Update of my horse who has soft hooves

[glory_horse]

Hello! First of all, I would like to thank everyone who gave me support and advice in my previous post here. You are a big help and I felt much better after reading your comments.

Comments

[tinlizzie82]

No, the coffin bone will never go back to its normal position but if the rotation is slight, the horse can adjust to it without exhibiting lameness. However, he will always be more prone to another episode of laminitis in the future

[glory_horse]

OMG! Thank you so much for taking your time posting this for me. It's very informative and I really appreciate it. :D

[tinlizzie82]

Don't worry too much about your guy, he'll probably be just fine, especially since it sounds like you're feeding him the perfect diet. Lots of horses have a mild laminitis episode due to poor management or some outside factor and then never have another for most of their lives and even with a slight rotation of the coffin bone, he should be perfectly sound with good shoeing

[glory_horse]

Oh,dear. Good thing I stopped wrapping his hooves then. I'm not sure why the former owner suggested that ( he's also a vet so I trusted him ). I will be very careful with the hoof issue. My groom was instructed to let my horse's hooves dry before applying hoof oil ( Leovet's summer oil ) and putting him in the stall.

I will try to find the ingredients you mentioned but I'm not sure I can find everything. It's quite difficult to find horse stuffs here. :) Thank you so so much again for your help. I'll probably update about him again in the future.

[lurath]

Perhaps these are bad photos, but I was surprised to read that your horse's feet were just shod. The toe is still too long, and it looks like his heels are seriously contracted and under-run. If he has a slightly tipped coffin bone, it's even more essential that you have a more balanced hoof.

tinlizzie82 gave a good explanation of how the laminae work. If you can visualize that, imagine the long toe "catches" on the ground, contributing to the "velcro" of the laminae pulling away from the front of the coffin bone.

[corellian_ninja]

I thought the same. His heels look painfully contracted to me.

[glory_horse]

The toe was much worse than this before the farrier did his shoes. ( Sorry, I forgot to take the photos before he was shod ) I spent almost 2 hours talking to him about these front hooves and he said that it can be dangerous for the horse if he adjusted the toe completely right away. ( This is the first time he actually did the shoes for my horse since I had him

[landrews]

In my experience, it will probably take several shoeings to get the toe proper and let the heels grow out. There's no instant fix. He'd probably be very lame if they went even shorter on the toe right away, even if you had a horse without compromised hoof structures. YMMV :-)

eta: see all the extra shoe for support and to encourage widening? My horse took eight months to get straightened out after she was at a trainers and I was too far away to monitor farrier work :-)

[glory_horse]

That's exactly what my farrier said. And you have very good eye! My farrier told me he left some rooms for his hooves to grow/ expand. I'm not exactly how it helps Laminitis because my farrier spoke very fast and didn't give me much details. All I know is that we are coming in the right direction. It should take about 5-6 months before his hooves will look more decent and that's when we will take an x-ray again. :)

Thank you so much for your input! This is very helpful.

[corellian_ninja]

He looks like a sweet boy, I hope you guys don't have any more trouble with sore feet

[glory_horse]

Thank you so much for your kind words! I really need that right now. People at my stable are very mean and they talk behind my back all the time about this ( like "oh, she's so pathetic, having a horse with hoof problem",etc ). He's a sweet boy and a super talented one. I will be heart-broken if anything happens to him.