Preserving the sole of the horse...Balanced for performance...Naturally

Monday, October 18, 2010

LFD

One of my favorite phrases "LFD...Lack of Farrier Disease" was coined by Dr. Neil Valk, DVM, Greeneville TN.  He also is a bare hoof trimmer of high caliber.  I had the pleasure of meeting Neil in person when I transferred a client over to him when she moved from NM.  Here is a great example of what that is.  This is the set-up trim on a pony mare suffereing from LFD.  She walked off sound and has never taken a lame step since. 
 Look at the length of this foot! 
 There's a sole and a frog in there somewhere...
 The dogs had a party with all the trimmings.  Just noticed that I didn't bevel the roll prior to taking the photo. 


On the sole prep, I didn't work too much on the bars and I returned two weeks later to define the bars, back up the toes a bit more and check for balance again after she has had time to walk on them a bit.  Normally I leave the sole alone if possible, but she had excess dead sole (oh, just a tad) that was harboring little beasties.  Was careful not to remove ANY live sole.  Recommended the owner treat for thrush.  Ya think?

There are three parts that form a successful natural hoof care triad:  Nutrition, exercise and mechanics.  But when any one side of the triad is missing or compromised, the triad fails.  Simple as that.  I will discuss each one in detail in following blogs.  The trimmer takes care of the mechanics, but without the horseowner taking a proactive role in the other two, it just won't give the horse a chance to meet its full potential.

2 comments:

  1. WOW what a difference! I've always been fascinated by hoof care, it always amazed me how such a structure that gets so much weight put upon it can be so strong, yet so weak at the same time.

    Er, you might want to change your analogy though...Pyramids have four sides. Five if you count the base. If you're a geek though, there ARE four sided dice. ;D

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  2. Forgot to say, a tripod has three legs, and will collapse without all three working.

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