DAN: "If you have a beginner's eye
and need to look at conformation,
what's the first thing a vet will look at for soundness?"
DR LYDIA GRAY: This sounds like an easy question.
It is not.
Because there's no place there is
more jargon than conformation.
I mean, right now you and I could
do a speed round of conformation,
like sickle hocked, and cow hocked, calf kneed,
and this and that.
And I remember years and years ago going
to the AAEP annual convention.
And there was a talk on conformation
and its effect on soundness.
And it was specifically, what things
do you see, angles, length, slopes,
and that that are actually real.
And it kind of shot holes in everything I believed in.
DAN: So what do you mean when you say what's actually real?
DR LYDIA GRAY: Well, so we hear things
like horses with long, sloping pasterns, maybe not
a good thing.
It actually turns out ideal would be medium
length, medium slope.
Long, sloping pasterns are not bad.
I know.
Hold on to your stool.
You'd rather have a long, sloping pastern
than a short, upright pastern.
DAN: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Everyone that I could see agreed.
Short, upright pasterns are not good,
both for the soundness and the longevity.
So the concussive forces that your horse
is undergoing in a short, upright pastern
tends to concentrate in that pastern area, in the fetlock,
and even in the foot.
And they set the horse up for a ringbone.
Arthritis all down that short bone through the leg.
And the thinking was a long, sloping pastern
set your horse up for bowed tendon or a pulled suspensory.
It doesn't.
It's actually protective.
DAN: Blew my mind first thing this morning.
DR LYDIA GRAY: I know.
But if you start at the bottom, everyone
agreed the foot's the foundation.
And there was a lot of research in evidence based medicine
on the foot.
And it turns out that the long toe, low heel is the worst foot
conformation.
DAN: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And the one that you should avoid.
DAN: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Cause it said there
are a multitude of problems associated with that.
Not just one.
DAN: Yep.
DR LYDIA GRAY: It sets the horse up for lots of things
to go wrong.
But navicular or caudal heel syndrome was one of them.
Because when you have a long toe way out in front,
and a low heel, and you use a plum line from the horse--
because we know most of their weight goes in their forehand--
it puts 75% of the horse's weight on the heel.
And those structures just cannot tolerate that.
DAN: Well, so I ride stock horses, which
navicular is very common in.
And so that is something we usually look at
is how is their toe?
Do they have a long toe, low heel situation?
Because we know that that is something
stock horses unfortunately can be.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Well, and quarter horses specifically,
and possibly stock horses, not that they're
bred for small feet, but they tend
to have, in proportion of their size and weight, small feet.
And small feet also not good.
DAN: OK.
We want dinner plates.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Well, no.
Flat feet, not good.
DAN: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
You know, clubfoot came up in the paper.
And as long as it's not a severe clubfoot,
then it wasn't that bad of a problem.
And I had kind of always stayed away from a clubfoot.
In fact, I'm horse shopping now, and I saw a clubfoot.
I saw a clubfoot and I walked away.
And I saw a long toe, low heel and I walked away.
DAN: Yep.
Smart.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So I'm glad you--
DAN: This is actually a perfect topic for you
since you are horse shopping.
DR LYDIA GRAY: I know.
I know.
Let me see what else I found.
We talked about the feet, the pasterns, and the foot.
Oh, there's this myth out there about you're supposed
to have a short cannon bone?
DAN: Yeah.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Have you heard that?
DAN: I have heard that.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And that's not true.
DAN: That has no impact whatsoever?
DR LYDIA GRAY: No.
DAN: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So in the hock, when
you look at the horse from the side,
a sickle hock means they come down.
And the back of the pastern, instead of being horizontal,
is sloping this way.
Like that's the front of the horse.
Sorry.
We need a horse here.
And sickle hocks do make horses a little bit prone to a curb.
But if it's not a bad sickle hock,
it's not something to walk away from.
So note to self.
DAN: OK.
So sickle hock you can still explore.
DR LYDIA GRAY: You can live with it if it's not terrible.
And the horse that is post-legged.
So do you know that?
So much jargon.
When a horse doesn't have much bend in the hindquarters,
that the leg is fairly straight.
DAN: It's almost like a straight line.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
There isn't much bend in the hock.
Those horses are set up for a hind suspensory issue.
So if it's a severe post-legged horse,
then that might not be a good choice.
DAN: Maybe you walk away.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
Oh, one more.
You've seen or heard of a hunter's bump?
DAN: Yeah.
DR LYDIA GRAY: OK.
So it's a bump in the croup of the horse,
right where the top of the pelvis is.
DAN: I was going to try to help you out and explain it.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Can you?
DAN: Well, so if you look towards the back of the horse,
you do see this little extra bump.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Sometimes.
DAN: Yeah.
Sometimes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And it can be on one side or both.
DAN: Yep.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And I always thought, I
was told it was an injury, between the ligaments
of that part of the pelvis, the tuber sacrale, and the spine
itself where it attaches, the sacrum.
It's not.
One of the people said--
DAN: We're just debunking myths all over the place here.
DR LYDIA GRAY: I know.
And not helping her at all.
But one of the people said it's actually a beauty mark, not
a defect.
DAN: Really?
Well, look at that.
You were walking away from all these horses.
And it's just a beauty mark all along.
DR LYDIA GRAY: I know.
I know.
So talk to your vet.
But I would also do some reading at a reputable source.
Because you're going to have to count on yourself to be like,
what's good conformation?
What's OK?
It doesn't matter.
And what is legitimately a problem?
DAN: And also probably manage what
your goals are with the horse.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Oh, that's the other thing.
Thank you so much.
DAN: You're welcome.
DR LYDIA GRAY: A horse's conformation,
what might be bad in one discipline, say, racing,
is OK, or, in fact, good another discipline.
DAN: Yeah.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So even if you stick with English,
what jumpers like, and what a dressage horse, how
he's going to look to excel, can be quite different.
And then your Western disciplines,
what a reiner might do OK with or need to function at his peak
is not what a western pleasure horse needs.
So it is absolutely discipline specific.
Thank you.
DAN: Absolutely.
So basically we'll look at feet, see how that's setup.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
DAN: The hocks after that.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Well, just work up the limbs.
DAN: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Cause it's feet.
And then it's limbs.
There was a little discussion about sloping shoulder.
And the thing with that was, because you've heard,
oh, sloping shoulder.
DAN: Yes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Well, when they looked at it,
everybody measures it from a different place.
And so there's no agreed upon definition of sloping shoulder.