Horseshoeing And Bowed Tendons
Filed Under Pets | Posted on February 24, 2008
Bowed tendons on a horse can be murder. The deep flexor tendon between the knee and the pastern joint blows due to excessive stress and stretch. It’s a long recovery process sometimes leaving a blemish.
There can be several elements that can all contribute to this problem. Hard work is surely one while incorrect shoeing the other. A quick look at race horses and how prevalent bowed tendons occur can give you some clues to a deeper understanding into this issue. Race horses are definitely worked hard – at the end of the race horses are completely exhausted. In this condition of exhaustion and fatigue the muscles of the body are not carrying the horse in the most optimum manner-hence a breakdown.
Race horses are shod typically with a longer toe than normally acceptable. The length of toe creates a lever for the horse to drive off of creating more speed- just a little added thrust as the hoof breaks over. The above two mentioned instances combined with other factors (not absolutely correct shoeing) all contribute to the increase of the possibility of bowed tendons.
When the toe of the foot is long it “Sticks” to the ground longer as the horse moves forward; this stretches the deep flexor tendon and stresses the leg. When the horse starts to tire during hard work such as a race the stresses increase as the muscles stop carrying the body correctly. The stress the fatigue the improper shoeing and strike three the tendon blows.
To minimize the possibility of bowed tendons obviously reverse some of the above elements. Don’t work your horse to such exhaustion, don’t have a long toe and make sure everything else about the shoeing is very correct. Give your horse a little bit of heel (don’t trim the heels down too short) it’s somewhat the same as too long toe in how it creates stress to the joints and tendons. So move the shoe to the rear of the horse (to shorten the toe) increase heel and then be careful with the exhaustion factor and you’re starting to gain on the prevention of lameness.
Now there are other necessary aspects to the shoeing that are also most important to prevention but are much more difficult to discuss in a text format. Unfortunately these methods are not readily available in the horse shoeing schools or horse shoeing textbooks so you will be wasting a lot of your time researching and researching. However – I have a 16 year 100% track record “Not One Single Lame Horse” due to the methods I’ve discovered for myself as a farrier for over 16 years now. I know what you’re thinking “you want this information for yourself” – and “How do you get it”?
OK. Just go to the website link below in the author bio “Now” before you forget. Go ahead your horse will love you for it. That’s a promise.
Author Bio: John Silveira, Farrier, Aikido practitioner, spiritualist, born and raised in San Mateo California the bay area. For information on his shoeing method and the 100% track record just go to http://Farrieritis.care4horses.com and leave contact information.
thank you and remember to Care4Horses
Reprint rights allowed providing nothing is changed.
Tags: bowed, farriers, Horses, jumping, lameness, laminitis, Navicular, riding, ringbone, saddle, splints, tendon, toe
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