"No foot, no horse"
~ that's an old adage that most horsemen will agree upon.
These days there seem to be as many methods to take take of horses' hooves as there are farriers and barefoot practitioners.
Last night (the reason why the normal Thursday blog was postponed to Friday!) I had the opportunity to learn a bit about the thinking behind the principles espoused by the Institute of Applied Equine Podiatry (IAEP) from practitioner Kathy Hopkins in a class she gave through our Boise School District Community Education program.
IAEP folks look at the horse's foot as a living, changing and adaptable structure, largely made up of soft tissue. Which can be a bit of a surprise if you've never thought about what's *inside* that hoof wall.
Kathy brought along this fascinating freeze-dried and mounted model in which halves of bones are mounted to the whole by magnets. You can see the individual bone halves on the table top; the gray areas in the mounted portion hold the magnets. Really cool, check it out at HorseScience.com
Thursday's presentation was a nice summary of internal structure, the function of the parts of the hoof, and the ways in which trimming and shoeing (or not! a key point) affect the horse's hoof and overall soundness. A very pleasant evening for an anatomy nerd.
You need to dig a little bit into the IAEP website to find solid information on the research, experience and resulting philosophy of the institute's founder, K.C. LaPierre, but on the hoof club page, in the right hand column, are a series of PDFs you can download to read more.
There is a bit of hard-sell edge to this site which gives me pause, but I've downloaded a number of the PDFs and look forward to reading more in depth.
If you're interested in hoof function and general anatomy I recommend two additional resources which I've found quite interesting:
Principles of Equine Orthopedics: Stance and Biomechanics for Every Horse Owner by Deb Bennett, PhD. (As I understand it, this is still available as a back issue of the Inner Horsemen ) In 2003 she began a concerted effort to introduce orthopedic principles to farriers and horse people in general.
Farriery: The Whole Horse Concept published in 2007 by British farrier David W Gill. This interesting volume does a good job of integrating the hoof into the horse's anatomy as a whole-body system.
If you really want to geek out, dive into Equine Locomotion by Willem Back and Hilary Clayton, especially Chapter Six, The Role of the Hoof and Shoeing by Willem Back.
Will you find conflicting information among different authors? Of course.
It's up to horse owners to use their heads to learn (and keep learning), then analyze that information to decide what's best for their horse.
I believe that artists working in realism also have a responsibility to learn, analyze that information and then decide how to best portray the animal -- for what people see when they look at our artwork can all too often be assumed to be correct or ideal (even if it's not).
Can you learn everything at once? Of course not. It's a life long process, especially as new research develops. Please do share your latest discoveries of books or resources that you've found particularly helpful in the comments section.
There is a bit of hard-sell edge to this site which gives me pause, but I've downloaded a number of the PDFs and look forward to reading more in depth.
If you're interested in hoof function and general anatomy I recommend two additional resources which I've found quite interesting:
Principles of Equine Orthopedics: Stance and Biomechanics for Every Horse Owner by Deb Bennett, PhD. (As I understand it, this is still available as a back issue of the Inner Horsemen ) In 2003 she began a concerted effort to introduce orthopedic principles to farriers and horse people in general.
Farriery: The Whole Horse Concept published in 2007 by British farrier David W Gill. This interesting volume does a good job of integrating the hoof into the horse's anatomy as a whole-body system.
If you really want to geek out, dive into Equine Locomotion by Willem Back and Hilary Clayton, especially Chapter Six, The Role of the Hoof and Shoeing by Willem Back.
Will you find conflicting information among different authors? Of course.
It's up to horse owners to use their heads to learn (and keep learning), then analyze that information to decide what's best for their horse.
I believe that artists working in realism also have a responsibility to learn, analyze that information and then decide how to best portray the animal -- for what people see when they look at our artwork can all too often be assumed to be correct or ideal (even if it's not).
Can you learn everything at once? Of course not. It's a life long process, especially as new research develops. Please do share your latest discoveries of books or resources that you've found particularly helpful in the comments section.
mmmmmm
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