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"[He was] so
learned that he could name a horse in nine languages ... So ignorant that he
bought a cow to ride on." Benjamin Franklin
Hoof Model
Go to any of the shows held here in
Florida, or any state for that matter, and you'll see a wide variety of hooves. High heels, low
heels, barefoot, shod, short toe, long toe, hair lines that cut a plane and
those that arch and everything in between. Within the Strasser Protocol
there is a model that is considered healthy. These parameters define a
healthy foot as one that has hoof mechanism, that is, when the horse weights his
hoof the walls are able to move in a proscribed manner and the sole is able to
draw flat. This allows for maximum blood circulation and allows the coffin
bone to descend without pinching the solar corium. Also, the hairline
forms a
plane at a 30 degree angle to the ground and on the front hooves the dorsal wall
makes a 45 degree angle to the ground. Heel height is at 3 cm. These
angles and heel height contribute to hoof mechanism and blood flow and allow for
the best weight displacement across the hoof contributing to a wide variety of
factors. This is not a complete description but a sketch of the high
points. Below are some pictures and diagrams of the hoof.
HOOF DIAGRAMS
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DIAGRAM OF
THE TWO WEIGHTBEARING STATES
Here are the two
positions of the foot. Weightbearing when the sole draws flat and the
wall moves outward allowing the corium to fill with blood. Then the
hoof is lifted out of its weightbearing phase and constricts to its
narrowest state and the blood is expressed. Anything that interferes
with this, like a shoe or an improper trim, impedes blood flow. A
horse's heart is only .5% of his body weight and he depends on these four
auxiliary pumps to keep his blood flow optimum. |
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DEFORMATION
OF HOOF CAPSULE
Note that the dorsal
wall at the coronet band moves in and down. That all movement is from
the center of the dorsal wall all the way around and not just from the end of the quarters back.
Also note that unlike many descriptions in texts the points of the bars
remain fixed while the bar itself, along with the buttress of the heel moves
outward. Also note the movement down in the quarters that allows
the top of the coronet band to move downward. When this is locked down
either by a pasture trim that leaves the wall flat in this area or by a
shoe, there is bruising in the hoof wall.
Animation courtesy of Peter
Speckmaier |
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UNCONTRACTED HOOF
or
How To Tell
If Your Horse Is Contracted.
Here we have an excellent example
of an uncontracted hoof. Draw an imaginary line from the apex of the
frog out past the outside of the heel bulb. If the buttress of the
hoof, i.e., that point where the wall turns back in on the foot and becomes
the bar, lies inside that line, then your horse is contracted If the
buttress lies outside that imaginary line, as shown in the photo at the
left, then your horse is not contracted. |
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HOOF
MECHANISM
If you look closely
you can see the arteries open and close as the hoof expands and contracts.
Note that the coffin bone descends with the solar floor and the walls move
outward on weightbearing. One can easily see how leaving the bars long
or at wall height would pinch all the tissue between the bar and the
navicular bone thus making a horse very heel sore with a tendency to toe
walk.
Animation courtesy of
Peter Speckmaier |
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Why doesn't
a Shod Horse Feel the Damage?
Cutting off the blood supply to the
foot during certain phases of the cycle of movement is normal, and part of
the pumping mechanism. However, many of the hoof problems encountered
by the domestic horse are hidden from the owner's (and the horse's) notice
by an artificially induced chronic lack of circulation (high heels, shoes)
which impedes oxygen uptake and therefore nerve transmission leading to a
lack of sensation, allowing internal damage to reach vast proportions and
lead to severe metabolic consequences. |
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