How is everyone doing? Got some badly needed snow here and a shot of cold air but next week is looking mild. I had my first Robin here! Way too early for them but what are you gonna do? Be sure to hit the Like button and Share with anyone. Remember you can give a gift subscription to someone you think might like my writing or maybe you just want to torture them? The buttons are at the bottom. Have a great week!
I was rolling down the interstate looking forward to getting home early for once when my new bag phone rang. Only two people had my number. Kerry and the veterinarian’s office in town, but they always called me at the house so I knew this had to be my blushing bride. I so look forward to opportunities like this.
“Hi! Are you naked?” I asked in a lecherous tone of voice which was sure to bring an outraged rebuke from my innocent wife which never fails to delight me.
“No.” replied Gus the veterinarian, “but I can be if it will get you here faster. I have a problem.” How my laughing didn’t send me careening off the highway, I will never know. After choking out an apology I headed straight for the clinic.
There, on the main treatment floor stood an old friend of mine, Kat. She was a bay mare that when I met her two years before I was told she was worth a great deal of money as a roping horse. I found that very hard to believe at the time because her conformation was all wrong. Kat was built downhill, meaning her hind end was taller than her front. She was also over at the knee, meaning her front legs were set too far back. The combination meant that she would suddenly trip at any gait. That leads to a dangerous situation when you are moving at speed roping a steer.
I worked on Kat every eight weeks for just over a year. Her feet were a mess. They didn’t grow at a normal rate. They were crumbly and wouldn’t hold nails. She grew almost no heel and what she did grow would just crush under the pressure of her moving. The owner started a nutrition program to try and get some decent foot growth and after six months there did seem to be improvement. The tripping issue remained however. That led to the owner riding less, which I completely understood, and Kat getting out of shape. We agreed we needed a change in strategy.
You might be surprised at how many times something like tripping can be attributed to poor riding, lack of training or behavior. Believe me, it happens all the time and I cant fix those things with shoes. While I was reasonably certain that the tripping was not a rider caused problem, the owner could ride, I made arrangements to bring Kat to the ranch for Kerry to work while I tweaked the shoeing. We thought that daily work on the flat as well as going up and down the hills we had on the place could build some muscle and get Kat in good condition. Improving her strength in front would allow her to lift and extend her front legs, at least in theory. Kerry and I had worked together on other horses and had good success and while Kat had some serious issues, she might be a fun project for us.
One day, as I was filming Kerry riding the horse to analyze later, Kat tripped and fell to her knees. Thankfully, Kerry didn’t somersault through the air. She stuck like glue and went on for another half an hour of work. Finished, she led Kat back to the corral while shaking her head.
“She didn’t give me a hint that she was going to do that. I had her balanced and moving forward. That was scary.” Kerry said while taking her rig off Kat.
Over the next two weeks it was obvious that this was not some behavioral thing. It was not rider error. It was a physical thing that couldn’t be fixed. Kat was dangerous to ride which was a shame because she was a sweet horse with a kind eye and great attitude. She went back to her owner and, as the owners husband said, was turned into an expensive lawn ornament.
“At least she is pretty to look at,” he had said, meaning Kat, although I’m sure he felt the same way about his wife.
Today Kat was standing on the concrete floor at the vet’s with blood dripping from her foot and pastern. The pastern is that first straight bone above the foot. She knickered a greeting at me as I came in the man door with my tools. I squatted down to look at her injuries. At this point in my career, I had never seen anything worse. Her foot looked like someone had taken a chain saw to the outside half leaving a ragged, bleeding, gash. Her pastern was cut and bleeding as well, but I couldn’t see how bad it was. She was covered with mud up to her knees and hocks. Did this happen while she was in a creek? Gus came in with a bucket of warm, soapy water.
“Hi. I figured we could wash everything first and see what we are dealing with.” We used a warm hose to wash off the non-injured legs just to be sure they really were not hurt under the mud. Then we started to gently wash off the bad leg. The more we washed, the worse it looked. The pastern laceration wasn’t deep but the skin was peeled down in a circle around the bone. The hoof wall was gashed from the hairline down to the ground. There was also a deep slice over the top of the bulb of her heel in back. Every time she put weight on that foot the crack in th wall of the foot opened and the whole rear section of her foot moved independently from the rest of the foot.
That movement gave me a little flutter of panic. My hand trembled slightly as I picked up Kat’s foot to get a closer look from the ground surface side but I quickly set it down. I needed some air. Giving some excuse about getting a tool, I went outside to the truck and poured myself some coffee from my thermos to calm down and think. He laughs about it, but whenever I come across a problem with a foot and don’t know what to do, Gary’s voice would pop into my head with sage advice. Gary was the master farrier I apprenticed with back east.
“Start with trimming the foot and bringing it into balance,” was what came into my head. I finished my coffee with a long swallow. That was good advice, thanks, Gary. I grabbed a towel from the back seat to rest the foot in my lap to keep most of the blood off my chaps and went back in the shop.
“I think you are going to have to resect some of that wall towards the heel.” Gus mumbled as I squatted down next to him. “I can’t see what it’s covering up. Can you use your dental acrylic to stabilize that heel?”
I put the foot up on my foot stand to get a better look.
“I think so. What would you think about a heart bar shoe with a clip towards the heel to help keep it from moving?” A horse’s foot expands and contracts with each step. The heels expand the most so this was going to be tricky.
“That’s a good idea.” Gus said. “What do you think about sewing it together with wire?”
I have been involved with several of these operations and the only time it was successful was a toe crack that did not go into the hairline.
“I really don’t like the sewing option, Gus.” I said it gently because the vet is the licensed expert and his or her opinion is what matters. “Besides, after I’m done resecting, I don’t think there will be much to sew together.”
“Oh good,” Gus breathed, “I hate that procedure.” That made me chuckle. Gus and I made a good team.
“Gus, I’m going to try and trim that heel so it isn’t weight bearing. That way there will be no pressure on the crack and the heart bar will take all the weight. Does that make sense?”
“Makes sense to me. While you are forging shoes, I’ll work on that pastern laceration. I’ve been thinking that the horse must have stepped in something like a culvert pipe. When she pulled her leg out, the sharp edges of the pipe did all this damage. The ranch said they found her standing in the creek. Ranches always have broken culvert pipe laying around.”
Gus’s explanation gave me the shivers. I had once sliced my leg but good on a piece of culvert pipe while trying to replace it. It was an ugly wound and looked a lot like Kat’s foot. Fortunately for me, Kerry said I was fine . She made sure I bandaged it properly and sent me back outside to finish the job with an admonishment to not bleed on the carpet.
I trimmed up Kat’s foot and measured for her heart bar shoes. I decided to shoe both fronts to distribute weight more evenly and prevent an issue with founder. Horses do not do well when they are unable to be even weight bearing for long periods of time. The heart bars would protect her by providing pressure on her soles which is essential to a horse’s physiology.
I forged both shoes out of flat stock. Pre-made heart bars didn’t exist then! The shoe is shaped basically like a Valentines Day heart only rounder in the toe. The V in the center goes right down the frog of the foot in the center.
Outside the shop I fired up my propane forge and began to shape the shoes. Gus took a break from wound care to watch. People always enjoy watching shoes being forged. There is a point at which the heart bar shoe looks like a tangled mess but once all your turns are done you flatten it out and like magic it’s a heart bar shoe. Gus apparently didn’t know that and gave me a concerned look when I held up the mess for him to inspect.
“Is it supposed to look like that?” Was all he said before going inside to leave me to my fate.
I made one quick trip inside to fit the shoes to Kat’s feet, and then I welded the Vs together. Then, I punched nail holes and drew clips to hold the shoes on. Some grinding work came next to make the edges look crisp and clean. The horse wouldn’t care but I liked a professional looking job.
Back inside the shop, Gus had Kat’s foot up on my foot stand. He was shining a small flashlight at the crack and squinting.
“Come here,” he said. “Do you see anything in there?” We switched positions and I looked close. There definitely was something in there. I took a nail and scratched it leaving a little shine.
“I think its metal, Gus.”
“OK, lets take a picture.”
We had to wait for the medical clinic in town to develop our x-rays but when we got them back and stuck them up on the light board we were both perplexed and very glad we took an x-ray.
“John, it’s a dang fencing staple.”
“How the hell…”
“I don’t know. The question is, how are we going to handle this?”
We couldn’t tell if the coffin bone had been damaged. The coffin bone is the big bone inside the hoof that is shaped roughly like a horse’s foot. The staple was right up against it. The other issue was that I did not want to remove more hoof wall then necessary thereby destabilizing the foot more than it already was. However, that staple couldn’t stay there. We decided to try and remove the staple with forceps. I would resect just enough wall to get the tool in place and then we would see what we were left with.
Lucky for us Kat was a good patient. Gus sedated her just enough to keep her standing but not care about what we were doing. I used a Dremel tool to grind away wall and then carefully slid the forceps in. Instantly there was a problem. There wasn’t enough room to open the forceps jaws enough to grasp the staple. The handles were too wide open and didn’t fit in the crack.
“Gus, can I adapt your forceps?” I asked.
“Sure, what can I do to help?”
“Do you guys have any fencing staples around?”
Gus gave me a funny look but began to open drawers and feeling around on shelves that were spread around the shop. He came back with three.
“Perfect. This won’t take long.”
I went out to the truck and heated up the jaws of the forceps. Gus didn’t know it, but the tongs we use to hold hot shoes have to be adjusted so that the jaws grab the metal and the handles, we call them reins, would close comfortably in our hands. I used the fencing staples as a gauge and bent the jaws out a little. Now I could grab the staple in the foot and the handles wouldn’t be in the way.
“That’s a cool idea,” Gus observed.
Back inside we got Kat’s foot up on the stand again and I reached in to lock onto the staple.
“OK Gus. I’ve got it. I’ll hold the foot and you pull.” Gus got a firm grip and gave it a little yank. The staple popped out so easy he almost smacked me in the nose with the back of his hand.
“I’ll be darned,” he said, “It was just sitting in there.” We washed the crack out with disinfectant and looked carefully with the flashlight. Everything was clean. We agreed that since the staple was so loose inside, that the bone should be fine.
I nailed the shoes on. Gus packed the resection with gauze and iodine and I filled it all in with Playdoh. The Playdoh protects the sensitive tissue from the heat build up as the acrylic sets up. Next I placed a straw slathered in Vaseline in the Playdoh. I could acrylic right over it then slide it out leaving a nice drain hole in case of infection. The Playdoh would work its way out the bottom as the hoof wall grew back. After five thin layers of acrylic set up, I drove nails and clinched up. The dental acrylic did its job and held everything together. I walked the mare back to her stall and was surprised to see that she didn’t act all that lame considering she was bandaged from her ankle down and had a foot held together with acrylic, Playdoh, and steel.
Kat went home a few days later. I knew the owners would take special care of her. I showed up once a week to be sure everything was tight. I ran a hack saw blade between the shoe and heel of the foot to make sure the steel wasn’t touching her heel. Kat did not grow hoof wall very quickly under normal circumstances, but I have a theory. I have no proof to back it up but I think hoof wall grows faster when there is an injury.
After eight weeks, the crack had grown out of the hairline. I couldn’t even see a scar. I gave her a couple more weeks then pulled the shoe, trimmed her and reset the shoes. She walked away 90% sound and when I visited again two weeks later, she never took a bad step as the owner led her around for me. We were thrilled so the owner turned her loose. Kat proceeded to trip and go down on one knee. I closed my eyes and cringed. All that work and worry might well have been all for nothing. Kat, however stood back up, shook herself off and walked away perfectly sound. I turned to the owner’s husband.
“I’m going to leave now before anything else happens,” I said with a wry smile.
“I wish I could go with you,” he replied with a resigned shake of his head.
Kat was trotting towards the paddock fence to whinny for her friends who were off in the distance. For just a few steps she was graceful. Mane and tail flowing in the breeze, her head held high, ears forward. Then she got to the wooden rails of the paddock fence, slid to a stop and loudly cracked right into the rails knocking the top one down.
“You idiot!” Cried the owner.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Bellowed the owner’s husband.
“I am out of here,” I whispered so no one could stop me.
Best line I'll be using again and again... "At least she is pretty to look at,” he had said, meaning Kat, although I’m sure he felt the same way about his wife.
Another great story, John.