Part 2 of Equine Balance

In our daily routine of working with horses and especially trimming or shoeing their feet, we have to understand if we make changes to the body of the animal, then there is to be a neurological signal sent to all regions and individual parts of the animal's body to inform the different bodily structures that there has been a change in the system. When these signals are received and acted upon, we begin compensation in the animal's body, and this can be for a short time or persist for some time in the body. It can be a positive or negative experience for the animal.

These compensation patterns can occur without a rider; however, if the ride is added to the equation, they must be included in changing the structures. Compensation is a protective process and part of the body's unconscious response. It is the process of offsetting a psychological difficulty by developing in another direction related to the state of the physical cause or compensation patterns in the animal's body.

Therefore, every time we trim or place a shoe on their feet, we are altering the forces in their body and start the process of them reacting to our intervention of changing the physical forces they feel through their proprioception system and requiring an action by the neuro-muscular system to us working on their feet.

Have you ever stopped and considered how nature designed the distal phalanx or how it transfers its loading characteristics, functional or dysfunctional, to the internal sensitive lamina, and how those loading factors could influence the hoof capsule and your trimming or shoeing strategies? 

Many in the equine industries believe that the distal phalanx or pedial bone should be set and maintained at a three to five-degree positive angle to the solar or ground surface of the hoof capsule. Is this formula correct? Does it take in nature's design for the equine distal limb loading, or are we asking the animal to change its bioengineering to comply with what we believe is correct for the industry?

The equine foot has been designed to carry the animal's weight and concussion forces that respond to the undulating ground surface beneath their feet and include the effects of the gravitational forces of living on our planet. Nature has designed the three bones of the distal interphalangeal joint and the associated soft tissue structure that supports them to do just that, and when we alter them throughout our farriering process and place them out of balance by raising the angle of the distal phalanx, we are altering the entire animal.

If we look at the structural integrity of the distal phalanx, it is clear that it requires its base or solar border to be supported to carry the animal's weight through its centre. Suppose we set the base or solar border to a three or five-degree positive angle. In that case, we are altering the orthopaedic forces on the limb and the loading characteristics of the middle phalanx and how it can sit on the top of the distal phalanx and transfer the descending weight to the biological centre of the bone. You can try and feel the differences in the loading of the pedial bone by taking an object with a similar base surface, placing it on the palm of your open hand, and pushing down on its centre.

Can you feel how the weight is distributed evenly to its outer edges? Now, change the object's angle to higher in the rear, like the raised pedial bone and see where the forces go when you push down on it. You should find that the loading forces are now transferred to the front of the object, that the change in angle is not comfortable in your hand and that you have to compensate for this angle change through the arm you are pushing with; this is the same for the horse.

I will leave you to think that over, and in the meantime, look closely at the photo and ponder over the balance between the middle phalanx with the distal phalanx and the consequences of that on the navicular bone. In the next blog, we will continue to outline the forces that influence the orthopaedic loading of the distal joints and the external shape of the equine hoof capsule.   

If we change our horses' feet, then there must be a change in the internal structures.