A Modern Look at the Hoof

By Monique Craig

Keeping horses comfortable and sound can be a complicated and often times stressful process not only for the owner, but also for hoof care professionals. The author started her learning journey out personal frustration with these issues. Her goal was initially just to find solutions for her own horses. Eventually her hoof research provided results applicable to every horse. A must for anyone (owners, trainers, trimmers, farriers, and veterinarians) wishing to be well-versed in the hoof, readers will without a doubt gain new insights from this book on topics not found in other hoof related publications. This book is a new look at the hoof, focusing on a detailed look at its morphology (shape) and function, and discussing implications for how the hoof should be trimmed and cared for. The information is backed up with the presentation of accurate measurements from thousands of horses’ hooves, as well as examples painstakingly collected over the author's 20 year involvement with trimming the hoof. This book contains over 300 color images, many with measurements and annotations, and will be an excellent addition to your hoof care resources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monique Craig
• Release date: Mar 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311033598

Monique Craig

Monique Craig is a hoof researcher, farrier, consultant to farriers, rider, author, and founder of EponaTech ( www.Metron-Imaging.com ) and EponaShoe ( www.EponaShoe.com ) and the Epona-Institute (www.Epona-Institute.org). She has a BS in Computer Science Engineering, formerly studied art and won sculpture awards, and now gives seminars and lectures on the hoof, trimming, shoeing and equine biomechanics. She has published several papers related to the hoof and soundness, and gives lectures at the college level in hoof biomechanics. A tri-lingual native of Switzerland, she became a US citizen in 2001. She recently published her first book: "A Modern Look at... The Hoof" available at www.EponaBook.com

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The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

A Modern Look At ... THE HOOF

Morphology ~ Measurement ~ Trimming ~ Shoeing

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2015 Monique Craig

v4.0

Cover Photo © 2015 Faye Baker. www.photogenics.biz. All rights reserved - used with permission.

Interior Images © 2015 Monique Craig. All rights reserved - used with permission.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Dedicated to Smirnoff with love.

Foreword: A Chronology of the Journey

Horses have always been my passion. My first experience with riding horses was at the age of six. My parents had a house in the Swiss countryside where we spent weekends and holidays. I started riding by climbing on any horse I could find, often horses that were grazing in pasture. I would spend many days roaming the countryside on horseback by myself. I eventually took proper riding lessons but I never had the same fun as the years I spent roaming the countryside alone.

I stopped riding when I prepared to go to college. I met my husband, John, in Switzerland and ended up moving back with him to the U.S. Shortly after starting university I married him. After graduating from engineering school, I went to work and started to save enough money to buy a horse. At that time, my husband was quite unaware of my passion for horses. We both loved animals; we had already collected two cats and two large dogs. My husband and I were living in Palo Alto but opted for a more countrified lifestyle, purchasing a piece of raw land on the San Mateo Coast in 1989. Our property was at the end of a very winding and narrow four-mile road with no adjacent neighbors—only the state park.

I had just started leasing riding horses in a local barn to get myself back into the saddle. My plan was to go back to Europe, spend a couple of months at a riding school and come back with a horse. The idea was to do this after we finished our house and barn! For a time, I casually looked at horses in my area but resisted the urge to buy one. One day, a trainer told me that I should go and look at a nice bay Holsteiner. What was the harm in looking? I looked at the horse, fell in love, and ended up buying a green broke five-year-old stallion in1989 --- Smirnoff. I fully knew that boarding a stallion was a bad idea, but I naively thought that building our house and barn would go smoothly. My husband and I planned everything in minute detail. We were told that we should expect to wait six months for permits. After a mere eighteen months of jumping through hoops, we finally started to break ground! We actually ended up living for two years in a trailer with no real running water nor adequate heating. Water was delivered to us by truck since we could not even start drilling for a well. We had no electricity—only a generator. Eventually we finished our passive solar house and moved in. In fact, our entire ranch ran on solar electricity. This was our pride and joy.

Smirnoff moved in with us just a little after we finished the house – a mere three years after buying the land! I felt relieved to have him home. Smirnoff had chronic lameness issues almost immediately after I bought him. He had a thorough pre-purchase veterinary exam which he passed with flying colors. I went through a slew of experts and tried many different shoeing prescriptions, but nothing worked for the long term. It was very frustrating. Sometimes it seemed to me that as farriers changed, so did Smirnoff’s conformation!

After I moved into my ranch, I bought two young thoroughbreds. Boris was a four-year-old ex-race horse and Gluck was an un-raced two-year-old. Boris and Smirnoff were shod on all four hooves, and neither one of them were consistently sound. Gluck remained barefoot as I was not yet riding him. Once the horses and I were settled on the ranch, I finally had time to learn everything about the hoof and equine anatomy. Hooves seemed to have so many lameness issues that at one point I started to wonder if there were evolutional flaws in the design of the hoof. This led me to read books on paleontology and evolutionary biology. I also attended educational seminars on the hoof.

I met Dave Duckett in 1992 at a farrier convention. Dave Duckett is a world champion blacksmith with an open mind. What made him very intriguing to me is the fact that he was questioning conventional farriery and that he had spent time studying feral horses. I followed his work for two years and had Dave Duckett shoe my horses for a while. I evolved my own thoughts about trimming in 1995 during the worst storm we had ever experienced on our ranch. There is some truth to the adage Necessity is the mother of invention -- probably in my case this could have been translated to Absolute fear was the mother of invention!

The month of January 1995 was a very wet month but nothing too unusual except for one horrific storm at the end of that month. We received twenty-two inches of rain in twelve hours with wind peaks of 120 miles per hour and sustained winds of 90 miles per hour. The worst of the storm happened during the night. The only paved exit to our property washed out that night. As I was checking my horses during the worst of the storm, mudslides blocked the access road to the barn. I ended up trapped there by myself for most of the night. It was too dangerous for either John or me to walk through the mud. We used our flashlights to signal to each other that we were okay. At one point, during the night, the barn started to make strange creaking noises. I went out and noticed that mud was piling up behind the barn. My only escape was through the pastures. This situation presented some serious problems. I had no idea whether the road to the pastures was actually accessible. I decided to stay put until I had no other option but to make a run for it. At around 5:00 a.m., the storm started to wind down and luckily the slides behind the barn did not worsen. I was still trapped but started to calm down somewhat.

I decided to focus my rattled brain cells on trying to figure out how to ‘build a hoof.’ My thought experiment was a pivotal landmark for my own research. Being at the complete mercy of the elements was also a life altering moment for me. I learned a profound respect for nature’s forces. This experience also changed my outlook on wanting to control events; it definitely made me appreciate being alive. The rain subsided as dawn broke. John, I, and the horses made it through the storm unscathed. The road to the pasture was completely blocked; the retaining walls behind the far part of the barn and to the pasture had collapsed. I eventually was able to tread my way back through the mud to my house. From there, John and I managed to clear a safe path back to the barn. The main exit road was repaired three weeks after its collapse. The potentiality of another storm, along with the damaged retaining walls, compelled us to move our horses to a boarding barn.

After fixing the damages, my horses were eventually moved back to the ranch in early summer 1995. We had two other wet winters after that, but we weathered them without significant problems

As life settled back to a more normal routine, I launched a research project in which I put force sensors on Smirnoff’s hooves. I used a small computer that could be secured to his body to record the stress and strain in his hooves as he moved. The information from the force sensors on his hooves let me see how the hoof capsule was behaving. I was able to let my horses move free with this equipment. This was a great advantage compared to taking data on a treadmill because I could measure capsule behavior while the horse was turning. I continued to attend hoof seminars. I met Gene Ovnicek in 1996. I was then introduced to Dr. Bowker while attending Gene Ovnicek’s lectures.

In the same year, I also met Mike Savoldi. Mike came to our ranch at my request to conduct a seminar. We have remained friends since. Mike taught me everything I know about hoof anatomy. Mike and I are still collaborating on various hoof-related research projects.

I started trimming horses in 1996, shoeing came later. Around that time, I also started to take before and after trimming photos to document my work. After the 1998 El Nino storm event, we decided that we needed to find a more horse-friendly ranch. We moved to Paso Robles in 1999 where it was possible to devote my time and energy to horses, not to weathering bad winters. John and I founded EponaTech in 1999 and introduced our software Metron. This software was primarily designed to accurately measure the hoof and to document changes over time. We both wanted to reduce the guessing game of assessing change in hoof morphologies. Our primary goal was to aid communication between farriers, veterinarians and horse owners. I started trimming and shoeing horses according to my approach in 2000. I mostly worked with composite shoes. I invented and designed the first EponaShoe in 2003. My shoes became available on the market in late 2004. My success stories with these spread by word of mouth. Soon, I was being asked to write articles for farrier and horse owner magazines (most are posted at www.epona-institute.org.) I also started to give lectures part time in a course on equine biomechanics at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.

Two of my original horses are still alive as I write this. Smirnoff died of heart failure in 2011, at the age of twenty-nine. Boris is now thirty years old and was retired from riding in 2013. Gluck is twenty-five years old and is still being ridden. I have also rescued quite a few horses while I was shoeing. I own thirteen horses now, seven of which are being ridden. These horses have been invaluable as far as keeping long term information about hoof behavior with my system. John and I are continuing our research. We founded a research institute in 2008 that is dedicated to the horse (www.epona-institute.org).

Reflections on the Journey

When I initially bought Smirnoff, I had planned a totally different course for my career, namely pursuing my academic interest in computational linguistics and art. Designing horse software, horse shoes or even getting involved in equine research were foreign concepts to me.

At the beginning of my journey, I had serious difficulties reconciling my obsession with Smirnoff and the effect it had on my academic and professional pursuits. My intellectual self started to wonder if I purposely wanted to sabotage my career. Many times I considered buying another horse and forgetting about Smirnoff. In my heart of hearts, I knew that I had to do something for this horse. My inner nerd was also irked by the lack of logical solutions to Smirnoff’s hoof problems. I wanted to find the cause of the problem rather than apply a band-aid to its effect!

A funny thing happened to me once I truly accepted my quest for answers; I actually solved Smirnoff’s hoof problems and found much more along the way. I learned that trusting my intuition and heart was not antipodal to scientific pursuits. I learned hope by witnessing how nature can heal itself if only we allow it to do so. My intellectual journey through different scientific disciplines deepened my respect and sense of belonging to nature. By integrating and seeking practical application of that knowledge, I found context.

‘The heart of science is feminine. In its essence, science has very little to do with competition, control and separation – all qualities that have been associated with science in its male-dominated, twentieth century form. The science I have come to know and love is unifying, spontaneous, intuitive, caring – a process more akin to surrender than to domination.’

~ from Molecules of Emotion by Dr. Candace P. Pert

Contents

Foreword: A Chronology of the Journey

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Hoof

Chapter 3: Measuring the Hoof

Chapter 4: Assessing the Hoof

Chapter 5: The Epona Trim

Chapter 6: Shoeing & Case Studies

Concluding Thoughts

References & Further Reading

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In this chapter a brief overview of the anatomy of the hoof is given. The second portion of the chapter presents the most basic aspects of my approach in order to assess a horse and its hooves for trimming purposes.

The Basics: Overview of Anatomy

Figure 1: Some of the important structures of the lower limb. A radiograph superimposed on a photograph is shown in (A). One can see where the bones are relative to the hoof capsule. In (B) a photo of the underside of the hoof shows the triangular-shaped frog, the commissures (a.k.a. collateral groves) that run along its sides, and other basic geometrical features of the hoof.

Terminology for the Bones of the Lower Limb

The anatomical terminology for the lower limbs is not completely standardized. The most common terminology is shown below. The names high-lighted in bold below will be the ones used throughout this book.

The third phalanx, or P3, can also be called: coffin bone, pedal bone, or distal phalanx.

The second phalanx, or P2, can also be called: middle phalanx, or short pastern bone.

The first phalanx, or P1, can also be called: proximal phalanx, or long pastern bone, or simply the pastern bone.

The navicular bone, can also be called: distal sesamoid bone, or podotrochlear bone.

The cannon bone, can also be called: third metacarpal (in a front limb), or third metatarsal (in a hind limb).

The splint bones, can also be called: second and fourth metacarpals (in a front limb), or second and fourth metatarsals (in a hind limb).

The sesamoid bones, can also be called: proximal sesamoid bones.

See figure 2 for examples of all these bones.

Figure 2: (A) shows the disarticulated bones of the lower limb. The letters SB stand for splint bones. The letters S and N stand respectively for sesamoid bones and navicular bone. (B) shows a view of bones as seen in a lateral radiograph.

Tendons and Ligaments of the Lower Limb

There are no muscles present in the equine lower limb below the knee (nor below the hock in the rear legs.) The bones of the lower limb are stabilized by a complex system of ligaments. Ligaments are fibrous collagen tissues connecting bone to bone. Their main function is to stabilize joints. There are four tendons in the lower limb: the main extensor tendon, the lateral extensor tendon, the superficial flexor tendon and the deep digital flexor tendon. Tendons connect to muscles and bones. There are only two tendons attaching to the pedal bone: the main extensor tendon and the deep digital flexor tendon. The main extensor tendon inserts to the extensor process of the P3. The deep digital flexor tendon inserts to the semi-lunar area of the P3 (figure 3.)

Figure 3: The area circled in red (A) indicates approximately where the deep digital flexor tendon inserts into P3. The area circled in green (B) indicates where the extensor tendon inserts.

Figure 4: Lateral view of both the deep digital flexor tendon and the main digital extensor tendon as they insert into P3.

The deep digital flexor tendon originates from a muscle (flexor muscle) that pulls on P3 to flex the lower limb. Think of curling your middle finger inward toward the palm of your hand. The main extensor tendon originates from a muscle (extensor muscle) that pulls on the other side of P3. Think of straightening out your middle finger after you flexed it. The flexor and extensor muscles are called antagonistic muscles. Antagonistic muscles are pairs