Is it hoof pain or something else?

I am a farrier with a lot of continuing education in all aspects of horse care with a particular interest in anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, and of course farriery. Still, there is a lot I don’t know and don’t know how to explain. And for every single one of these cases, while I have a general idea of what is going on, I don’t know the anatomy well enough to speak to the very specifics of what is occurring when i feel certain things when I am under a horse. 

Horse 1- 

He is significantly impacted by EPM and one of the first horses I worked on that was severely neurologic. He was unaware of where his feet were and his ability to maintain vertical was a challenge during hoof care. There was a feeling of ‘vacancy’ when I worked on him. 

Horse 2-

Acutely neurologic, diagnosis THO. Not only was instability and ataxia present, he was also anxious of having any hooves lifted. 

Horse 3-

Sweeney shoulder injury to left front. Able to pick up LF front with ease. Hinds are easy enough. Front right, the horse bowed over me as the left shoulder collapsed laterally. A very strange and dangerous feeling.

These first three are extreme examples with diagnosis and certianly not hoof specific. But they taught me to feel their bodies. These extremes gave me the info that helped me be able to feel when it was mild. Sometimes we have to learn from the extreme so that we can listen more closely to the mild or situational. These horses taught me to trust what I was feeling in their bodies when I was under them so we could do something safely for all parties involved for their hoof care.   

Horse 4, 5, 6- 

My first time getting under this horse (s), I felt unsafe. I could not sort out why. The horse was not difficult nor dangerous but something felt severely off. A tendency to park out and/or place limbs oddly. To the point that I eventually told the owner I could no longer work on the horse because I felt unsafe. A challenging conversation to have as the horse wasn't difficult to work on.

Horse 7, 8, 9, 10 -

Horse(s) is presented to me with being foot sore. Zero pulse, zero reactivity to hoof testers, zero increase in temp, xrays indicate good HPA, appropriate sole depth, and positive palmar angle. Horse(s) appears tender or ginger footed. My gut feeling is this is not hoof pain but something that is causing sensitivity in a way to appear like hoof pain. Shoeing of any kind, has not yielded positive long standing resolution to the ‘hoof pain’.

Horse 11, 12, 13-

Horse(s) are presented to me with being foot sore. Zero pulse, zero reactivity to hoof testers, zero increase in temp, xrays indicate good HPA, appropriate sole depth, and positive palmar angle. Horse(s) appears tender or ginger footed. My gut feeling is this is not hoof pain but something that is causing sensitivity in a way to appear like hoof pain. These horses are anxious about hoof care. Varying signs of pain, notably trying to rock back/down severely while trying to work on the front feet. Then pulling and moving around while working on back feet. Reluctance to bring front legs forward. One of these started this behavior before being backed as a 3 yr old and has continued/escalated (landing toe first) with ridden work.

Horse 14-

Young horse, no history. Good for left front, good for left hind. I am told right hind is hardest. I go to right front. Anxiety goes up for the horse. Aversion to standing with leg up in farrier position. A feeling of ‘vacancy’, the horse twists her neck and immediately needs her leg back. This feels very different than a horse that needs to get off the opposite limb or a diagonal limb. It felt like a slow crumbling. The horse starts making very strange choices about where to place limbs, all unstable positions. Right hind starts out ok enough, but clear there feels like a hesitancy up high near SI to extend. She needs it back and anxiety behaviors continue along with poor limb position placements. The more I try to find a good spot to hold her right hind, the more insistent that she is not happy about this and escalates her communication about picking that limb up. 

This is only 14 horses that I am describing that I can think of off the top of my head. 11 of which (the first two were euthanized, third is out to pasture) are working. These cases often lead to challenging conversations with owners where horses are performing and riding “well”. How do I explain that what I am feeling when I pick up a leg and hold it in a certain position puts pressure on areas of the body with a high density of nerves that causes the horse to have behaviors specific to farrier care or appear foot sore? 

These areas can’t be blocked out or imaged well. Diagnosing situations where the nerves are being negatively impacted is challenging at best, if you can get a vet to listen. This isn’t on most vets radar and when it is brought up, bute trials and sedation are the go to answers to get the horses trimmed/shod. I am not blaming them in the slightest, we don’t know what we don’t know. And I don’t have any solid answers either. I just know that of the thousands of legs I have picked up and the horses telling me something isn’t right and my education tells me it isn’t primarily the feet, we need to start listening and start looking into this. Rarely, rarely do I find horse’s behave poorly or with anxiety for hoof care unless there has been significant trauma or a lack of education. Way more often than not, horses are trying to tell us something doesn’t feel right and we need to learn to listen better. 

Fortunately, there are people doing work that is addressing this issue. Balance Through Movement Method developed by Celeste Lazaris. I am watching her work applied by the dedicated caretakers resolve these issues for horses. Horses that were performing well, are performing better. Horses that struggled on farrier day are getting easier. People are starting to listen to their horses and realize they aren’t being bad, they are communicating to us that something doesn’t feel right to them and they don’t feel safe in what we are asking of them. 

In the next post I am going to go into the observations that I have had, along with input from Katherine Lowry, a biomechanics expert, on how we can look at and hopefully start to answer the question…

Is it hoof pain or something else?