On The Hoof

A Firm Foundation

 

Horse Shoeing for the Mounted Athlete

 

Sometime back I was called out to tack a shoe on for a girl in town for the high school rodeo. When I arrived it was plain that this horse needed much more. He had four completely mismatched feet! Turns out that it had been about three months since he had been shod and they had been nailing shoes back on as they fell off. I told the girl the horse needed to be shod all around and that was the only way they were going to get me to work on him. She called her dad over and when I told him my price he informed me that it was twice what he was paying at home. I bit my tongue, overwhelmed with the urge to launch into a diatribe about cost versus value. As I went to work Dear Old Dad began to tell me how disappointed he was in the horse. He had spent $7500 on this nag and his daughter had not been in the money even once all year! This time I couldn’t resist and I informed him (in true horseshoer fashion) that if he could afford that kind of money for a horse, then he sure ought to be able to cough up the funds for a decent shoeing job. Well, we didn’t speak much more the rest of the time I was working. However, the next day I got a phone call asking me to come to Gallup, NM every six weeks to shoe this horse! Seems he went in the night before and took second out of about 15 can runners. The eight hour drive wouldn’t quite fit into my schedule, but I was able to locate an AFA farrier in their area and hooked them up. The point is that the horse had all the tools to be competitive but because no attention was paid to his feet, his very foundation, they were unable to put it all together.

 

Treat Them as Athletes!
Mounted shooting horses perform as finely tuned athletes, and participate in one of the most demanding of all equine sports. The stress and strain placed on the horse in this event is comparable to that felt by polo and jumping horses. Imagine if you will an athlete like Tim Duncan trying to drive the lane and slam dunk a basketball while wearing a cowboy boot on one foot and a tennis shoe on the other. He might get it done but he wouldn’t be very efficient and chances are he’d wind up injured! Same is true for Ole Dobbin when he’s trying to pack you around the balloons with unbalanced, poorly shod feet.

 

So What Do I Look For?
For the purposes of this article we’ll assume that the horse has no major conformation faults. I’m not going to go into evaluating equine conformation here. If you are unsure whether your horse is built right or not, there are many resources available to help you out. You might even ask your veterinarian to give you an evaluation of your horse and whether it is satisfactory for the rigors of mounted shooting. Set your ego aside and listen to what the vet has to say. It could save you a lot of heartaches on down the road. 

 

So, assuming that Dobbin has a leg on each corner, they all reach the ground, and point pretty much in the same direction, we will first evaluate his balance from the side.

 

Stand the horse squarely on a flat, level surface and look at the angle of his hoof and pastern from the outside looking in on each leg. The hoof angle is the relationship between the length of toe and height of the heel. This angle determines the ease with which the horse picks up his feet, also known as his “break over.” The hoof angle combined with the pastern angle is known as the “Phalangeal Lever.” There are some folks than can actually spell all this out for you in terms of algebraic physics equations. The good news is… I’m not one of them. The important thing to remember is that these angles need to be kept as close to natural as possible with regards to each individual horse. (Figure1.)

 

The first illustration represents an ideal pastern/hoof angle. A line drawn from the center of the pastern joint to the ground running parallel to the surface of the horse’s pastern and hoof is straight and has no appreciable deviation. This is as it should be. The second illustration shows what is known as a “Broken Back” condition. The hoof angle is lower than the pastern angle and our line breaks toward the ground. Sometimes this is created by trimming off too much heel when preparing the foot. Other times it is a conformation fault. Some horses just flat will not grow heel enough to keep up with their toes and no matter how you try to put heel on these horse naturally, they either break it off or curl it under. Either way this can be a real problem for speed event horses. A low pastern angle and long toe may be just fine for a Saturday ride on the trail, but can cause real problems when you want to run hard, turn sharp and get around the cones and barrels while blazing away at balloons.

 

If your horse’s feet are in this condition, discuss it with your farrier. The shoer may want to try to leave more heel on the horse, and rock the horse’s toe which eases the hoof’s break over, or may want to add some sort of appliance such as wedged heeled shoes or a wedged pad to bring the foot up to a normal angle. I can’t stress enough that running a horse with a broken back angle can cause tremendous stress on the tendons, ligaments and bones of the lower leg resulting in serious long term and in many cases permanent lameness issues.

 

Next is a “Broken Forward” condition. The angle of the hoof is steeper than the pastern angle and our line has a peak in it. This condition, while it is a deviation from the ideal, is usually less threatening to your horse. Again this can be the result of a preparation fault — that is not trimming off enough heel — or it could be the horse’s conformation. We see a lot of Quarter Horses with one or both front feet broken forward as a result of short tendons and ligaments. While a slightly broken forward foot breaks over quickly and is usually not a problem, a horse that is extremely “club footed” tends to be clumsy and exerts a lot of concussion stress on the pastern and coffin bones resulting in such problems as ring bone, side bone, and in some cases navicular syndrome. Again this is something to discuss with your farrier. Most of the time these horses can be trimmed as close to their ideal angle as possible without causing any problems. While this condition is considered by many to be “normal” in hind feet, I prefer a good natural angle all around whenever possible, especially for a speed event horse.

 

Next time we’ll talk about balance and foot flight as viewed from the front.
(Note that throughout the preceding text I’ve instructed you to DISCUSS these conditions with your farrier. Please don’t take this magazine out and whack your shoer with it insisting that he/she change the way your horse is shod. Use it as a guide to evaluate your horse’s balance and if you notice a problem, open a dialog. If your shoer can’t, or worse, won’t give you a reasonable answer then let your conscience be your guide.)

 

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Jim grew up at horse shows in the Seattle area. He attended Montana State University’s Horseshoeing school in 1980, earned his AFA basic certification in 1985 and his Journeyman in 1987. Jim lives in Alamogordo, NM were he and his wife Louise run Cloud Peak Stables. He started competing in mounted shooting in 2005.

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