DAN: "I have a two-year-old Quarter Horse
mare that has a club foot.
What is a club foot?
How do horses develop a club foot?
What will this look like for the mare's future.
I am working with my vet and farrier,
but what else can I do to properly manage this?"
We actually did have a couple of comments on our community board
on YouTube.
So Kayla wants to know-- or said, "I have a mare
with two club feet.
It's really very manageable with the right care.
But I feel as though many people are still
very confused by the idea."
DR LYDIA GRAY: Mm, that's helpful.
DAN: And then Donna said, "I sincerely
want to know the answer--" apparently,
Donna is experiencing this--
"I have seen a lot of videos on hoof care
and how the farrier trims and cares for a horse.
But I've never heard of a club foot in horses."
DR LYDIA GRAY: Oh.
All right, well, you came to the right place.
So I want to make sure I got this right.
And I asked Danvers Child, our Hoof Health Consultant--
DAN: Our go-to.
DR LYDIA GRAY: --yeah, to help me on this.
So this is what he wrote, "There are
numerous definitions of club foot, which may
be why there's some confusion.
But the simple fact is that a club foot is overly upright."
Or steep, is one way of saying it.
"Whether the condition is genetic or acquired,"--
so present at birth or develops later in life--
"it places excess stress on the bony column of the limb
and creates alignment issues.
While the condition often doesn't
cause immediate lameness or acute lameness,
it does affect gait and movement.
And it generally tends to shorten a horse's useful career
and comfort."
DAN: Hmm.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So he says, for this person, specifically,
"You're on the right track by having a vet/farrier
team working on this, because it does require a team.
Club feet are graded from a mild, that's a grade
1, to a severe, grade 4.
So the first step for your team is
to determine what grade or severity they're working with."
DAN: OK.
And that's what your vet would decide?
DR LYDIA GRAY: With the farrier.
DAN: With the farrier.
DR LYDIA GRAY: They use the same scale
so that they can talk apples to apples.
Yeah.
And they can consult with other people and show radiographs.
"If it's a 1 or 2,"-- so that's on the mild side--
"they'll likely opt for management.
And that's the farrier keeping a tighter schedule
than usual"-- like we say, five to six weeks, maybe.
So it might be three to four weeks or even two weeks--
"working to ensure that ratios and angles are maintained
and avoiding stress to the joints and bones.
If it turns out to be a more severe grade, like a 3 or 4,
they might opt for surgical intervention,
which would involve cutting the inferior check ligament"--
in addition to the management of the increased schedule,
the tighter schedule, and then the ratios and angles and then
all that.
DAN: So with a club foot, basically, normally
with a horse's hoof, we see a lower heel.
But with a club foot, it's going to be--
DR LYDIA GRAY: The heel is taller.
So in a horse's hoof, you want the--
DAN: That was my hoof, by the way.
[LAUGHS]
DR LYDIA GRAY: Oh, OK.
You want the pastern hoof angle to be the same, parallel.
And in a club foot, the hoof is steeper than the pastern angle.
We call this a broken forward angle.
This is the uprightness, steepness.
"boxiness" is a term, "boxy," "boxy foot," I've heard.
Interesting that the lady who asked, the horse has one foot.
And then the community commenter has two feet.
DAN: That's what I was going to ask.
Is it common to be in two feet?
DR LYDIA GRAY: It can be.
What I just learned at a symposium
I went to recently at the Northeast Association of Equine
Practitioners is the person who spoke said,
"Don't get so focused on the club foot itself.
But when a horse has a club foot, or in this case,
two club feet, the other feet will be affected too."
Instead of having an angle this way,
they might be broken back to compensate.
There's some compensation in the body going on for the one
or two feet that are clubby.
DAN: Got it, so--
DR LYDIA GRAY: So you've got to pay attention to all four feet.
DAN: Because it's not just the look of the hoof
but the structures inside the hoof are being affected.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Exactly.
And we used to think about this as being contracted tendons.
So it's the deep digital flexor tendon
that is pulling on the coffin bone
and changing that coffin joint.
But now we know that there's more structures
than just the tendon affected.
They call it the musculotendinous unit.
So the whole back of the leg is affected
in pulling that shortened--
DAN: Which is then going to affect the movement
of the entire limb.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, and what can
lead to the discomfort and the performance
challenges and the--
not life expectancy, but career expectancy, career span, yeah.
DAN: OK, so continue to work with your vet, your farrier,
get on the same page, get radiographs, and figure out
what your time frame for your horse's trimming cycle
is going to be.
And manage their comfort and gauge it from there?
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yep.