I wonder how many horses can actually be helped
with a little corrective balancing. Beau had a trailer for a couple of
cycles when he was about 9 y.o. and it really helped him a lot because his
muscles were forced to work in a more correct way. I think that the
musculo-skeletal system is a lot more plastic than the farriers beleive.
And if you correct imbalance, you are actually improving the bio-mechanics of
the way the horse moves, therefore saving wear and tear of improper movement
over time.
I'm a firm believer in Tony Gonzalez's "Proper
Balance Movement" methods and I use his formula for my trims to a certain
extent.
After firing many farriers - I believe that the
farrier can make a big difference in the way the horse travels. I've
seen a mild confomation issue with my mare, for instance, become a total
uneven-ness because the farrier says that's just they way she is, rather than
trying to do something to make her travel more even. The net result had
been a progressive unbalancing of that limb. She does tend to grow a
flare on that toe, but a good farrier would manage it, and an unaware farrier
would just blame her conformation.
She does much better when I keep that flare
trimmed down. I don't like trimming hooves that much, but I decided that
I knew more about how to keep my horses even than most of the farriers who
totally have attitudes, so I've got the nippers, knives and files in my
toolkit now. Hopefully if I ever need a farrier again, a worthwhile one
would appear miraculously. The best farriers I've had were those
fresh out of farrier school, and a few shoeings later they become "creative"
and it starts going downhill from there and I end up firing them.
JMHO Angie. Your right, in that a person can only do so much with
some type of travel/conformation issue. If you try to correct it
completely, you may vary well cause other problems, putting stress on
joints/soft tissue that because of how the horse is made, he isn't as
capable of tolerating.....not at our sport. So, what I have done, is
work with what I have, correct it enough so that I can stand to look at it,
but not sweat the fact that it isn't perfect. They can still be
balanced at a stand still, and then that *something* happens when they hit
that big trot, etc.
Jody
PS. I have been working with Cash Pony, Dr. Waldron has recently
convinced me that aluminium shoes will hold up. I tried them and loved
them. But, the point is Cash has a constance balance issue on his rt.
front. I knew this from day one, I have been fighting it every
shoeing, the lighter shoe does help him, (hoof flight follows weight).
So, even IF I don't get him perfect, the lighter shoe helps to minimize his
hoof flight....which if you haven't seen Cash trot, just imagine a TWH with
pads on the front end....sort of. He does this big funky swinging
thing...but he is 1/2 TWH !!!!
rides2far@xxxxxxxx wrote:
it
is the horse's fault...is there something a farrier can do that
would be a help to the horse or do you consider that just a part of the
horse?
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