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  Discussion on Abnormal stance while grazing
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Member:
Mosttime

Posted on Sunday, May 22, 2005 - 8:29 pm:

Hi Everyone. My friends horse, an 11-year old TB, cannot graze unless he shifts his right front leg back, almost to the location of his back feet, and shifts his left front leg forward by almost the same distance. He puts no weight on his right front ever while grazing, and balances all his weight on the left front. His left front shoulder is distended out during grazing because of the force put on this leg. He has done this ever since we have known the horse (several years). I have heard two theories: (1) his neck is too short thus he cannot reach the ground if he does not spread eagle his legs (not sure I buy this) (2) his right front is a "club foot" (not sure what this means or how it might affect this problem). Has anyone seen a horse grazing in this manner?? Any ideas of why or if it could be corrected?
Member:
Suzeb

Posted on Sunday, May 22, 2005 - 9:18 pm:

Hello Carole,
You could suggest to your friend to have a chat with the farrier and see what's up. If the horse is not lame at pasture and at work, I wouldn't mess with it too much. From your description though, it does sound like something could be going on in the left fore. Whether it is high up or down would take a hands on vet to determine. Does your friends' horse do anything else besides pasture and companion?

Susan B.
Member:
Brandi

Posted on Sunday, May 22, 2005 - 9:49 pm:

Carole,
Most horses have a grazing stance that they prefer, few this severe, but I have two horses that graze similarly, again not as severe. Both of my horses rarely switch foot positions, if so, only momentarily, and both put the majority of their weight on their forward foot. Both have a "clubby" foot, the one that is placed rear-ward. The other foot is long-toe/low-heeled, and in wet winters the heels tend to crush and get worse. So while your friends horse is more exaggerated, unless the right front is lame, I wouldn't say it was that abnormal, based on my experience.
My retired farrier and I have arm-chair-studied this behavior for years. He believes many horses are being bred taller (leggier, not just bigger), and more have difficulty reaching the ground. I have not had any success correcting it. My paint, who injured his tendon last July has been in a stall for over 10 months now, still has the same conformation of his feet (much to my old and new farrier's dismay--they thought for sure that once he was taken off pasture the feet would begin to change, and stall-time meals are feed 1 1/2 feet off the ground). Additionally, even though his injured tendon was on the weight-bearing forward leg, he never changed his grazing stance (during hand grazing)...just shifts more often, but always shifts right back to his habit. Now that he's also injured (in March) his rearward placed leg's impar ligament, he still places that foot rearward (straining the ligament), and if it's too sore, he leaves it back there, and just rests that foot on its toe. Obviously a life-time of this stance will affect the muscling of the horses, and my older gelding has always had an overdeveloped right shoulder (front, weight-bearing leg). My paint is not overdeveloped, but I have only had him for 2 years and doubt that he spent much time on pasture in his first life.
I don't know if all this helps, but it sure sounded familiar to me, so I thought I would share. I would like to hear what others have to say.
Member:
Hwood

Posted on Sunday, May 22, 2005 - 10:18 pm:

I was participating in a Lyons's clinic once, and when John was teaching us how to cue our horses to DrOp their heads (and the goal was to get our horses to walk fifteen steps with their noses on the ground) there was an American Saddlebred that could only DrOp his head as far as his knees. The horse was one of the most responsive horses at the clinic . . . and was trying so hard to do everything the owner was asking, but his nose just wouldn't touch the ground. The owner told us that the horse always spread his front legs far apart when grazing, and that the gelding prefered to graze the side of slopes/hills. Saddlebreds tend to have their necks set higher on their shoulders than many other breeds . . . and this particular gelding had a shorter neck than seen on most American Saddlebreds . . . so, I guess what I'm saying is that shorter/higher set necks can present a problem for grazing horses, and such horses would have to compensate by grazing hillsides or by changing their stances in order to compensate.
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Monday, May 23, 2005 - 6:13 am:

Hello Carole,
The best way to find out if your horse has a problem that needs correction in a complete physical exam, the stance oddity by itself has very little significance.

It appears you need a definition of club foot, for a illustration see, References » Equine Illustrations » Leg Anatomy and Conformation » Foot and Pastern: proper a-p (anterior to posterior) balance and trimming. The club foot is the upright foot in the bottom. For a definitions see, Equine Diseases » Lameness » Diseases of the Hoof » Club Foot.

To evaluate your horses conformation a good set of photos is sure to get a response.
DrO
Member:
Mosttime

Posted on Monday, May 23, 2005 - 10:35 pm:

Hi Dr. O, Sue, Brandi and Holly. Thank you for your responses. My friend will be excited to hear that others have witnessed this same thing. She does moderate hunter/jumper type work with him. He is quite sound. She has had several vets/farriers evaluate him, thus the varied opinions. Is there a general rule of thumb for confirmation of the neck? Someone suggested that the neck plus head length should normally be as long as the horse is tall at the withers. Is this true?
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 9:03 pm:

I have seen this in my horses that are born with really long legs the foal gets into a habbit of putting one foot forward and one back. This then changes the way those feet grow and if left long enough will affect the whole skeleton.

The pics with the club foot show 3 feet all with trim issues the last one being a typical club foot. If you look at a club foot from standing in front of the horse you will notice it has a smaller diameter.

This is easily fixed by trimming the heel down to the correct height. I did this for my Anglo colt and his club foot disappeared in a few weeks you could not guess which one is clubby. I know which one it is and will keep up trims until a full hoof capsule has grown in. The same goes for my two year old he is going well once the correct trim was applied.

I am also working on an 8 year old with a club foot and the chiro is amazed at how much the skeleton has healed since we removed his shoes and shaped his foot correctly.

I know of another horse that could not stand with feet close together. It turned out to be bad shoeing causing huge muscling in the neck. This neck muscle was so painful the horse preferred not to be rugged and would stand under a tree rubbing its mane out.

As soon as it was trimmed correctly the horse started to change its whole life.

Regards
Darren
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 7:51 am:

Darren you cannot fix all club feet by trimming them to a non-clubby angle. Some horses have a contracted DDF tendon that has resulted in the clubbiness. Trimming the heels of these horses results in a horse that cannot put his heels down on the ground, and the horse is left standing on his toe. The toe becomes bruised and the flexor tendon strained.

If the horse has simply been trimmed improperly you would be correct. An important key is to look for proper a-p balance as to whether a horse is naturally clubby or has been trimmed improperly. That is what you missed in the images you reference.
DrO
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 10:13 am:

Actually considering that the DDFT is a soft tissue even though it is damn strong it is designed to adjust in shape to cope with each change in the foot.

This is obvious if you take into consideration a wild horse may have a long toe that suddenly snaps off the DDFT will adjust in function to allow for the new forces and angles. If the DDFT could not adjust then the horse would constantly fall down.

I think it is weird that a notion of a tendon that is constantly too short can occur in a world where exercise and stretching is considered correct. If the tendon was always too short how would a horse go through growth spurts. The body is a finely tuned machine constantly seeking balance.

Part of it is muscle memory and part of it is the ligaments that provide the anchors. In fact the whole skeleton can adjust to a club foot. You may even find the opposite hind foot is wearing faster than the other feet as it takes more of a load with the angles created by having a club foot untreated. It can be a complicated sequence to trim a horse back to a normal foot. In most cases though if you concentrate on the club foot the skeleton will return to a normal shape. A good chiropracter can tell you how much the upper body is affected by bad feet, if you get the feet right the upper body will adjust.

I have a QH who smashed his upper illiac 7 years ago, even his ribs grew large amounts of bone to take over while his hip was not being used, as his hip returned to use that extra bone dissolved.

There is actually a barbaric treatment for club footedness based on the theory that the DDFT is the cause of the problem. The DDFT is cut leaving the load to be taken on the suspesory ligament. This causes a constant weakness in the DDFT from the scaring and overloads the suspensory ligament.

This supposed contracted DDFT is thought to be the cause of young horses developing club feet. This is totally incorrect, there are many horses that developed club feet at a young age with the supposed short tendon that with proper trimming have 2 equal sized properly growing feet.

My foal who developed a serious club foot 4 months after foaling has correct feet after just a few correct trims, he still stands one foot forward and one back to eat but since his feet are a correct shape when he walks off his tendons are the right length. The club footedness has not returned. In the wild the foals would be traveling 20km a day so their heels would always be worn down to the correct level and all the tendons would be the appropriate length.

Even horses born with a club foot have no reason to maintain the damage. If the bone shape underneath is correct the hoof will grow correctly.

Some how I think we have diverted from the origonal topic of odd stances. Even though a club foot is a common cause of odd stances, pain in parts of the hoof can also drive the problem. There may even be huge changes in the upper body from pain in the feet.


I only metion these things as they are proven to work much more effectively than the old ideas. It is weird to go from a mailing list where the biggest issue with horses feet is how much preparation work is required to do a 400km ride in 5 days and how much has to be trimmed off the hoof each night to keep it at optimum levels. Things like founder, club foot, navicular are seen as man made problems that are easily fixed with the correct approach. The old ideas of surgery to fix foot problems is slowly going away. The need for tendonotomies or nervectomies has proven to be false. Some nervectomies had to be redone every couple of years as the nerves reform. These sames horse live pain free once the cause of the problem is fixed. There was a lecture given to the upcoming vet students on how to treat horses without these unecessary surgeries so in the future these practices may disappear, or only be used when all other choices are exhausted.


Regards
Darren
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 6:01 pm:

Darren I do not know where to begin with your statements above they show a total lack of understanding and experience with the subject.

Contracted tendons are a real problem. The mild ones that do not respond to treatment develop club feet that you cannot treat by trimming the foot to some number of degrees that you think is correct. To say otherwise contradicts every veterinary text I have on muscoskeletal disease (some as old as a hundred years and a few less than 3 years old) and every farrier text that I have, not to mention personal experience over the past 21 years and dozens of cases. Concerning DDF tenotomy, it has saved many foals that would not be able to ever stand without it but perhaps you have never seen a foal whose has wore all the tissue off the front of his fetlocks and moving around on the open joint because he could not extend his foot due to DDF contracture.
DrO
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 6:38 am:

I can only suggest you have a look at the work done by Dr Tomas Teskey DVM.

He was a farrier for 17 years or more and has been a qualified vet for 12 years.

He has published some papers that show that tenotomys and other work are due to a lack of understanding in the horse world.

To have some one with experience in all fields of vet care and farrier work almost renounce the work he has done in the past is just stunning.

He was recently invited to present a disection to fifty soon to be graduating vet students. I can't remember which university. Even these vet students who are about to enter the profession had no idea what they had missed in the standard training regime for the Equine Distal Limb.

In fact after the demonstration a couple of the students brought their own horses in for corrective work as they now had some clue as to why their horses had been lame.

If I remember rightly there is an old article Dr. Teskey wrote when he was doing earlier research into new corrective procedures without surgery.

It is titled something like "bringing the sparkle back to crystals life"

It is an open letter to the vet and equine community about a horse that was booked in for a nervectomy with one vet. The purchaser decided to try Dr. Teskey's methods as they were more likely to be a long term solution. The mare was only young and was seen as a compromised breeding prospect only. After the work was completed the mare is now able to move perfectly and compete.

Dr. Teskey was pretty scathing of the old regimes of nervectomy's and tenotomy's. He knows it will take time for the world to realise the correct treatments without surgery. That is why he has released a number of open letters and is demostrating to vet students.

He comments that a vet "should do no harm" and yet until recently he admits he had been doing so without knowing or understanding.

My own experiences match the cases presented by Dr. Teskey. I don't doubt that your training has given you a solution that works as it is the culmination of years or sequential research. Dr. Teskey used to believe in his years of farrier work and his Veterinary medicine training too.

It was only when Dr. Teskey looked into the cases that could not be cured he found that a lot of the work he was doing was causing the problems.

I am not saying it is easy to understand or will work with absolutely ever case as there is no such thing as an absolute.

The cases that I have seen all respond well to corrective trimming. I do have a friend who has a horse that would be an interesting study as it has the classic extreme club foot. The entire body has been affected by the imbalance in the hoof. This includes most of the skeleton as well as the muscles and tendons.

Knowing how each of these work and having seen dramatic changes in my QH who smashed his hip. I would expect the horse to grow a normal hoof once treatment was done.

An Australian farrier that is now following in Dr. Teskey's footsteps and has set up his farm for rehabbing foundered horses by correctly trimming the heels down and getting horses to exercise everyday. There are no horseshoes used to repair foundered feet though he has set up the lanes between yards with rubber walkways so the foundered horse can exercise in comfort with the other horses in the yards. In fact he showed all his farrier text books and the things that could not be treated once they were discovered. Some of these were old standard texts others were a year or so old from england that showed procedures he now says are wrong.



Regards
Darren
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 7:03 am:

Sorry Christos to answer the other question you asked there is no link between vet clinics and no reason to suspect these isolated incindents are related. One clinic has 8 vets another has 6 the big clinic has over 20 vets. The other vets are at small 1-3 vet clinics.

Even if it was suspected the symptoms vary so wildly and the blood reports all come back close to standard so where would they start.


Playing with the attachment feature now :-)

TB not owned by the person who contacted me

TB not owned by the person who contacted me

Ok I have never had contact with the owner of this horse but was contacted by her friend after she saw a post I made on a cause for weightloss. So yes most of the time the horses are just lucky to have the right info passed on. He is a 15 year old TB gelding that was loosing weight no matter what he was fed.

The treatment of Moxidectin was delayed by the owner not believing the cause and then using an Ivermectin based wormer she had already bought. After asking the owners friend for followup info the owner used Moxidectin and reported back an immediate response.

I could make a good sales rep for the makers of moxidectin but they do not even believe their product does anything out of the ordinary :-/

Regards
Darren
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 7:31 am:

D*** it all posted to the wrong window???
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 9:34 am:

Darren that is fine and I am sure Dr Teskey is a great guy but when you make blanket statements about things you do not have a good understanding about (like all club feet are easily fixed by correct trimming or that DDF tenotomy is a brutal unneccesary practice and many others) you do harm to others reading this topic for information. Which is why I am working so hard trying to correct a number of misconceptions you seem to have. Dr Teskey may have some ideas that some of the indications for this procedures are different than commonly accepted, but trust me, no one with experience with this subject will make the statements you make above.

Let me put this in another way to help you see what I see. You have a computer background so let's look at a hypothetical. Say you are running a computer advice board. People have computer problems they write in and advice is given. Say a veterinarian joins your board. And starts making a claim that the idea that a hard disk can fail is absolute nonsense. That he had actually fixed hundreds of hard disks, hard disks hardware experts have given up on, and by removing the disk, tap it lightly with hammer and then put it back into place it would begin working again. That he had seen hundreds of hard disks thrown away but if he could have got to them with his hammer he would have been able to save them. Then he makes similar statments about failed cooling fans, power supplys, etc.. In fact there does not seem to be any problem computers have that are not do to the poor understanding of all computer experts and if they would just listen to him computers would never have any problems. How would you reply?
DrO
Member:
Frances

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 10:23 am:

Excellent analogy, DrO.
Member:
Tangoh

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 12:54 pm:

Thanks for your post Dr. O. It was necessary.
Member:
Dyduroc

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 2:24 pm:


DrO, you get an A+ for creative writing!

D.
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 5:53 pm:

Actually you are correct in more ways than you can imagine :-)

I did state earlier on there are no absolutes but people must be let consider the alteratives.

I do in fact have numerous hard drives thrown away by technical experts. So if someone was to say hard drives don't fail, me being the person on the other end of the weirdness scale would have to agree. The supposed hard drive failure and consequential disposal of a good hard drive was due to an unseen factor for example a problem in the power supply an irregularity in the cable etc.

So in laymans terms the lay person was right all along and the hard drive failures are not due any fault within the drive itself.

It just takes a tech to go the extra mile to prove what the real fault was. I am using 10 of those supposedly dead hard drives in computers here.

I must seem like a smart alec, but your analogy just happened to be so accurate it was weird.

If all computer techs went out and learned what the real symptoms for a hard drive failure were, many fewer hard drives would be thrown away.

Even Dr. Teskey accepts that there may be cases where surgery is advised but he expects that this will be a very rare thing. From all the case studies I have seen reports on for club foot surgery was unnecessary.

Yes blamket statements are bad when considered a 100% certainty. They are also good to increase awareness of alternative solutions.


Remember no hard drive no computer :-)


I will shutup now


Regards
Darren
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 7:29 pm:

Our intrepid veterinarian replies: "Great, so you have had luck with hammers on hard drive's too?How much force and how many taps have you been giving? Until now no one would listen to me but I have photos of these hard drives to prove my case. I have to admit, they would have to throw away my hard drive over my dead body, my first move was always to stick it into another computer, but if I still could not access the drive my hammer was always ready.

I guess you have found that hammers do not work on power supplies. Just through trial and error I found that removing the power supply by candle light, burning patouli incense, and playing old George Harrison Albums (surprisingly McCartny albums had no effect, I really liked that Ram album) restored them to perfect condition when reinstalled! "

DrO
Member:
Mrose

Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 11:57 pm:

Dr.O -
Member:
Hwood

Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 12:17 am:

Dr. O. and Darren,

Thank you, both, for being so darned agreeable during this very interesting exchange. I am in awe. It is more entertaining than anything I've read in ages, and I'm hooked . . . waiting for the next installment . . . and looking for a resolution to this mystery . . . Where is Miss Marple when we need her?
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 5:02 am:

Why thank you Holly.

Umm I don't know what else we can get way of topic on yet, though it will probably happen somehow.

Who says entertainment can't be educational.

Hey Dr. O, I will give you some inside advice, the use of a hammer on electrical equipment is called a "Technical Thump" and yes it may have to be done more than once. If you don't call it a technical thump the computer owners won't pay the service bill.


The Quoting of Dr. Terkeys words about the cutting of tendons or nerves probably should have been attributed to the vet not just apperaing as something I said. It might make me appear more extreme than I am too.


Oh so many vets who to listen too who to believe, hmm this week Dr O has provided more jokes than the average vet.



Regards
Darren
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 7:37 am:

Darren, by agreeing with the intrepid DrV that, "yes hard drives never fail and you can fix them with a hammer" did you do your members a service? Consider the consequences of your actions: now members who take your advice quit backing up data to a separate medium. Time goes by, hard drives do fail eventually, and important data is lost. Only with horses it is lives not data.

You trim that angle on a true club foot to 54 degrees on a adult horse and you are going to have a real problem on your hands just as sure as every hard drive you have will eventully fail. I would much prefer you give us your truthful experiences rather than repeat in an authorative manner what you think someone else might have said, that you may not well understand. People will listen better if you do.
DrO
Member:
Unicorn

Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 11:56 am:

Actually the first three horse's I described are my own and doing perfectly where some may have recommended tenotomy's so yes it is experience of putting into practice the best research available talking, I did not realise I would get a big response to the suggestion of correct trimming. I am not seeking praise for my efforts to research the methods available as well as the pro's and con's anyone can do that.

It all started with a comment that trimming is a very good solution if done right.

I decided to do some research on this site as to methods of treating club foot. The article I found the most interesting repeated almost word for word the findings I discovered from other sources.

The article on this site states that tenotomy's are inappropriate surgery and proper corrective work is the better choice.

To quote the comment from your article "Most veterinarians think that cutting tendons and ligaments will help the problem. I have seen many a horse that still had a club foot after being cut."

In the article it states that the correct work on the hoof will correct a club foot, this particular article recommended a certain style of shoeing with regular maintenance. I have the same sucess without the shoes, it is knowing what went wrong, why and how long ago.

I know there is a mass of stuff available here and it will keep me stocked with info for years to come. If people read the articles here and my own experiences and research listed above (besides the hard drive logic) the two are almost parallel.

The surgeries you stated as necessary instead of correct trimming are deemed unnecessary by the farriers contributing to this site and a few other vets.

In the real world the rare occasion will warrant surgery (nothing is absolute), but most feel it should be an extreme last resort especially given the logic behind it.

This is your site so I won't run around with my T shirt over my head.



Regards
Darren

PS to continue the computer joke, you only do backups to stop the hard drive failing, the moment you forget to do the backup is the cause of the hard drive failing.
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 1:30 pm:

Hello Darren,
It is not the comment about correct trimming that illicited my comments, something that should be done in every case, it is your implications that all club feet are do to improper trimming, your lack of understanding on what a true club foot is (it is a short DDF musculotendon unit), your not understanding what you were looking at when you looked at the images of different types of conformation, and the comment that a DDF tenotomy is a barbaric practice. All comments that I do not want my members to see uncontested.

Darren you left out two critical lines in the article on Club Feet: Non-lame adult horses with a club foot are best left alone. Attempts at correcting the club foot usually result in lameness from excessive thinning of the soles and should be discouraged. Non-lame adult horses with a club foot are best left alone. Attempts at correcting the club foot usually result in lameness from excessive thinning of the soles and should be discouraged. Try to maintain an inline hoof pastern axis.

Though the computer hypothetical was meant to be light hearted, I think it reveals underlying logic about how you and I approach boards like these. I do agree you expontially increase the chance of a crash by not backing up however.
DrO
New Member:
Belumedx

Posted on Wednesday, Aug 24, 2005 - 2:00 pm:

Hello out there,

My name is Charles. I’m an RNP and I have been active in wound care on the human side for ten years now. I have been in the equine business for 30 years. I have a question. Why is the use of Betadine, HyDrOgen peroxide and other heavy medal solutions considered good medicine in the equine veterinary medical field, then on the human side, they stopped using those products 30 years ago.

Sure, Iodine products kill bacteria but they also kill tissue. Every time you use these on a horse wound you set the wound healing back 24-48 hours. The same is true when you use hyDrOgen peroxide. Another thing. Why all the bandaging. Heavy bandaging promotes the formation of proud flesh. I have seen a vet make the same mistake over and over again. He will cut off the proud flesh and re-bandage, only to have come out and again cut off proud flesh. If once the granulation bed is up to skin level, DON”T bandage anymore. Leave the wound open and let the air get to the wound. You will not have any proud flesh is you rob the wound of moisture. At my stable, we wash wound with saline, not betadine. We bandage lightly until we have a granulation bet up to skin level, and then we use a paper towel cut to the wound size, to suck up the moisture.

The time to heal, even large wounds is 50% less. Lets talk about it
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Wednesday, Aug 24, 2005 - 7:01 pm:

Hello Charles and Welcome,
While I agree with your assessment of peroxide (though not a heavy metal solution) and plain iodine solutions the same is not true of povidone (tamed iodine) solutions, at least not at recommended dilute solutions around 2 to 4%.

Though there are hundreds of current papers on the beneficial use of povidone in human wound care I pick this one since it reviews a large amount of the current literature:
Br J Community Nurs. 2003 Jun;8(6 Suppl):S36-42.
Povidone-iodine as a topical antiseptic for treating and preventing wound infection: a literature review.
Flynn J.
University Hospital Lewisham, London.

With the proliferation of antibiotic and antiseptic resistant strains of bacteria around the world, attention is increasingly being focused on more 'traditional' methods of combating and preventing wound infections. This article examines the research literature pertaining to the use of povidone-iodine, a form of iodine commonly used for skin cleansing, as a prophylaxis or treatment for wound infection. The literature is discussed as it relates to the ideal characteristics of an antiseptic for use on wounds proposed by Konig et al (1997) and Liptak (1997). On the basis of available research, it appears that povidone-iodine should be promoted by nurses and other healthcare professionals involved in wound care as a means of preventing and treating infection in a range of acute and chronic wounds.

Nor is it true that this is no longer used in human medicine here in the US. Last summer a tech or ours was severely bit on the hand by a dog. Upon admission to the emergency room, the first thing they did was soak the hand in a bowl of povidone. Judging by the opacity I would guess at least a 4% solution.

You will find most of your recommendations already in our article on long term wound care, Equine Diseases » Skin Diseases » Wounds / Burns » Long Term Deep Wound Care.
DrO
New Member:
Botchi

Posted on Friday, Nov 24, 2006 - 9:16 am:

Okay - back to the original question-

My foal, now 7 months, has been grazing with his right front foot back. He will take a step and then will put this foot back with a bend in his knee. I have not seen him graze with that foot forward yet! Although when I make him go for a carrot with both feet placed square he can reach the ground - so I don't believe his neck is too short. He is sound, and has no soreness and leg length seems to be equal. He is trimmed with careful medial/lateral balance every 4-5 weeks. He is not upright nor too lax. He has started to get 'rings' on that foot at the top about 1 inch from the cornet band. I had a mare which a club or what my CJF called a 'grazing club'. I feel like my colt is on that same path. I feel that due to the fact that there is toe pressure from him grazing that way that it is causing changes in the way his foot grows and he will end up with a 'grazing club'. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Denise
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