Posted by George Spear on December 29, 2002 at 16:30:48:
In Reply to: Re: My notes from the sigfoos lecture posted by Phil Armitage on December 27, 2002 at 19:04:37:
: : : : :
: : : : :e Rob can hold a clinic on the negatives of "Natual means of balancing a foot". Maybe he is not talking about the NB trim at all, maybe he is refering to some other Natural thingie dingie or widget, who knows. Then you get into the mix with all kinds of information and names and try to make a point about something?????????????????????? What is your point anyways?
: : I attended the lecture. Rob was very negative about natural balance but did not go into any detail to disprove it. He did lecture on a study he conducted looking at traditional measures to balance the foot. He studied a group of horses looking at 3 common measures of balance - Coronet is parallel to the ground - Heels are the same leagnth - cannon bone is at right angles to the solar surface.
: : He found only one horse that would balance with all three measures. 5 horses that could balance with at least one. And found that 71% of the horses could not be balanced with any of the three measures when referenced to radiographs. His conclusion. Always get radiographs. Course he is shoeing at the University of Penn vet school and has access to the equipment at all times.
: : My conclusion as I do not travel yet with an xray unit in my rig is to rely on the sole plane as the next best indicator of the position of the coffin bone. I do push strongly for radiographs on theraputic cases.
: : David Hood DVM of the the Texas A&M hoof project lectured on his force plate studies that patty references in a post above. He studied a large group of domestic horses and found that within 7 days of being turned out barefoot the wear patterns were identical with that of feral horses. They moved them across the force plate on a solid surface and in sand to get both a hard and a soft suface "imprint". His foundation does not recommend trimming or shoeing techniques. They exist to do reasearch on interesting topics and leave it to the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.
: : This study would seem to indicate the the argument that feral horses and domestic horses are differant species that do not share hoof characteristics is invalid.
: : George
: Thank you George, I really wanted to attend this year, however I got burried in work due to truck problems and so forth. I hate when that happens. Interesting that Rob was so negative about the trim, doesnt suprise me. Does he realize that one of the things the NB Trim is based on is Radiographs and that the it is the next best thing to taking Radiographs? When people ask me what I think of the Trim, I tell them the ideal thing is to take Radiographs, however this trim is the next best thing and works about 95% of the time.
: Phil
Phil,
Sorry to hear you are having truck problems. We missed having you at our table this year (funny how its always the same 10% of the farriers at the clinics). I am sure we'll see one another at one of the spring clinics!
The trim sure works for me too. When dealing with a theraputic case I like to have the vet take radiographs but for everthing else I just balance to the sole plane.
George