Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Title: RE: RE: [RC] Low Heel & wedge pad

I can not agree more with Heidi. On top of that, I would try to learn the horse to go into hard going and rocks with respect. I would certainly avoid over-protecting the horse by choosing only good going. Concussion and hard going should normally help the heel to grow better. For the race on rocky going, I would rather choose for leather pads than shocktamer or similar to learn the horse the respect of the rocks... and go slow, of course :-)

Leonard (www.endurance-belgium.com)

From: heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [RC]   Low Heel & wedge pad


We're competing one that started out that way, although we've got him growing pretty evenly now, with good trimming and shoeing.  I'd rather try to balance them up through good shoeing, changing the shape of the toe on the low-heeled foot and setting the shoe back to encourage heel growth, and trimming as much heel as possible off of the high heeled side, before starting to compete.  I think you get better long-term results that way than you do with wedge pads, but that's just my nickel's worth.

Heidi

> I would like to know how many of you are competing horses with mis-
> matched feet (one higher heel, one lower heel) and how many use a
> small wedge pad to lift the lower heel up?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lauren