by Kirt Lander | Originally posted on the Ridecamp forum 3.27.12
The laminitis season is upon us.
So many causalities can contribute to this affliction. High sugar-content hay, heavy grain loads, stress, illness, vaccine reactions, etc.
One thing is for sure, however, the old methods of treatment with heart bar shoes and stacked wedges are giving way to pulling shoes and going barefoot. Low heels and short toes, combined with footing that will receive an impression of the whole hoof and sole provide the greatest support during recovery.
Of paramount importance in the recovering post-laminitic horse is that the causality has abated. Often, however, there is not just one causality. A horse may be living a life of perpetual, low-grade laminitis, then one day an additional causality puts them over the edge. When you are not certain of the cause, simplicity is key. A horse can live a very long time on a simple diet of low-quality Bermuda grass hay, mineralized salt and water. As also previously mentioned by others, the horse in active competition or heavy exercise will recover faster because movement is the key to hoof growth, and hoof growth is necessary to replace the entire hoof capsule with new and well-connected hoof wall and sole. The typical competing barefoot endurance horse will grow a new hoof capsule every five to six months, especially if given a quality hoof supplement.
What about recovery? Can the foundered horse recover and go back to competition? Definitely this is possible. A stallion I own was rattlesnake-bitten on the face in the middle of the 2005 ride season. In order to help save his life, he was administered dexamethasone, which is known to cause laminitis (and it did), not to mention the side effects of the snake bite (acute soft tissue inflammation) were enough to cause laminitis on its own. We gave him about four weeks off from heavy work, made sure his footing was full supporting (in this case, a combination of pea gravel and sand), kept his heels low, and reduced wall flaring and wall pressure at the ground plane by rasping the walls passive in the front half of the hoof. He went back to competition a month later with 1/8″-thick gel pads in his strap-on hoof boots and went on to win the Jim Jones Stallion award that year.
Below is a video link of him during a three hour workout barefoot and without boots, shot about six months after the snake bite incident. Toward the end of the video there is a still shot of the bottom of his front hooves where you can still see a bit of white line separation, as it may take more than one new hoof capsule for full recovery, but fully recover he did. His competition schedule was only subsequently greatly reduced due to heavy business-related demands.
The Barefoot Black Stallion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1bhE_1we6U
Kirt Lander is a natural hoof care practitioner and educator based in Arizona. A trimmer since 2000, he has helped hundreds of foundered horses. Kirt and his wife, Gina, enjoy endurance competition with their herd of a dozen barefoot horses, including their Arabian stallion Halim El Mokhtar, who received the nationally acclaimed American Endurance Ride Conference “Jim Jones Stallion Award” in 2005. Kirt is the inventor, developer, and manufacturer of the Renegade Hoof Boot, designed for the barefoot performance horse.