The good pacers do--young pacers and trotters don't necessarily--they learn
this during jogging--some have difficulty with it all the way down to about a
2:20 rate. At the end of a race, when fatigued, many llose this capability
and are in danger of injury.
>> I am also interested in your position on not necessarily using pastern
angle as your guide to hoof angles. At what point do you start stressing
other leg stuctures by deviating too far from the pastern angles. There
was a study a while back on dead horse legs that indicated higher hoof
angles decreased the stress on the deep digital flexor. That stress was
instead transferred to the suspensory ligament. I may have screwed this
up. I can't find the article.>>
Well, you can't go crazy with any technique. In general, with hoof angle, you
have about 4 degrees to play with: 51 to 55 in front and maybe a dcegree
higher behind. What we see in racetrack TBs, though, is 46s and 47s in front
and as high as 58 behind. At our facility we're using infrared thermography
every day to watch for the beginnings of inflammatory processes, so,
depending on the part under stress, we adjust shoeing and exercise.
>>Duncan Fletcher
dfletche@gte.net >>
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