Re: RC: 7/1 re: Butler on Barefoot/Strasser/fads...

[CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com]

In a message dated Sun, 1 Jul 2001 11:08:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Darolyn Butler-Dial <darolyn@swbell.net> writes:

<<   Not to bash farriers, & certainly not
all of them... but they have a habit of just continuing to shoe a club foot
allowing it to get more & more contracted.  A horse that's a little clubby
at 3-4 years old that is constantly kept in shoes & not therapeutically
trimmed to lower those high club heels is just going to continue to get more
& more clubby &  contracted as he ages.  >>

I have to agree wholeheartedly with this.  However, this is NOT an excuse to remove heel from the vast majority of horses, who are NOT clubby, and who have a terribly difficult time growing ENOUGH heel to keep the bottom aspect of the coffin bone parallel to the ground!

<<I'll never forget the heartache of Darla Westlake at the ROC on the Big Horn
course where she was passed all day with thumbs up on her horse's somewhat
weird gait (due to a club foot), then pulled at the finish.  >>

While it is true that RT Muffin has a tendency to be clubby, this is NOT what has been his problem in being accepted by veterinarians throughout his carrier.  Terry Westlake is an outstanding farrier.  I have vetted RT Muffin at rides since he was 5 years old.  He has a pretty symmetrical way of going, and Terry has done an OUTSTANDING job of managing his feet so that they have similar angles most of the time.  What has been the big problem is that Muffy is gaited, and especially early in his career, would actually gait in hand when being presented to the veterinarians.  Kerry Ridgway and I had a long discussion about this one time--Kerry was trying to say that Muffy was "symmetrically grade 2 lame on both front legs" when in fact, he moved just like any other gaited horse performing a 4-beat gait--when the weight is on the rear limb, the head goes up and when it is on a sound front limb, the head goes down, so that there is a head bob up and down with each "beat" of the gait.!
  Hence, when Muffy was "trottin
g" he was really doing a 4-beat gait, and the result was up-down, up-down, with EACH beat, instead of up on one beat and down on the next as it is with a lame horse.  Kerry realized what I was talking about after he got to watching him a little more.  What too many ride vets don't realize is that Arabians at one point were shown in 5-gaited classes, and those genes are still present in the breed--in fact, both of RT Muffin's grandsires had some ability to gait.  So he came by it naturally.  The whole "club-footed" bit about RT Muffin has been blown WAY out of proportion.

Heidi