Studies show that many of our horses suffer from some degree of bacterial or fungal hoof infection related to thrush. A combination of factors make our horses susceptible to thrush and white line disease, ie lack of movement, standing in manure or urine, soft, damp or wet footing, improper trimming and/or a diet high in sugars and carbs can all contribute to the problem.

Thrush is an infection of the frog of the horse's hoof. Although the name Thrush implies a fungal infection, it often involves bacteria. If you see a deep crease between the heel bulbs, smell an odor of your horse's hoof or see visible signs of thrush, start treating immediately.

These infections can also attack the white line and hoof walls. Commonly called white line disease, this is a very serious condition and should be treated immediately.

One of the simplest ways to eradicate thrush and keep the frog healthy is by scrubbing with a brush and some liquid dish soap. First, get your hoof pick and clean your horses hoof. Be careful because he may be very uncomfortable! Then rinse to get the loose debris you missed with the hoofpick and start scrubbing and rinsing until his foot is thoroughly clean.

For white line disease or advanced cases of thrush, you will want to soak your horses hoof.  One of the easiest ways to do this is with the EasyCare Soaker Boot. For thrush, this boot will protect the foot while infections drain, you can pad and pack the foot with medication and it also keeps the foot clean and free from dirt and bacteria.

                  

At EasyCare, we believe in natural hoof care. To keep your horse comfortable during any issues, use protective hoof boots with hoof pads. 

EC July/August, 2010

Podiatry is the specialized medical field that deals with study and care of the foot, utilizing knowledge of anatomy, pathology, medical and surgical treatment. Equine podiatry is a relatively new field in veterinary medicine that does more than bridge the gap between farriers and veterinarians; equine podiatrists must be both veterinarians and farriers —focusing on the equine foot and how to address its various ailments.

Scott Morrison, DVM, is head of the podiatry department at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the first equine clinics to initiate this type of program. Morrison became a farrier 20 years ago and later became a veterinarian.

“As I began my work with horse’s feet, it just amazed me how clinics and veterinary schools never put much emphasis on veterinary care for the foot. When you look back in history, veterinary schools usually had a full-time farrier, and vet students were required to take farriery classes. Sometime during the past century, this subject was abandoned in the curriculum of vet schools.  There were only 2 or 3 vet schools that had a full-time farrier on staff. There are so many other things the students have to learn, but it was amazing to me that something as important as the horse’s foot was dropped from the curriculum!” says Morrison.

Because of this deficiency, there has been very little emphasis on equine podiatry until recently.

THE ROOD AND RIDDLE PODIATRY CLINIC

The podiatry department at Rood and Riddle is leading the way.  “Dr. Rick Redden was probably the first veterinarian who focused on podiatry; he was the pioneer of this field, and a few others followed along after him,” explains Morrison. “Our clinic was probably the first to take podiatry interns and try to make it a curriculum and incorporate it into our practice. We take other interns, for surgery and medicine, but we were the first to take on a podiatry internship as well. We are trying to be leaders in this field,” he explains.

“Initially I felt a little uneasy about taking podiatry interns, afraid they wouldn’t be able to find jobs afterward, but it has worked out very well. Everyone we’ve had has found jobs easily.  Other practices are seeing the need for having people with this kind of training,” he says.

“What we do here is rehabilitate feet or resolve foot problems.  We also work on normal and preventative foot care, which often involves how horses are shod. By far the majority of our work is with lame feet and serious foot problems that may have limited the horse’s career or problems that might be life threatening,” explains Morrison. Typical cases range from mild lameness or interference problems to serious injuries.

“We have rehabilitated feet that horse owners thought were hopeless; we try to get these feet back to where they have use of the horse again. Much of our work deals with chronic foot problems in athletes and riding horses. We work on some critical cases as well, such as laminitis, infections or traumatic injuries to the foot. Our cases vary from mild performance-related problems to serious, critical-care situations,” he says.

His associate, Dr. Vern Dryden says, “In our podiatry clinic we mainly work on Thoroughbreds, just because they make up the majority of the population of horses in our area. Currently we are seeing a lot more Quarter Horses coming into the area, however, so we also work on a lot of Quarter Horses now. We also work with many Warmbloods, used as hunter/jumpers and for eventing,” says Dryden.

“By far the most common ailment we see in our practice is laminitis, followed by palmar heel pain (navicular syndrome).  We also see a lot of foot infections, anything from an abscess to an infected coffin bone, to a puncture wound or septic bursa or coffin joint. We also see a lot of white line disease and thrush, and a few cases of canker (about a half dozen cases per year). We see it all. We deal with many toe and quarter cracks, repairing and shoeing these,” he says.

“We’ve tried to design a podiatry clinic at Rood and Riddle that could attend to any type of foot problem,” says Morrison. “Farriers and veterinarians refer horses to us, and some of our cases come because people hear of us by word of mouth—horse owner to horse owner.”

There has always been a gray zone between farriery and veterinary medicine. “A lot of times farriers and veterinarians try to work together to resolve foot problems, but sometimes it takes a specialist, someone who works on those types of problems all the time, to do it proficiently and effectively,” explains Morrison.

“We keep the farrier in the loop when we can, especially if it will be a long-term problem where the farrier will eventually be taking care of the foot again at some point,” he says. The farrier may have to shoe that horse in a certain way for a while, or maybe for the rest of the horse’s life, depending on the situation.

“Some of the chronic problems will require constant care from then on, so you definitely want the farrier in the loop on those situations when he/she takes over the care of the feet. In really critical cases, we just take the case for a period of time until we get the horse straightened out,” says Morrison.

Podiatry as a specialty field is finally becoming recognized and the podiatry staff members at Rood and Riddle are in demand all over the world. “We travel constantly.  During a 10-day period last month, for instance, I went to Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Ocala. I think there are only about 7 veterinarians around the U.S. who are specializing in feet, and 4 of them work right here at Rood and Riddle,” he says.

“We are definitely raising awareness about podiatry. People are seeing how busy we are and how important and successful this field is, not only in helping horses, but business-wise, for a veterinary practice,” says Morrison.  He and his staff have come up with (and tested) several innovative ways to shoe problem feet, and have created some new types of shoes that have helped a lot of horses.

This clinic has been on the forefront of new developments in treatment and shoeing, utilizing new types of shoes and specialty ways to shoe some of the problem horses. “People send us prototypes of a lot of different shoes and ask us to try them and use them, and we test and develop many different shoeing techniques,” says Dryden.

Veterinarians and farriers come to Rood and Riddle to learn more about podiatry. “We usually take one intern each year, and we always have visiting veterinarians and farriers who spend time with us, as well. Any time you come to our shop there are usually several visitors there,” he says. It’s an ongoing educational program.

Currently there are several people working with Morrison in the podiatry clinic. “Dr. Vern Dryden did an internship with me 3 years ago and we hired him to stay on. Dr. Raul Bras came on board 4 years ago. They are both Veterinarians and journeyman farriers. All of us are continually being asked to speak at various places, and give a lot of lectures and write articles about podiatry,” he says. Their common goal is to get veterinarians and farriers all on the same page, receiving the same information.

Morrison, Dryden and Bras take turns going to Florida to work on foot problems at The Sanctuary, a rehab center for equine athletes located in Ocala. “The three of us rotate. Every 2 weeks one of us will be down there; we make appointments and see cases while we are there for a couple of days,” says Dryden. “We started doing that this year and it seems to be working out quite well. I am happy that they have this program there and I think it will be very beneficial for that area and hopefully for the practitioners there. They can refer difficult cases and we can help them out.”

Today there are more veterinarians becoming interested in farriery, and more farriers going to vet school. “An increasing number of vet students come and visit us. There is a huge interest in seeing what we do here,” he says. This will probably generate more interest in this field in the future, as people begin to realize its value. “It’s becoming an attractive area of work to get into,” says Dryden.

“We ourselves are constantly learning, and doing things differently every year,” says Morrison. “The way we do things now is a lot different from the way we did them 5 or 6 years ago; we are constantly improving and getting better at various things. It’s a new field, always in flux,” he says. The podiatry staff is continually finding new ways to treat many of the problems.

“We are also rediscovering some of the old techniques that can still be useful with various problems. Some of those methods had validity. What we do is kind of a combination of rediscovering old techniques and coming up with new ones—finding what works best for the horse,” says Morrison.

IMPORTANCE OF FARRIERY

“You have to be a decent farrier as well as a veterinarian to be a podiatrist, and shoeing horses isn’t the most glorious part of the equation. It is rough on the body and it takes some extra time and training to become good at it,” says Morrison. Most veterinarians, after they get out of vet school, don’t want to learn how to shoe.

“It’s generally easier to approach this from the opposite direction—to first learn how to shoe and then go to vet school. You can shoe a lot of horses while you are in school and as a part-time job, and then go to vet school,” he says. The experience of shoeing and seeing a lot of horses’ feet, both normal and abnormal, is very helpful and provides a good background.

“You need to work on a lot of feet before you become a good farrier. That’s why it’s hard for veterinarians to go into podiatry after they’ve graduated and become busy with a veterinary career. You almost have to take a step back and just be a regular horseshoer for several years to become familiar with feet and reading feet,” says Morrison. It’s a big advantage to start out as a farrier first, and then go to vet school. It’s harder to do it the other way, but not impossible. It just takes a very dedicated person.

Dryden agrees that it is easiest for someone to become a farrier first and then go to vet school. “It’s tougher if you go through vet school and then decide to get into podiatry. There’s a huge hurdle to get over, to become a farrier. It’s tough to do the type of jobs you need to be able to do, if you don’t have the farriery background,” he explains.

“You have to earn the respect of the farrier community, as well.  A lot of farriers like to stick together and they are a tough crowd.  It’s hard to break into that unless you’ve been a farrier, too. Then they are much more willing to listen to you and heed what you say. You gain more respect from farriers if you’ve been there and done that, and walked their road. You’ll have more credibility, in their eyes,” says Dryden.

Being a farrier first is a good background for anyone going into podiatry, because then you’ll have seen a lot of feet. “It is crucial to know what normal is, before you start dealing with abnormal.  It’s important to know what a normal foot looks like and be able to visualize what the foot should be—so you can help a diseased foot get back into a normal situation,” he explains.

“A lot of veterinarians don’t realize all the different things you can do via the foot to treat lamenesses that originate in other parts of the body—whether it’s neck pain, back pain, hocks, or stifles.  Even humans who don’t walk correctly on their feet can get hip or back pain, and good orthopedic shoes can help. There are many things you can do with shoeing and foot care to treat other parts of the horse’s body. Podiatry can help with these issues,” says Dryden.

Everything starts with the foot, regarding balance and movement of the body. “Just like in human podiatry, we recognize that the point of ground contact affects all the structures of the limb.  The way you place your foot on the ground affects the way you load everything, even up through your back and neck,” explains Morrison.

Dr. Raul Bras says foot health is crucial to the health of the entire body. “As veterinarians, we say that more than 85 percent of lamenesses are in the foot, so obviously the foot is very important.  The foot is the foundation of the whole horse.” If a horse doesn’t have good feet, he won’t stay sound as an athlete. If a mare has poor feet, she won’t be able to produce top athletes—if her foals inherit her poor foot structure. “Her babies would need continual foot care to develop correctly. Horses need a good foundation,” he explains.

Foot health not only affects whether or not a horse can be a good athlete, but also affects the horse’s quality of life. Care of the feet is crucial to the health and well-being of the whole horse.  “Even if the horse has a problem higher in the leg, affecting tendons, ligaments or joints, we can still help that horse with therapeutic shoes,” says Bras. A shoe can be designed to help take pressure off certain areas and enable a leg injury to heal better or help alleviate pain to make the horse more comfortable.

PODIATRY IS UNIQUE

This field is merging two schools of thought. Podiatry is a specialty field that can do much more for certain foot problems than either the veterinarian or the farrier can do alone.

“Veterinarians come from one background and farriers from another, and often when treating a problem they disagree or don’t understand each other,” says Morrison. “It’s becoming popular now to have veterinarian-farrier conferences, and we do a lot of this—having them meet together and have lectures, so that they are getting the same information. Then when they have to work together it is a lot easier for them,” he says.

“As podiatrists, we can help the horse in general, not just the feet,” says Bras. It’s an exciting field and more people are becoming aware of it. During the past 10 years we have been able to educate clients, owners, and other veterinarians and farriers who want to be better able to work as a team to help the horses. The team effort is very important. You often need veterinarians and farriers working together to help certain cases,” he explains.

“As podiatrists we are farriers as well as veterinarians, but many veterinarians are not comfortable working with feet. Thus it is important that they use their farriers to advantage as part of the team,” says Bras. It is most beneficial to the horse if the veterinarian and farrier can work together rather than against one another, as has often been the case in the past. They can accomplish much more, together.

“Most of the lameness issues in horses, and most performance issues are in the feet,” says Morrison. “It is hard to effectively remedy some of these problems if your horseshoer is primarily accustomed to working on normal feet, with maintenance shoeing. And a veterinarian is generally not confronted with hoof problems. The veterinarian and farrier can sometimes work together effectively, but in many instances you need a specialist to consult or to treat these problems,” he explains.

“We are bridging the gap between them, but there will always be a need for veterinarians specializing in podiatry, no matter how much of that gap you bridge. If a veterinarian only deals with certain types of cases only once every couple of years, he/she is not as comfortable treating these,” says Morrison.  A person is more proficient when working with various foot problems all the time.  It’s just like human doctors who specialize; there will always be a place for this.

“We are hoping to eventually have a network of podiatrists all over the world. We want to have board certification in this field, like we do now for surgeons, cardiologists and other specialists.  It will take time, but I think we are taking the right steps and we’ll eventually get there,” he says. “We can then have meetings and share information. Once that happens, it will really take off, and improve the quality of care for the horses.”

He feels this is one of the areas where you can make a huge difference to a horse, very quickly. “This is why I like it. It’s very rewarding. You can improve the comfort level of the horse right away, or the owner or rider can notice the difference right away.  Some things take a lot of time, if you are waiting on new hoof wall growth, or for improvements in a laminitic horse—so you also have to be patient—but for the most part I like it because it is not only challenging, but you can usually see results fairly quickly,” says Morrison.

There has always been a gray zone between farriery and veterinary medicine, and sometimes it takes a specialist, someone who works on those types of problems all the time, to deal with them proficiently and effectively. This is the mission of the team at the Rood and Riddle Podiatry Center.

TAKING PODIATRY SERVICES TO OTHER CLINICS

The podiatry associates at Rood and Riddle take turns going every other weekend to The Sanctuary Equine Sports Therapy & Rehabilitation Center in Ocala, Florida. A growing number of clients in that area bring their horses to The Sanctuary for all kinds of foot problems. “We help foals with conformational problems, and work with sport horses, laminitic horses and any types of foot lameness (quarter cracks, hoof capsule distortions, chronic lameness, and so on). We also go to Wellington, Florida and shoe sport horses. We travel internationally as well, so this keeps us very busy,” says Bras. As more horse owners learn about podiatry, many of them will take advantage of the services offered.

HELPING EDUCATE PODIATRISTS

Many farriers and veterinarians come to Rood and Riddle to study with the podiatry staff. For the past 4 years, one of the door prizes at the International Hoof-Care Summit (an educational international gathering of farriers) has been a chance for the winning attendee to spend a week at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital with Dr. Scott Morrison and his podiatry crew. The winner in 2008 was Julie Bullock, DVM, who has an equine practice at Mount Sidney, Virginia where she deals with many hunter/jumpers, endurance horses, and pleasure horses. She has a keen interest in podiatry and trims and shoes many of her patients—working with white line disease, foundered horses and other medical issues.

She spent time with Dr. Morrison and then went on the road with Dr. Vern Dryden for a day. “A lot of what I gleaned was confirmation that what I am doing is on track, which was good, but I also learned some new tips and techniques for some of the things I’m doing. For instance, I’ve put Steward clogs (a special type of shoe) on many foundered horses, but the way I was taught was to use screws all along the hoof capsule as struts. At Rood and Riddle they just toe nail those on briefly and use Super Fast to attach the block to the hoof capsule, then they take out the toe nails. Then there are no screws. It’s faster, and also easier to remove when it’s time to remove the clogs. So that was a plus,” says Bullock.

At Rood and Riddle she observed the use of maggot therapy, which she had never tried before. “It’s one thing to know that you can put maggots in a foot to clean out a deep abscess or a case of osteomyelitis (bone infection). But to watch someone actually do it is more revealing about how it’s done. We put the maggots on some saline-soaked gauze and put them in a certain way. You have to order them and they must go into the site within 24 hours because otherwise they don’t live long. They start out tiny and grow very large. We rechecked one maggot case and the maggots didn’t need to be replaced; they were still vigorous and working well to do their job cleaning out necrotic tissue,” says Bullock.

She also got to see how to use a spring shoe or hinge-toe shoe, for treating clubfeet and contracted heels. This shoe is basically two half shoes joined at the toe in such a way that the shoe can become wider. A spring, shaped like the frog, is drilled into the heel. It goes across the frog but doesn’t touch the frog. A piece of wire holds the shoe closed. “You glue it on after trimming the foot to appropriate length. When the wire is cut, to engage that spring, you can put your thumb or finger between the bulbs of the heels and actually feel and watch it spread. It forces the hoof capsule wider and allows the bony column to adjust,” explains Bullock.

She also saw repairs of catastrophic breakdowns on racehorses, in which the horse then foundered on the other foot. “I saw how they rehabbed these cases. I also saw a racing stallion that had white line disease so severely—with coffin bone significantly rotated–that a prominent veterinarian had said the horse should be put down. Dr. Dryden took over the case and now the horse is normal and back racing. These types of cases give you hope and inspiration to look at your own cases, to realize there might be something else you can try because you know this injury can get better,” says Bullock.

“I saw tons of ideas at their clinic. You walk in the back where they are fabricating shoes and can look at hundreds of shoes they’ve had on horses and taken off. You pick one up and wonder what it was for.  It’s like walking into the idea store! There are a million ways to think outside of the box.”

The field of podiatry is an exciting marriage of veterinary medicine and farriery, using the expertise of both. “We teach each other, and help each other, to help horses,” says Bullock.

THE PODIATRISTS AT ROOD AND RIDDLE

Scott Morrison – Dr. Morrison grew up riding hunters and jumpers and was always interested in foot care. “I was fascinated by the farriers and the work they did. In 1989 I went to horseshoeing school at Danny Ward’s Eastern School of Farriery in Virginia. I started my own farriery business shortly after that, while attending college at Virginia Tech. I shod horses for 5 years before getting into vet school—where I continued shoeing horses up until my senior year,” says Morrison.

He did an internship at Rood and Riddle after he finished vet school. “At the completion of my internship, 10 years ago, Rood and Riddle hired me to start a podiatry clinic. There was no podiatry clinic here at that time. Like most clinics, they’d just have a farrier come in to work on certain cases under the instruction of a veterinarian. But the growing number of cases, and where we are located (with so many horses, in so many disciplines, in our area), created a need for someone specializing in this field—to do it effectively and follow up on the cases. You need someone who can really take an interest and know how to effectively treat these cases. This was an area that I thought had a huge need; there was never enough attention paid to it, for the number of foot issues we face,” he says.

“I ran the podiatry clinic on my own for the first year, then hired Manfred Ecker, a farrier from Austria. He helped me significantly, in developing a world-class podiatry service. Ecker has since retired, due to health issues, but we always have several top-level farriers on our staff,” says Morrison.

Raul Bras – Dr. Bras has an extensive equine background. “I was born and raised in Puerto Rico and grew up showing Paso Fino horses. There are a lot of horses in Puerto Rico with foot problems and there was not much knowledge about how to deal with these,” he says. There were very few professionals who knew about feet. Bras decided to go into a field of study to learn more about how to work with foot problems and chose to become a veterinarian.

“I went to Louisiana State University for my undergraduate work. After that I went to veterinary school at Ross University in Saint Kitts. If a person wants to be an accredited veterinarian in the U.S. you have to do a clinical year here, so I did my clinical year at Auburn University, in Alabama. After that I did an internship at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital. When I became part of Rood and Riddle and realized how we were able to help the horses and save some of these horses’ lives, I became very interested in podiatry,” says Bras.

“After my year of internship I became an associate in their podiatry department and worked under Dr. Morrison for almost a year. I then decided to apprentice with one of their farriers for 6 months, shoeing sport horses. After that, I went to Cornell University for farrier school. I came back to practice with Rood and Riddle as a podiatrist,” says Bras. He has been on the podiatry staff now for 5 years.

“I became a certified farrier in 2009. I was already a practicing podiatrist but wanted to also have my farriery certification. I recently became a certified journeyman farrier,” he says.

Vern Dryden – Dr. Dryden grew up on a working cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona. “My father and my older brother were both blacksmiths and I grew up shoeing horses with them. I’ve been shoeing since I was about 13 years old. I went to Oklahoma State Horseshoeing School in 1998 and shod horses through college and while I was in vet school at Washington State University,” says Dryden.

“While I was there I shod horses for the Veterinary Teaching Hospital and had clients around that area to help put myself through vet school. Then I did my internship at Rood and Riddle in podiatry and split my internship between podiatry and surgery.  I stayed on as an associate. Now I am a journeyman certified farrier through the American Farriers Association,” he says. Dryden has been with Rood and Riddle for 3 years.

No related posts.