Here is how it works in Fools vill following just only the sole plane.
Dry weather for a few months sole stays retained.IT rains for a few days the hard dry sole & bars flakes out. Fool desides to follows sole plane.
What is the result? quarters & heels cut to low.If the sole plane is continuly followed your on your way to negative palmar angle. But it gets better. over time the bulbs flaten the horse now has collapsed heels due to the angle the horn finds its self having to grow from a flattend bulb.

owen charles wrote: It seems that you are you suggesting that instead one should not trim the heels, but leave them alone and only trim the toe. Is this your solution?

You do your best to have your heels at the hight they should be.Not where they end up because you followed a foolish idea of following the sole plane.How hard is that to comprehend.

Its as daft as the bare footers who talk about transition period. Talking as though the sole is stagnant in growth. Wont soften in wet weather wont ware in abrasive conditions. All you have to do is keep trimming it even if it bleeds till the magic transition period kicks in. sounds kind of lame doesen't it.lol

owen charles wrote: Ok. How does one quantify the height the heels should be? What is your system of measurement?
Personally I don't follow the sole plane, but I do know to a scientific certainty that the sole is deposited from the bottom of P3 and that following it absolutely to uniform thickness produces a zero ventral angle - same as if you set P3 flat on a table. How hard is that to comprehend?

Personally I don't follow the sole plane, but I do know to a scientific certainty that the sole is deposited from the bottom of P3 and that following it absolutely to uniform thickness produces a zero ventral angle - same as if you set P3 flat on a table. How hard is that to comprehend?

Garbage!! Where did you learn such rubbish.

owen charles wrote: Rubbish? Are you that illiterate?

I've done numerous cadaver dissections. It is quite obvious that the solar corium and insensitive sole covers the bottom of P3. Therefore it is also quite obvious that trimming so that the sole is uniform in thickness would place P3 a uniform distance above a flat surface - making it parallel to that surface.

If you wanted P3 to be at a negative ventral angle, then it would be easier to achieve by simply leaving all the horn in the heels to jack up the back half of the foot until the caudal sole collapses at the junction of the bars while keeping the cranial sole elevated. In this situation the sole and the bone are at a negative ventral angle and the bars are collapsed and displaced outward accordingly.

owen charles wrote: Say what???? Read, with comprehension, what Tom wrote. His statement is not hypothesis or theory, it is, fact.

I'm finding it a challenge trying to figure out Which one of use is Zig & Which one is Zag. Who's Fact yours Rick ?. Because its sure as hell not my Fact.

owen charles wrote:

owen charles wrote:
Jack Mac. I agree with you that seasonal variatons occur in the sole plane depth. In my environment here in maine I see horses retain sole in the winter to help keep the foot warm. They shed it in the spring wet season and then retain it again in the summer dry season. In the summer the extra sole helps insulate them from the hot ground. Gene ovineck uses the analogy that on a hot day in the summer its nicer to walk on the hot beach if you wear your flip flops on the hot sand. Then in the fall rainy season sole plane sheds only to accumulate again in the winter.

At all times the sole is parallel to the coffin bone as Tom B mentions.

I don't see how this should be any issue for heel height as I am not familar with any method of balance that uses the sole plane to regulate where one trims the heels.

What method of balance uses the sole plane to set heel height?

Natural Balance Guidelines for example do not use the sole plane to establish the height of the heels. Instead other references are used that do not move seasonally. We target the back of the frog as a "goal" to trim the heels back too BUT should the sole plane at the heels appear we stop short of this goal. Rather than being a guideline the sole at the heels is the absolute limit of what is permissible to trim. Most of the time the widest part of the frog is reached with the heels well above the sole plane and the heels left there.

Do you have hoofcare providers in your area using the sole plane to establish heel height? If so who taught them this? I know its not NB trained folks as they are not taught to do this.

It seem your hell bent on tormenting me in bad taste.Thats fine it will come back to bite you ten fold.
George NB would have to be one of the worst example of purposely setting out to deform horses hooves.There is no just reasoning behind applying NB shoes to every horse you shoe other then Not knowing how to shoe otherwise.Heel hight really is not that important if your setting out to mutilate their hooves in the first place.

Guys, this ain't Jack. Jack ain't going to be around, get it? Show a little fricken respect!