Fantastic Trimming + Hoof Boots = Success!

My name is Marianne Allen, Know Hoof Know Horse Barefoot Hoofcare Practitioner here in sunny Southern Florida. Our challenges in South Florida are the soft ground and lots of rain in the summer. Most of our terrain does not exfoliate the hoof so as trimmers we must do more to maintain the overgrowth of bar, sole and hoof wall.

The horse pictured above is Mouche, a Prix St. George dressage horse. Mouche lives in Wellington, horse country with beautiful dressage rings and show grounds. Last November I received an emergency message from his owner, Elizabeth Brauer. The veterinarian was there and had just taken x-rays of Mouche’s feet. His two front feet were badly rotated; there was only 1 mm of sole left under the toe of the coffin bones. When I went to trim him I saw how much pain he was in. He could hardly lift a hoof for me to work on him and rocked back and forth on his front feet. Mouche was her pride and joy and Elizabeth was in tears.

We had sent the x-rays to Cheryl Henderson of the Oregon School of Natural Hoof Care. She is my teacher, my mentor and dearest friend. Cheryl has many years of founder experience and has developed tools for mapping the hoof and getting the coffin bone ground parallel with each and every trim. She mapped out Mouche’s feet and wrote detailed instructions which I took with me to Elizabeth’s. I knew exactly what I had to do.

After the trim Mouche was more comfortable but still had bouts of laminitis for about 2 or 3 weeks. I trimmed him every week for about 3 months. He became more sound and stopped having laminitis.

She bought him Cavallo hoof boots to turn him out in and took them off when he went into his stall. Elizabeth was already familiar with rasping and maintaining his feet in between her other farriers visits. The problem was the bars were never addressed, his heels were very high and between the leverage of the bars and heels the coffin bone rotated downwards. When I relieved the pressure off the bars and lowered his heels he began to heal. I began to give Elizabeth trimming lessons. She was a very serious student, the health of her horse depended on it.

Within 5 months she was trimming him and I would go to Wellington at first every 2 weeks to check on him and now I check on him once an month. She maintains him weekly and has done an awesome job so that we have good dorsal wall attachment to the coffin bone and a ground parallel coffin bone.

This picture is of Mouche one year after his devastating founder. He is lunged daily and ridden by Elizabeth and getting conditioned so that he can once again go into the show ring! I am Mouche’s biggest fan and will be there when he goes to his first show. I am sure to take a lot of tissues as Elizabeth and I will be crying tears of happiness.