Horse Topics

Studies have shown there’s a 98% chance most horses feet are pigeon toed. This fact puts the horse at risk of lameness due to instabilities in its gait or motion and way of travel. Farrier textbooks suggest and define perfect conformation as feet, cannon bone and knees pointing straight ahead. Since 98% of horses are afflicted with less than perfect conformation the question then becomes how to understand what are the results of conformation defects and what to do about them to prevent lameness.

Pigeon toed horses are the most common. In this condition the horse is not “breaking over” directly dead center of his foot. In fact examination of the horses shoe will reveal an uneven wear pattern that will not be directly center of the shoe. Very similar to the way the heels of your shoe show wear either off to one side or the other or dead center. A closer examination of the dynamic loads happening to a pigeon toed horse reveals the foot to be out of balance and having very poor support to the outside of the foot resulting in twist within the joints. (more…)