A barefoot racehorse story

We were asked to rehabilitate a racehorse. This story does not have a successful barefoot end but it does illustrate how important diet is for performance hooves and how common low level laminitis is in all horses from big to small.

The racehorse’s shod feet. Note the very under run heels and significant imbalance.

Eight months later the under run heel is significantly improved, the whole hoof shorter and the medial lateral imbalance much reduced.

Nine months after being unable to return to full race training due to recurrent tendon injury the racehorse resumed training once again, barefoot.

This time, three months into training, he was successfully achieving
a one mile gallop per day, six days per week. Then he started to lose performance on the gallops and a few days later he went foot sore on hard and stony surfaces.