Concerning hooves
On Tuesday I went on a day's footcare course, run by Helen Straker, the trimmer who has been looking after our horse's feet as our regular trimmer has been off work with some health problems. The aim of the course was to give us a bit of an understanding of the horse's foot and the tools to evaluate the condition of a hoof and get an idea of how they work.
The morning consisted of sessions on the structure and performance of the hoof, looking at the physical structures that make up the horse's foot and how they interact, then going on to look at how a good trimmer will work to help those structures work optimally and finally discussing some of the problems and pathologies that can occur in horse's feet.
There was so much interesting content to this that it's hard to pick out any particular parts, but I was struck in particularly by the observation that the effect of conventional shoeing is to hang the entire weight of the horse off the laminae. It was also interesting to hear about how going back to the nineteenth century it was known that long term shoeing affected the horse and that veterinarians at that time recommended giving horses breaks from shoes from time to time "to restore the quick." In many disciplines- particularly where horses worked on a more seasonal basis - this has traditionally happened, but in the modern world most horses are shod most of the time.
The discussion of pathologies was interesting as well - one of the other participants has a horse with serious laminitic problems and so there was a lot of depth on that topic. I found some of the things about dealing with abscesses interesting too, though perhaps largely because I'm fortunate enough to have rarely had to deal with them so it was mostly new to me. Having covered how the foot works it was easier to understand the nature of these problems so that I could immediately grasp why, for example, anti-inflammatories are problematic in the treatment of abscesses.
The whole day was paced fast enough to keep everyone interested, but with plenty of time for questions and discussion if there were parts that anyone didn't understand.
In the afternoon we looked at some basic hoof maintenance and then Helen performed a dissection on a foot so that we could see the structures that had previously been described. I wasn't as squicked out by this as I had feared I would be and it certainly made a lot of sense of the morning's descriptions when we could see the various parts of the hoof in situ. It was hard to watch ( and to hear ) in places but I think it was worth it for the amount I learned.
I was left overwhelmingly impressed with the brilliant engineering on the part of natural selection that lead to the equine hoof.
I believe Helen is planning to do some more of these days and I have to say I would recommend this to anyone who owns a horse. Really interesting and very worthwhile.
The morning consisted of sessions on the structure and performance of the hoof, looking at the physical structures that make up the horse's foot and how they interact, then going on to look at how a good trimmer will work to help those structures work optimally and finally discussing some of the problems and pathologies that can occur in horse's feet.
There was so much interesting content to this that it's hard to pick out any particular parts, but I was struck in particularly by the observation that the effect of conventional shoeing is to hang the entire weight of the horse off the laminae. It was also interesting to hear about how going back to the nineteenth century it was known that long term shoeing affected the horse and that veterinarians at that time recommended giving horses breaks from shoes from time to time "to restore the quick." In many disciplines- particularly where horses worked on a more seasonal basis - this has traditionally happened, but in the modern world most horses are shod most of the time.
The discussion of pathologies was interesting as well - one of the other participants has a horse with serious laminitic problems and so there was a lot of depth on that topic. I found some of the things about dealing with abscesses interesting too, though perhaps largely because I'm fortunate enough to have rarely had to deal with them so it was mostly new to me. Having covered how the foot works it was easier to understand the nature of these problems so that I could immediately grasp why, for example, anti-inflammatories are problematic in the treatment of abscesses.
The whole day was paced fast enough to keep everyone interested, but with plenty of time for questions and discussion if there were parts that anyone didn't understand.
In the afternoon we looked at some basic hoof maintenance and then Helen performed a dissection on a foot so that we could see the structures that had previously been described. I wasn't as squicked out by this as I had feared I would be and it certainly made a lot of sense of the morning's descriptions when we could see the various parts of the hoof in situ. It was hard to watch ( and to hear ) in places but I think it was worth it for the amount I learned.
I was left overwhelmingly impressed with the brilliant engineering on the part of natural selection that lead to the equine hoof.
I believe Helen is planning to do some more of these days and I have to say I would recommend this to anyone who owns a horse. Really interesting and very worthwhile.