Trimming and Preparing the Feet for Shoes

© J. Scott Simpson

posted here with the permission of the author

first posted on the Internet in The Horseman's Advisor

Trimming and preparing the feet for shoes is one of the most difficult procedures in learning to shoe. It is a very complex subject to understand due to all the variables which are involved. You often see varied hoof conformations and moisture contents of the foot structures. Feet which have been mismanaged by neglect or accidental breaking also may present problems for the novice horseshoer. We will look into some of these variables later in this chapter.

THE NORMAL FOOT
Let's begin by discussing the trimmings of normal foot. This foot has been protected by a shoe for about 8 weeks and it will need to have about 1/2" of wall removed at the toe. This horse's feet have been cared for and the moisture content of the frog, sole and hoof wall is sufficient so as to allow you to cut them away without undue effort. Always use the sequence as outlined here and it will eliminate problems in learning to trim feet.

As you begin this procedure, you will again need three tools: the hoof knife, nippers and rasp. Now you are ready to begin.

Step One
Thoroughly clean out the bottom of the foot. Hold the hoof knife in both hands as though you were going to stab yourself in the chest. Using the dull side of the hook, scrape out all the foreign matter which may be trapped in the sole and in the deep grooves (sulci) along the sides of the frog. Some of this material may be difficult to remove. Be persistent, though, and get it all cleaned out. Again, holding the knife in both hands, trim the edges of the frog enough to restore its natural shape. When trimming the right side of the frog, begin at the rear and using a slight sawing motion, terminate this cut where the point of the frog meets the sole. To trim the left side of the frog, begin at the sole and again saw towards the heel. These two cuts should be tapered towards the center of the frog about fifteen degrees. Any loose tags around the cleft of the frog should be picked up in the left hand and trimmed off, holding the knife in the right hand.

Step Two
Your attention is now on the bars of the foot. If they protrude above the level of the sole, they should be knifed until they just blend into the sole. Do not cut them below the sole level. Also, do not gouge out the sole in the seat of corns. (Many people have a tendency to do this.) Put the foot down now and catch your breath. Old Brownie needs a break, too!

Step Three
The next step is the most mystifying to the beginner. It is also sometimes difficult for an experienced horseshoer to perceive. That is: how much sole should be removed? The only answer to that question is to remove enough sole with the blade of the knife until it takes on a glossy, shiny appearance. Color of the sole doesn't signify anything. Red spots or lines in the sole do not indicate sensitive tissue. They are merely bruises of the sensitive sole which have grown down into the horny sole. Until you've trimmed enough feet to get a feeling for the proper depth, stop when you get to a shiny or glossy appearance of the sole near the toe. This probably won't be as deep as a professional shoer would take it, but better to leave a little excess than to take too much sole.

To trim out the surplus sole, begin by drawing a line across the sole at the tip of the frog. Use the hook of the knife to do this. Most beginners take more sole out of the quarters and seat of corns than they should. For this reason, you should only trim out sole in front of the line you drew with the knife. The best way to learn is to hold the knife with both hands. Use the blade near the hook, but avoid using the hook itself directly into the sole. Scraping out sole with the hook of the knife will result in cutting a series of grooves in it. One or more of these grooves will be likely to penetrate the sensitive sole. Use a scooping motion with the knife blade until you get the desired glossy appearance to the sole. When cutting from the left side of the foot to the right side, the knife blade will be pointed back towards the frog. When cutting right to left, the blade is pointed towards the toe. In both cases, the hook of the knife is always up.

After the proper amount of sole is removed, search a track in the white line at the toe with the hook of the knife. This track needs to only extend about one and one-half inch from the center of the toe on each side. This is easiest to do by moving the knife right to left. Do not cut the white line below the sole level. All the knifing which remains to be done at this point will be to blend the sole behind your initial line into the sole near the heels. Here again, you must be careful not to dig out the sole in the seat of corn area. Just blend it in. You will notice I use the word blend often. It describes exactly what I want you to do. Take small amounts until they merge together.

Take a moment to see why I stress using both hands on the knife for most of its use. The first reason is for your own safety. With both hands on the handle, it is difficult to cut yourself with the blade. Second, using both hands on the knife will discourage your tendency to hold the foot with your free hand. This will help you to learn to hold and steady the foot with your legs. There may be occasions when you do need to steady the foot with one hand while you knife with the other, but for the most part, use both hands on the handle of the hoof knife.

Step Four
Before we go on to the use of the hoof nippers, we must have a definite plan as to how much hoof wall we will need to cut off with them. The length of foot as measured at the toe is arbitrary, but most riding horses will trim down to about 3-1/2" at the center of the toe. Caution should be exercised here, as some feet will not trim this short. Three and 1/4" of length should be considered as approximately how short any foot can be safely trimmed. Measuring toe length before trimming a foot is always a good idea and will help to eliminate the ambiguity of how much may be trimmed off the foot.

The first cut is easily determined, as it will always be directly in the center of the toe and to the level of the sole. The amount of heel to be cut off must be determined before any trimming occurs.

In most cases, only about one-fourth as much heel will need to be trimmed off as compared to the toe. The illustrations will help you to get in the ball park as to how much heel to toe ratio is proper for the variety of feet you may encounter. The important thing here is to set a known value on the amount of heel to be removed. If your first cut at the toe is 1/2", the most common amount of heel taken would be one-fourth of that amount. That comes out to one-eighth of an inch of heel. Keep that figure in mind and you've got your known value. You are just about ready to nipper the foot. But before you do, I want you to understand that this method of nippering will differ from the more traditional method of beginning the nipper cut at one heel and following it around the toe to the opposite heel. If you don't try to improvise, and follow the instructions precisely, I can help you avoid many of the common mistakes most beginners encounter when first learning to nipper the foot.

Begin by imagining a line across the foot 1" behind the point of the frog. Where this line meets the outer perimeter of the wall on both sides will be called the zero points. Holding the nipper handles in both hands, let the inside jaw rest against the sole at the center of the toe. Be careful not to let the outside jaw take a deeper cut than the inside jaw; squeeze the handles firmly together until you hear a positive click. Holding the handles in the closed position, break this first cut away from the wall by firmly wiggling the handles from side to side. (Don't push them forward.) Now make overlapping cuts on the left side of the foot until you reach the zero point on that side. Make certain you continually reduce the depth of each successive cut so as to taper the line of your clip to take no material at the zero point. Return to the toe and beginning at the depth of the first cut, trim away the right side. Taper out to zero at the zero point.

You will have a tendency to let the nipper jaws angle outward, letting them cut deeper on the outside jaw. Do not allow this to happen! Now take the foot into the clinching position and beginning approximately one inch in front of the zero point, draw a straight line with your felt-tipped pen from that point through your known value at the heel. Return to the working position and begin cutting from front to rear following your line. Be certain to cut all the way through the heel.

KEEP THOSE NIPPERS LEVEL! You will notice that you did not cut to the level of the sole through the quarters. That's good, because that is exactly what you want to avoid doing. Pat yourself on the back and put the foot down while we discuss how you're going to rasp the foot.

Step Five
Your first attempt at rasping a foot flat may lead you to believe that the rasp was never made for taking material from the bottom of a horse's foot. You will discover that it does a great job of grabbing the foot and pushing it from between your knees, scraping all the skin from your knuckles, and rasping huge holes in the knees of your expensive new blue jeans. Because the rasp is so difficult to use, you will find yourself wanting to use the file side of it to rasp the bottom of the foot. This is another no no! Don't cheat! Force yourself to only use the coarse side until you have the foot flat. A little fine tuning with the file side is alright, once the foot is flat.

The question always arises: Where do I begin rasping the foot? There is only one correct answer to that question. Begin rasping the high places on the foot. In fact, this is the entire object of the rasping operation -- rasp only the high spots until they blend with the lowest places.... let that last sink in for a moment.... do not rasp the low spots. They will only become irreparable gaps in the wall if you do. You will have a tendency to over-rasp some areas of the foot which are easy for you to access with the rasp. This is not the time to be careless and sloppy in following the directions for rasping the foot. After all, the shoe must rest on the surface which you are now preparing, and it must be flat.

Five and seven are the area of the buttress of the heels. From nine around the toe to three, the rasp will need to visualize the foot as the face of a clock. Twelve o'clock is the center of the toe. Three and nine are the mid quarters. Follow the direction which would be depicted by the hour hand on the clock. Having previously used the zero point method of nippering, your two highest spots will usually be found at the ten and two positions. So when rasping the ten o'clock spot, the front of the rasp will point to ten and the handle will be in the four o'clock position. For this direction of rasping, the toe of the rasp is held in the left hand and the right hand holds the handle. The opposite is true when rasping the two o'clock location. Got the picture? For all rasping on the left side of the foot, the rasp handle is held in the right hand. The left hand controls the handle when rasping the right side. When rasping the center of the toe, point the rasp directly at 12 o'clock. Go back and review this paragraph. It's very important that you understand it!

Now how about the rear half of the foot? Unless the frog extends above the level of the hoof wall, all rasping can be done straight across the foot. This includes the buttress of the heels. You can still only rasp from the inside of the foot to the outside. (Don't try to rasp both sides at once.) This will mean you still have to change hands on the handle. The illustration will show you exactly which direction to run the rasp for all parts of the foot.

Should the frog extend above the wall at the heels, it will prevent you from rasping the buttress of the heels from the side. Avoid the temptation to grab the knife and reduce it to smaller than its normal size. Instead, hold the front (toe) of the rasp in your right hand, hold the foot steady with your left hand, and pull the rasp towards your chest. Be sure the rasp covers the right buttress of the heel as you do this. To do the left heel, simply change hands. The illustration shows this technique.

In rasping the toe and front portion of the quarters, you will often find the rasp is contacting a great deal of sole. This makes rasping the wall difficult to do. To solve this problem, use the blade of the knife to just skive off a thin portion of sole in this area. This must be done very carefully as this is where you are most likely to cut into the sensitive structures of the sole.

Frequent sighting across the plane surface of the foot will assure that you are rasping away only the high places. Once the wall appears flat, you will most often need to make another pass or two over it with the rasp to shorten it a little further. The last pass may be done with the fine side of the rasp.

One last bit about rasping the bottom of the foot. Should you have accidentally made a bad cut with your nippers and perhaps cut one or both quarters too short, do not rasp these gaps at all. Just get the toe and heels flat and live with the low quarters. This is because no matter how much you rasp the low spots, they will not get higher. Better to live with the gouged-out quarters than to risk getting the rest of the foot too short. Although this is poor horseshoeing, it's a scientific fact that no horse has ever died of low quarters. This is a frequent problem experienced by everyone learning to shoe horses. Simply being aware of it should help you avoid making this mistake.

Now take another much needed break. You've earned it. The foot will not be considered ready for a shoe until the outer shell of the hoof wall is rasped to a normal shape by removing all abnormal flares. These flares, if they are present, are found at the toe and sometimes one or both quarters. These will be rasped away while holding the foot in the clinching position. When rasping on the outside shell of the foot, you will discover that the fine side of the rasp will often cut better than the coarse side. Try both sides until you find out which side works best for you. To know how much flare to remove, examine the foot care- fully and you will notice that the wall is straight from the hairline down about two inches. Flares will begin below this straight portion of the wall. The straight part above the flares will dictate the line that the flares should be removed to. Care should be taken so as to not rasp the flares excessively, giving the edges of the foot a dubbed-off appearance. The illustrations will describe flare removal more precisely. Once all the flares have been smoothed off, lightly round the sharp edge of the hoof with the fine side of the rasp. This will prevent you from cutting your fingers on the edges of the foot while fitting the shoe. Try not to rasp any of the wall within one inch of the hairline. The protective layer of periople must not be disturbed in this area of the hoof wall.

Even if no flares are present on the outer hoof wall, there will sometimes be some small bulges and chips where the old nails came out. You should rasp these areas smooth. This makes for a nicer looking job after you are finished. I call this cleaning up the outside of the hoof.

PROBLEM TRIMMING
Some of the problems and variables of hoof trimming will be looked at now. If the horse has been barefoot for quite some time, the feet may be worn down short and will need little if any trimming. Often, in such cases, the toes of the feet have become rounded off excessively. Sometimes the wall at the rear of the quarters will be chipped or broken away. About all one can do with this type of foot is to cut off a small amount of heel with the nippers to obtain some bearing surface at the buttress. Rasp everything as flat as you possibly can and take it from there. Just do the best you can under these circumstances. These gaps in the quarter will have to remain low places. They are unsightly and spoil the possibility of a perfect shoeing job, but nothing can be done about them as it is impossible to trim the rest of the foot short enough to eliminate the condition.

Occasionally you will need to leave all the heel possible on a foot. If this is the case, nipper to the zero points and then rasp the foot flat. Even when heel is needed to be retained on the foot, it should be rasped enough to obtain a solid bearing surface. This is important, as leaving a lot of weak heel on the foot will result in the heels crushing down in a short period of time after shoeing. Should this happen, the rear nails will be loosened and the entire shoe will become loose on the foot.

Should it be necessary to remove more heel than toe, take your first cut at the toe as usual. Break it out and use the felt-tipped pen to draw the intended line of cut all the way back through the heels. Follow the line with the nippers, eliminating the tapering to the zero points. Care must be taken to follow the line precisely through the rear quarters. The tendency will be to allow the nippers to trim the sole level in this area. This may result in trimming the quarters, again, too low.

Trimming excessively long feet can sometimes be a confusing experience. If you haven't seen feet with an inch or more of wall to be removed, you may be too timid to trim the foot short enough. The practical solution to this problem is to nipper off about one half the amount to be removed before using the knife to remove any of the sole. To make this preliminary cut, eliminate nippering to the zero points. Nipper from the toe all the way around to the heels. As this is just a rough cut, it does not need to be too accurate. Care should be taken to not take off more heel than is desirable. With the excess wall trimmed off, the foot should be set down and examined from the side once more. You may proceed from this point as though the shoe had just been removed from the foot.

A horse with good feet may have been ridden or run loose on hard terrain. This may have caused the feet to have been worn off to a point which is as short, or even shorter, than what is needed for shoeing. These feet will be nice and flat on the bottom and not need to be trimmed with the knife or nippers. They may need a little bit of smoothing with the fine side of the rasp, but that is all they need for preparation for the shoes. These feet will be identified by their short appearance, and often will have a glazed look to the sole and bottom of the wall.

We have covered just about all of the common situations associated with preparing the foot for shoes. Before going on to the next block of learning, this would be the time for mentioning the technique for leaving the horse barefoot. The only difference in the trimming technique is to leave the hoof wall about 1/8" to 1/4" longer than the sole. The edge of the foot will need to be rounded off to prevent it from chipping. This is done by first nippering a diagonal cut around the edge of the foot. The width of this cut can be about 1/4" wide at the toe back to where the zero points were. From that point back, a minimal cut should be taken. This diagonal cut is made with the foot in the regular working position. You will now need to take the foot into the clinching position and, using the fine side of the rasp, file the bevel you have created into a round edge.

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