Page 26 - Canada Spring 2022

EQUINE HEALTH
“I teach people to pick their horse’s feet up and hold them, so the horse gets used to the idea of having its foot held, and not just jerk it away.” – Dr. Tia Nelson
Steve Norman, a farrier in Kentucky who shoes a lot of racehorses, explains that you walk
a fine line in correcting a foal,
since too much correction can be detrimental. Even if the limb needs support, added support can be in the way. Some foals have feet that deviate outward so much that they crush
the inside heels at a very young age. “Your first thought might be to put on a medial extension for support. Then you end up bandaging the other leg because the extension hits it. You may have to do something else to correct the deviation or
cover up and protect the other leg (otherwise the inside sesamoid would be hit too hard and swell) and hope you don’t have to do it very long. You don’t want to create more pain. There is a happy medium that you try to find,” says Norman. It takes time and experience.
Regarding conformation, you need to figure out which part
of the foot is getting the most stress and pressure, and deal
with it accordingly. “If there is a conformational defect and you
can’t address it fairly early in the young horse to actually correct it, then you’ll have to deal with it on a monthly basis, with each trimming/ shoeing, for the rest of that horse’s career. Many problems can be remedied to a certain extent, but it’s just tougher when the horse is older. You always need to support the weak side,” he says.
HANDLING THE FEET
Nelson says one thing she used to do when she was shoeing fulltime, before she became a veterinarian, was work on foals’ feet at no charge, if it was a foal who belonged to people she’d been shoeing for regularly. “Until it was six months old, I did not charge for any hoof care that I provided for that foal,” she says.
“I did that for several reasons. I liked to look at those foals when they were three to four weeks old, or even earlier if the owner was concerned about a foot/leg problem that might
need correction. If there is any conformational problem that you want to change, you need to do it before they are two to three months old and then follow through after that. By looking at these foals early, if there was something that needed to be changed, I could do that,” says Nelson.
“The second reason was that I got to teach that baby how to pick up its feet and stand. When I am teaching it how to stand, I put the foal against the wall or against
the mare. I start with a hind foot (because it’s easier for the youngster to balance on three legs with a hind foot up rather than a front foot since the fronts carry more weight). I take as long as necessary, because I don’t want to frighten the baby,” she says.
“I teach it to pick up its foot, and then teach it to hold its foot up. Some people teach their horses to pick up a foot, but they don’t hold it up long enough. With some clients, I finally told them to not pick up their horse’s feet because
24 SPEEDHORSE CANADA Spring 2022
Horses instinctively want to be ready to run away from predators, and they feel vulnerable if they don’t have control of their feet and legs.