Quarter Crack-Itis
Having just spent several days at two of Arizona’s largest American Quarter Horse Shows I’ve come to one conclusion. I’m tired of looking at so many horses with quarter cracks. Now as you know, at a horse show there are horses from several different states and various environments. The horses I saw were performing several different disciplines. Registered Quarter Horses today are as varied in body type as the disciplines they compete in. Because these were top end horses in the industry I’m sure they were shod by top end farriers. The only common denominator is the fact that they were all shod with Natural Balance shoes and principles. The fact is that in the last five years I have had a number of quarter cracked horses brought to my shop with the same problem created by the same circumstances. I’m not saying that only the Natural Balance system lends itself to creating quarter cracks, but 4 out of 5 horses that are brought to me are. You can draw your own conclusions. Now after 32 years in the farrier business I am not out pounding the road day in and day out shoeing , but many lame horses are still brought to me either for evaluation or repair. The fact is that most quarter cracks should be prevented by using good sound shoeing principles to begin with. In my estimation nine out of ten quarter cracked hooves are from a shoeing imbalance.
You have got to realize that when you are competing on or training a horse for reining, working cow horse, jumping etc. that these are high stress events. Just stop and think of the amount of torque on a horses’ foot when he does a roll back after a cow. Remember he not only has his weight to deal with, but also his riders’. Anytime you add speed you increase your chances of injury. With that being the case you need all of the foot surface on the ground that you can get. From what I can see from the Natural Balance method you are taking away the very hoof surface that you need touching the ground. If you think about it the hoof wall is thickest at the toe. From an engineering standpoint that is the part that should bear the most weight. When that portion of the foot is removed from touching the ground the same amount of weight and torque is distributed over a smaller area. The modern horse certainly does not need a smaller foot. If anything it needs a larger one. The other consideration when you take the horse’s toe away is that besides leaving it in a weakened state you are removing the horse’s “purchase”. By “purchase” I mean the ability of the horse’s toe to dig into the ground to gain traction. Why would you want to inhibit traction on a speed event horse? Why would you want to have less of the horse’s foot coming into contact with the ground? When you generally have a small foot to begin with why do you want to put increased pressure on an even smaller part of the foot? So perhaps you may now realize why we are seeing so many horses with quarter cracks that never had them before.
Even, on the best of horses injuries can occur, but it is beyond me why you would want to increase the chance of injury by putting your horse on a shoe that supports less of the hoof surface. After having shod over 39,000 horses I have learned that it is best to leave the hoof alone as much as possible. Just so I wasn’t missing something I rechecked the “natural balance” website in case there might be a new piece of wisdom that might help me shoe horses. While on there I noticed they have a slogan called” Hope For Soundness”. In my opinion if I had to shoe horses using that methodology I would even pray for soundness. We have been shoeing horses for over 4000 years now. I think we have it pretty well figured out. It goes back to the old acronym “KISS” or keep it simple stupid.