Most owners and professionals we speak to are not sure what an underrun heel really is!
They confuse an underrun heel with a low heel, and try to correct that by allowing the heel to grow longer.
And that’s a BIG problem for the horse.
In this lesson Lindsay Setchell discusses underrun heels, long toes, the incredible papillae (that no-one ever talks about) and why chopping off the toe interrupts vital feedback pathways and the physics of biology.
Biology is important – really important.
🚨 Also find out about our UK 2024 tour dates and how you can book your place on our amazing in-person workshops to become a HOOF HERO for your horse!
(For our international horse owners, our online courses are going to be re-released SOON – WATCH THIS SPACE!)
If you’re in the UK – join Lindsay Setchell, Garry Hinton & the HMIS Team for 3 transformative days where you’ll:
– Take part in trimming workshops
– Learn to maintain your horse’s hooves
– Witness a lower leg dissection
– Engage in a lower leg anatomy workshop
– Learn all about The Phoenix Way (the natural healing pathway)
– Become a Hoof Hero for your horse
🌟 First 4 dates & venues for 2024 are:
– – King’s Lynn, Norfolk: 2nd-4th February
– – Abbotts View Track Livery, Aylesbury: 15th-17th March
– – Longmarsh Track Livery, Somerset: 7th-9th June
– – Gawsworth Track Livery, Cheshire: 26th-28th July
These will be 3 of the most eye-opening, mind-shifting, transformative days you’ve ever spent learning about horses and their hooves.
🤝 We GUARANTEE you won’t be disappointed – or your money back!
They are SUPER POPULAR – so make sure you BOOK EARLY!
Book your spot now! 👉 https://bit.ly/3-DayHoofHeroLiveEvent
HMIS.
p.s. Please check out our FREE LAMINITIS WEBINAR if you want to learn more – go here to register and watch: https://www.hmischool.horse/webinar-reg-page
#LaminitisAwareness #EquineHealth #LaminitisMyths #ItsNotRocketScience #dontchoptoes #funkyfeet #laminitis #navicular #hoofcare
Well hello folks welcome back to another lesson of lindsy sexuals it’s not rocket science when it comes to horse and hoof care now today I’m going to talk to you about long toes and underrun heels because quite a few people have been requesting this because you need to understand
Because you want to understand what is meant by the underrun heels and the long toes and how they go together so that’s what we’re going to look at today so without further Ado let’s get into it so let’s get rid of my rocket okay so here we have our foot and here we
Have the coronary band which bends it bends and you have these pil here in the these little structures in the coronary band and they produce the horn tubules now what happens is that these grow down at a slightly different angle so the horn tubules are coming down like
This and they graduate so that that at the back they’re coming down at a less of an angle than at the front so at the top at at the toe oop I think let’s just draw that in again so at the toe here they’re growing down at a different angle than they are
At the heel oops I hope you can see that so at the heel they’re at a lower angle here and at the toe they’re at a steeper angle and this is really important because when you’re talking about heels you have to take into consideration the angle of the growth of
The horn tubules from the pilli that are at the coronary band and the reason that they’re angled like that is because of the angle of the coronary band on a natural healthy foot so if you have a situation where you are allowing the heels to get longer you can imagine that
This happens let’s imagine oops let’s imagine that you have this situation where you’ve allowed those heels to be longer than the hard Soul Plane which is what Mother Nature’s constant so if you allow the heels to get longer they will actually go underneath the foot or underneath where
They should be and that is what we call an underrun heel now it’s really interesting because it’s really interesting because what people tend to think is an underrun heel is a low heel they think that when the heels have been taken back to the hard Soul Plane and you have the heel
Bulbs on the ground or close to the ground for instance in a thorough bread you will then assume or many people assume that that therefore is an underrun heel not so the heel is actually back to where that horse needs it what an underrun heel is is when this
Continues to go longer than the hard soulle plane and it ends up growing this way and that’s your underrun heel now if you try and keep this in concert and you keep this balance then obviously you’re going to end up having a longer toe as well but that’s not exactly what
Normally happens because usually what happens is that this part of the toe starts to be removed because you’re either rasping because the ho Care Professionals either rasping from the top or they’re rasping from below to try and shorten that toe or they’re doing both so what we tend to have here is we
We then have a situation where we have an underrun heel which is going this way which is not down to the hard sole plane they’ve chopped the to off here and then you have a situation where the surface area that that horse is standing on is much
Shorter now it would have been longer back here but it wouldn’t have been correct but it would have been longer The Sur or the surface area would have been longer but it wouldn’t have been correct so surface area is really really important to a horse so if you don’t
Have an underrun heel so you keep your heels back to where they should be which is my board which is the hard Soul Plane here which is what we trim to which is we haven’t made up we are not personal preference trimmers we don’t go along to
A heel and gohm should we leave it just a couple of mil or 3 mil credit card thickness or whatever above the hard so plane we don’t do that we go no hard so plane is where it’s at that’s where that horse needs its heels so we bring the
Heels back to where the hard so plane is and that means those heels are in the right position we haven’t chopped the toe off because we are allowing those horn tubules to be here on the ground so that that enables feedback to the pil up in the coronary
Band which means that we can then balance from heel to toe and this gives that horse the maximum surface area that he needs or she needs to walk on and it’s really really really important that they have the maximum amount of surface area the problems all
Arise with hoof care when we we look down from above there’s our eyeball and we’re looking down at this foot and to us we go to the human eye we go oh no oh oh no that looks long why is it long so the human is looking down from the top and
Assessing the hoof from the top now this is a major problem because everybody does it everybody looks at a hoof they look down from the top like this looking at the horse’s foot and they assess the length of the of the toe you can’t do that you have to always be looking from
Underneath you need to look at that always from underneath and anybody that comes to you anybody whether they are professionals or not and they are looking at your horse’s foot from the top you ask them to have a look from underneath they need to be looking at the foot from underneath because they
Need to know where all the structures are they need to know where the hoof wall ends they need to know where the white line is they need to know where the Sol is because only then can you assess how long a toe actually is you can’t assess it from above you need to
Be looking at the structures underneath but where this starts to get complicated is when you start to get situations where you have separation down here because you’ve got a poly foot and P3 is in here trying to carry on being normal but you have this situation where if you look on our page
You’ll see images like this now you won’t see it on most other Pages because people don’t leave this toe on the ground we have the heels back where we should have them back at the Hard Soul Plane we have the toe here where it needs to be in terms of its feed back
Because we have to remember that this is the physics of biology because this is a living organism and it relies entirely on feedback mechanisms that’s how all organisms rely from their cells from the chemicals within their cells and the molecules all the way up to organs and the complete body everything relies on
Feedback me mechanisms so that it can in order for it to keep balance throughout the body so we’re not just talking about balancing the foot it’s about entire balance throughout the body and this is a sick foot we don’t want to be riding this horse and show jumping and Eventing
Because this is a sick foot and we need to understand that it’s a sick foot and it needs to rehab and during its process of rehab if you do it properly and safely you always protect the tip of P3 but the problem arises when this is all misunderstood and if you look back
On the HM page you’ll see where we’ve talked about uh rotation and we’ve discussed this long toe so when we’re looking at it from above and we see all of this and we see this awful long toe and we’re like oh my goodness the horse must be tripping it must
Trip no it doesn’t the horse doesn’t trip because of the way that the horse walks it doesn’t trip plus its brain is connected to this foot it knows where its foot is and then this long toe must be continually tearing this lamina it must be tearing the laminina no it
Doesn’t it doesn’t do that either because what happens is it just grows out over time following the correct angle of P3 and over time gradually this is removed and that’s a very safe way and and a comfortable way of rehab a horse so when it comes to long toes I
Hope hope that stays put please stay put I have somebody needs to come and fix my board so when it comes to understanding long toes and underrun heels you have to first understand oop let’s take that black one you first have to understand about the pilli these these
Little jiggers up here they are very very important structures and rarely does anybody ever talk talk about them and yet they are really important when it comes to forming the hoof wall because they create the horn tubules and the intertubular horn which is the glue which glues it all together they create
That these guys here and nobody ever thinks about them particularly when we go and we chop toes off because as soon as we do that these guys are like huh what’s just happened because now I don’t have that correct feedback no matter whether the toe is out there or not
These guys need the feedback they need to know so that they can balance everything that’s going on within that that horse’s foot and why is that important it’s important when that foot is trying to heal it’s really really important because you’re going down the healing pathway not the pathological pathway and
All other kinds of issues happen when you start chopping off the toe and we’ve talked about this before not only do you shorten that surface area so now you’ve got a smaller surface area that that horse is walking on but it always comes hand in hand with leaving the heels too
High and so you end up having a situation oop you end up having a situation where the heels are coming like this and they’re too high this is distorting out here they’re trying to keep this hoof past and access in line and what ends up happening is
This and then you go like that because that’s now the bit of the surface area that the horse is walking on and the and the end result is that P3 begins to look rotated and that’s the problem that you have with hoof care first and foremost understand what is going on in the
Coronary band understand these pilli because they’re so so important that will guide you that and the hard Soul Plane as to where the heels should be because you understand that these horn tubules grow down at slightly different angles from back to front and because of that if you carry on with these horn
Tubules and or if you carry on and allow the heel to be higher than the hard soulle plane you end up having an underrun oop I think my Pen’s running out you end up having let’s have that red pen you end up having an underrun heel because the
Heels are now going off in this direction the longer and longer that you leave it above the hard sole plane when it comes to understanding how to trim a horse’s foot you always always have to look at it from below it’s really really important that you don’t look at it from
The top so let’s get rid of that we do not look from the top oh the only thing that that can tell us from the top is it can tell us about the rings that we see going o you know the event rings that we see coming down the horse’s foot and
What happens when we shorten the toe here and we’ve also left this so of course we’ve shortened this surface area but what happens when we shorten this toe and we take it from being on the the ground where it would have been before we interrupt that feedback we interrupt the feedback to the
Pil that then therefore causes a Slowdown in the growth rate because now you’ve got this growing at a different rate to this because this is not being stimulated in the same way so now we don’t have balance no not only do we interrupt feedback and growth rate we also affect the natural
Pillars of support and those my friends are really really important and we will do another lesson on pillars of support because the horse has its own natural pillars of support or natural active wear patterns active and passive wear patterns in every foot it has a natural pillar of support and wear pattern and
When we start removing toes we affect this we affect this and we affect this and yet nobody ever really thinks about that and this is all the physics of biology and that is the bit that you really need to think about nobody ever does nobody thinks about feedback nobody
Thinks about growth rates nobody thinks about pillars of support So consequently they’re in this continual cycle of meddling with the foot to try and make it look right to try and get this HPA right to try and make it look right from above because it looks looks
Wrong and that’s not how you work that’s not how you should trim a horse’s foot you should always trim a horse’s foot by looking at the Hard Soul Plane that’s mother’s Nature’s constant and by trimming to Mother Nature’s constant stay still right I hope that helped talking about underrun heels is
All to do with the angle of the pil ey and then the long toe well that’s about observation from the top people look at the top and and worry that it’s a long toe and especially when the foot is healing if you heal it in the right way
It looks really long but in actual fact you’ve allowed that horse to have the to have a really good surface area for it to walk on it isn’t tripping it isn’t tearing lamina it’s just healing the horse’s foot is healing and if you allow it to heal naturally when you rem and
You respect feedback growth rate and the pillars of support that horse will get more and more comfortable it will get better and better as long as you have of course sorted Out as long as you have of course sorted out the diet because that is Paramount if you haven’t got the diet right then there’ll be no rehabbing any horse’s foot you’ll just chase Your Tail forever in a day and the horse will just go like this all the time because no matter
Whether we come or any other professional comes unless the diet is right then these hooves are never going to rehab but understanding the trim is very important and if you’re living in the UK we’ve just released our in-person Workshop tour dates for 2024 2024 well the first half of 2024 up until the
Summer we’re at three of the biggest track liveries in the UK we’re going to Abbott’s View track Livery that’s with Amy Dell the lady who wrote uh the book on track systems we’re also going to Long Marsh track Livery that’s in down in Somerset with Khloe Holland and we’re
Also going to galsworth track Livery back to beths where we were last year and we’re going back to that fantastic venue again next year in the summer and we’re also at the beginning of the year in Norfolk at one of our students places where he’s got this amazing track system
Set up too because we love track systems and we like to show all our attendees track track systems and how they work so if you want to come to one of our amazing in-person workshops and learn all about this stuff and so much more over 3 days then come along to one of
Our three-day workshops because they are amazing and you will be transformed when you leave those workshops you will know about this and so much more we look inside the foot we do dissections we do Anatomy workshops we look at track systems we look at diet we look at
Management we look at Evolution we look at why all of this is happened and we also look at pathology and why the ecoin world has lost its way over everything to do with hoof care okay so if you want to come to one of our workshops and it’s incred incredibly important for horse
Owners to understand this it’s really really important so if you want to come to one of our workshops check out the link below go to the booking form and book yourself in and they sell out folks because they are super super popular because we talk about everything there
Is to know about Hooves so hopefully we’ll see you there and for those of you who aren’t in the UK don’t worry because we are going to be relaunching on our Foundation courses our online courses very very soon they’re just almost ready and we’ll be releasing them very soon so
Just hold on if you’re not in the UK you can still learn all of this stuff but you’ll be doing it online which is just awesome in the most incredible online course that there is nothing like it anywhere in the world all right we’ll see you soon for another lesson of
Lindsay sexuals it’s not rocket science see you then