big trim adventure with the smelly hooves. But all’s well that ends well, as they say, and everyone did a fine job with their hooves.

Next week, we’ll finish up this brief look at hooves by trimming live horses. And even though we’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of both theory and practice, if this group is like every other person I’ve taught how to trim, they’ll emerge with a new respect for their hoof care provider, whomever he/she is!

New clients, particularly those with horses going barefoot for the first time since their youth, often ask, “When can I ride my horse again?” as I’m finishing up the first trim. That question used to puzzle me quite a bit, because nothing we do ought to affect a horse’s comfort in any way but positive. But an experience with a farrier finally made that question make perfect sense.

I was trimming a couple of horses for a new client some distance from home when her farrier walked into the barn. I later realized this had been the plan all along; she wanted him to observe me so he could “duplicate” the natural trim and continue using him, which I didn’t particularly appreciate. Nor, by the way, do I think anyone can grasp true natural hoof care simply by observing a single trim. But that’s not the issue at hand right now, so I’ll defer comments on that subject to another time. At any rate, he was a nice guy and I enjoyed talking with him. But after he’d watched me for a while, he suddenly said, “I see you don’t cut into any live tissue.” “No!” I replied with some shock. “Do you???” He then explained that at the very well-known and well-respected farrier school he’d attended, they were taught to cut into the live tissue of the sole (“pare out the sole”) as part of the trim process before applying a shoe.

And then it all made sense! I realized I’d watched other farriers who had trained at this same institution cut away sole tissue until they could flex the sole with their thumbs. I don’t think you have to be a genius to figure out that if I can flex the sole with my thumbs, a 1,000-pound horse stepping on a rock is going to hurt! But this, at least in my experience, is a very common practice. I remember helping a young farrier with his trimming some time later, and watching him cut the toe way down into live tissue. “Too short?” he’d ask. “Yes!” I’d reply, “When you see red (blood), it’s definitely too short!”

This is why new clients often ask that question; they’re used to having their horses be a bit tender after shoeing because living tissue has been violated. Obviously, the shoe, acting as a spacer between the sole and the ground, helps mitigate the discomfort. But this is why so many people who “try” taking their horses barefoot aren’t successful – because the same person who shoes their horse, cutting into living tissue as part of the process, is the person who trims their horse to be barefoot. And the horse, predictably, ends up sore – sometimes very sore. The owner then concludes the horse can’t be barefoot, and the shoes go back on. And “barefoot” takes the blame, even though the horse really never stood a chance because he wasn’t given a chance.

I typically see several different variations on sole tissue violation, depending on the farrier/trimmer. To be fair, many so-called “natural” hoof trimmers are also guilty of these same errors. But true natural hoof care never removes living tissue, but always removes only the ready-to-slough-off tissue that adequate movement over suitably-abrasive terrain would remove, given the opportunity. The illustration below shows a cross-section of the wall/sole/frog at the widest part of the hoof –

The top illustration shows the concavity and consistent thickness of a healthy hoof with all of the “junk” exfoliated. As you’ll note, the sole blends smoothly into the wall (at the white line), with no “lip” or “rim.”

The second drawing depicts the very common situation where the trimmer has “pared out” living sole tissue. This weakens the supporting and shock-absorbing capabilities of the hoof, allowing the weight of the horse to flex the sole more than it should, and therefore more readily come into contact with the ground. That, combined with the sensitive tissue that’s been exposed through over-trimming, often makes the unshod horse very sore on anything but a flat, unyielding surface. Even if shod, this horse will be sensitive on rocks or large gravel until the sole has had the chance to grow back. Often, these horses end up with very flat soles until proper hoof care is implemented.

Another very common scenario is shown in the next image, where the trimmer has over-rasped the hoof and violated the hoof’s concavity. It appears as a “rim” of sole inside the hoof wall, and is often covered up by a shoe. This destruction of the sole’s natural concavity also weakens the supporting and shock-absorbing capabilities of the hoof as above, although these horses, if shod, are often not as obviously sore because the over-thinned portion of the sole is covered. On the other hand, the loss of concavity places the sole that much closer to the ground. These horses can often take quite a while to regain the lost concavity, depending on the severity of the situation. These soles will sometimes appear to be flat, but only because the surrounding wall has been cut too short. An improperly-exfoliated hoof can mimic this problem, incidentally, because normal wall rasping flattens the sole material that should’ve been removed; the only way to distinguish between the two is by proper exfoliation.

The last illustration combines the previous two problems, and is what I witness in nearly every shod horse to one degree or another. This is why a shod horse often has trouble transitioning to barefoot: his hooves have endured many years of highly-invasive trimming with its attendant sole thinning and loss of support, and the horse is understandably uncomfortable on anything but the most forgiving terrain. In these situations, hoof boots are often necessary to allow the horse to be pain-free when ridden until the hoof recovers.

Proper hoof care should never cause pain. Sadly, many horses never get to experience that life. But once you understand what the farrier is doing, it’s pretty simple to understand why so many owners believe his or her horse cannot be without shoes, or have limited success with being barefoot. But the only way to truly “give barefoot a chance” is to hire a well-trained natural hoof care provider who understands what genuine natural hoof care is all about. So if your hoof care provider is guilty of either (or both) of these errors, don’t you owe it to your horse to look elsewhere? I think he’d think so…

One of the constant frustrations I encounter is nicely illustrated by the preceding clip from the 2004 – 2008 television show Wildfire. No, I’m not talking about chipped hooves and the common perception that they’re a problem; I hope I’ve adequately addressed that issue in earlier posts. What I’m talking about instead could perhaps be called the “expert syndrome,” which is when someone with a small amount of knowledge in a particular subject area feels qualified (and compelled) to offer his or her opinion on the subject to an extent that’s far in excess of what he or she actually knows.

I want to be absolutely clear here that I am not saying these people are stupid or incapable of learning. I’m talking about the gaps every person alive has in his or her knowledge. For example, I’m probably the most ignorant person on the planet when it comes to sports. I have no interest in the subject, and I know nothing about it. But most importantly, I know I know nothing about it and therefore refrain from commenting on it. That distinction is the subject of this article.

The “expert syndrome” is extremely common and certainly not confined to the horse world. For example, when I worked full-time designing professional audio products, a colleague once complained that a reviewer for the leading industry publication had written a rather bad review of one of her company’s new products, describing in technical detail a very specific problem with its performance. So she had the engineering department measure and re-measure samples of the product in an attempt to identify and fix the problem. Trouble was, they couldn’t find the problem; in spite of their $100,000-plus testing facilities, they simply couldn’t get the problem to show up. After about a week of this, she called the reviewer to ask him about the test conditions he’d used  to test the product for the review. His answer? “I didn’t actually measure anything, but I heard the problem while listening in my living room.”

I won’t even bother describing the differences between objective measurements done under very controlled laboratory conditions and one person’s subjective opinion in his living room, but I’m sure you get the idea. The more amazing part of this situation is not that he gave very specific numbers in his review as if he’d measured the product, but that he apparently thought nothing of writing a bad review of the product (which could’ve had dire consequences for the company) based on absolutely no objective information!

In the equine world, this often translates to some trainer or owner freely offering advice or making some proclamation as if it were based on actual data rather than anecdotes or speculation. Yes, I know it’s just a television show, but how many Wildfire fans nevertheless ended up believing that horses must be shod to avoid “risking a chip”? Even within the story line of the show, there’s nothing about this young woman’s history that would put her in a position to make such an authoritative comment on hoof care.

Some folks at Cornell University have actually measured this misperception of self- knowledge, and reported their findings in a paper authored by Justin Kruger and David Dunning and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology entitled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments“. In this study, the authors asked people to assess their knowledge of a particular subject area, and then tested them on that subject. Following the test, they also asked each participant to assess how they thought they’d performed on the exam. The results for logical reasoning ability are reproduced below –

As is obvious, the people with the least amount of subject knowledge grossly overestimated both their knowledge and their test performance. And not just by a small amount; their actual knowledge ranged from approximately one-half to only one-sixth of what they thought they knew! That truly frightens me, because the data suggests that half of the population overestimates its knowledge of a particular subject to a very significant degree.

The big problem, as the title of the paper points out, is that people don’t know what they don’t know. Based on their study, the authors make four “predictions” about the connections between competence, metacognitive ability (the ability to “know what one knows”), and inflated self-assessment, which I’ve summarized below –

• Incompetent individuals will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria when compared to their more competent peers
• Incompetent individuals will be less able than their more competent peers to recognize competence when they see it, whether their own or someone else’s
• Incompetent individuals will be less able than their more competent peers to use information about the choices and performances of others to form more accurate impressions of their own ability
• Incompetent individuals can gain insight about their shortcomings, but this comes by making them more competent, thus providing them the metacognitive skills necessary to be able to realize they have performed poorly

So the bad news is really the inability of these “experts” to know they’re not experts, which means it falls to the rest of us to try to sort things out. And that’s not always easy to do, because if we were experts in the subject area in question, we wouldn’t be seeking the advice of others! So it’s almost the classic “Catch-22.”

What can the horse owner do? Well, the study shows us that as a person’s actual subject knowledge decreases, his or her perception of their knowledge increases. So the most questionable sources would seem to be the individuals who freely offer advice about aspects of equine management that, logically, one wouldn’t expect them to have knowledge of, have nothing in their backgrounds that suggests knowledge of the subject area in question, and/or otherwise offer vague credentials such as “because I love horses” or “because I’ve been around horses my entire life.”

Unfortunately, and contrary to popular opinion, this also includes many veterinarians when it comes to hoof care. Logically, a veterinary student cannot spend much time on any particular aspect of the horse, since, in four years’ time, they have so much to learn – mostly about small companion animals. It’s not possible for them to spend more than a very small fraction of their time (maybe a class or two) on the equine digit. Yes, we horse owners tend to expect them to have the knowledge, but it’s simply not logical to assume they have it. After I posted Toy Story, I received a number of comments from horse owners and other hoof care professionals lamenting about similar experiences. Here’s one comment from a very well-trained and highly-experienced trimmer –

When I began to trim I asked my farrier, who had moved away, about barefoot trimming. He told me to keep records of at least the first year of my trimming and figure out what the success rate was for lame horses that I trimmed. He had spent years as the orthopedic shoer for the Florida vet school. He told me that the vet/farrier combination had less than a 30% success rate for bringing lame horses back to soundness; that most of what they did was simply extending the horses’ usability for a couple more years. My first year of trimming had an 85% rate in returning horses to work under saddle, many of those with a veterinary recommendation for euthanasia, After that, I was off and running with barefoot trimming.

Board-certified veterinary surgeon Neal Valk, who teaches in our training program, has told me similar things; that, even as a “super vet” from an education perspective, he was taught very little about hoof care, and what he was taught was aimed at getting a bit more use out of a horse, with the full knowledge that once the owner went down the “corrective shoeing” route, it was only a matter of time before it no longer “worked.” But this post has gotten much longer than intended, and I’ve got to wrap it up!

I see this lack of actual knowledge and the subsequent propagation of misinformation as a very real problem in the horse world, and I like to discuss this topic in my workshops because I want horse owners to not only be able to recognize suspect information when they encounter it, but also to halt its spread when possible. So question everyone and everything, and do your level best to share only well-researched sources of information supported by objectively-credible credentials. We all have an obligation to our horses to stop inaccurate information.

Please do your part.