Page 38 - Winter 2020

By Jana Thomason Photography
Therapeutic shoeing is the term that refers to the various ways and methods that can be utilized to help a hoof recover from injury, a medical problem or some kind of functional impairment. In many situations, a veterinarian and a farrier will both be involved in working with a problem foot, devising a treatment and shoeing plan to enable it to recover and function properly again.
Steve Norman, a Kentucky farrier who does a lot of work with racehorses, uses several types of special shoes to give support to problem feet, and says that in some instances these could be called therapeutic shoes. “If there’s a foot distortion or conformational defect that
is making the foot so far out of balance that it is negatively impacting the horse, something must be done to get it back to normal. There are many ways to support that type of foot,” he says. Other instances in which a special shoe might be needed would include certain types of laminae injury or laceration.
“A foal or yearling may need support for certain feet/leg problems, and a racehorse may need support for an injury such as a sheared heel.” There are a number of abnormal conditions that can be helped with a certain
type of trimming or shoeing to aid the foot or limb and help it heal or come back to normal. “For a sheared heel, I generally prefer a
Z-bar shoe, though there are other types of helpful shoes—such as a straight bar or an egg bar shoe--that will possibly do the same thing. There are always several options, and what the farrier uses will probably depend on what he/ she feels most comfortable with, knowing it
has worked for him/her before, to give the foot adequate support. Often what is used comes down to personal preference, and there are many different things that will work,” says Norman.
The farrier may have to try several tactics on certain cases. “An egg-bar shoe might work fine on one horse, but not on another. Sometimes you have to try several things to find what works best for that horse,” he says.
With foals and weanlings, he’s often used medial or lateral extensions on a foot to help support the ankle, or a toe extension, or a raised heel to deal with tendon contraction. “These supports are often done at a very young age, from two weeks to three months old. This has been a very useful tool for me, to support the limb. This is not a shoe, but something you add to the foot to support the weak side. By the time the animal is a yearling you can often use a special shoe because the foot is bigger. At that age you may be supporting
the knees rather than the ankles,” explains Norman. The growth plates on the ankles have finished growing by the time the horse is a
year old and there’s no longer that much you can do to correct an ankle deviation by that stage.
Glue on shoes are excellent for horses that are unable to have a shoe nailed to the hoof.
“But the knees are still growing and a therapeutic shoe can be helpful if you need to raise the heels or support the medial or lateral side with some type of extension shoe. Similar types of therapeutic methods are done on foals and yearlings, but as the foot grows larger we can use a shoe (nailed on), versus something that we’d glue onto the smaller foot of the foal,” he says.
There are many types of injuries that can occur in racehorses, so he is continually dealing with these. “It’s often some type of special-made bar shoe, to give the support where it’s needed— to hopefully get the injury healed quickly and well enough to get that horse back on the racetrack,” he says.
“I worked with a horse that injured a front foot with a hind foot as he was getting up. He got up so quickly that he ripped the coronet band and tore off 2 inches of hoof wall—just stripped it right off the laminae on the outside of foot. That horse was scheduled to race at Belmont Park on a Saturday and he injured the foot Friday afternoon. He had to be scratched from the race, and we used a Z-bar shoe to take all pressure off the outside quarter. The foot had to be treated
TherapeuTic Shoeing
by Heather Smith Thomas
36 New Mexico Horse Breeder
By Jana Thomason Photography