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Warning: Got roasted by an old timer for my toe clip placement | Farriers - nhfree.com

Warning: Got roasted by an old timer for my toe clip placement

I had a guy at a clinic in Kentucky watch me set a shoe and say 'son, that clip is gonna cause a quarter crack in 6 weeks.' He was right. I was putting my toe clips too high up on the nail line. I dropped them down a full 3/16 inch lower and stopped having horses come back with stress cracks. It felt wrong at first because I thought higher meant more hold. But the lower angle actually lets the hoof flex natural. Has anyone else gotten handed a harsh truth that fixed a problem you didn't even know you had?

2 comments

2 Comments

adam_nguyen74mo ago

Hugo, I gotta give you props for jumping into barefoot trimming, it's a whole different animal. But one thing that sticks out to me is that you said "let the hoof tell you where to go." I'd be careful with that approach, because sometimes the hoof will tell you all sorts of bad habits if you don't have a solid understanding of the anatomy first. Like, I had a horse with a really long toe and underrun heels, and if I had just followed where the hoof looked like it wanted to go, I would've kept taking off way too much heel and leaving the toe too long. You gotta have a target in mind based on the live sole plane and the coffin bone position, not just "what feels right" in the moment. Did you ever run into a case where trusting the hoof's "look" led you wrong?

hugo2384mo ago

Jumped into barefoot trimming a few years back after getting tired of seeing the same crack patterns and figuring there had to be a better way. A guy I met at a barn told me my nipper work looked like I was trying to carve a turkey, not shape a hoof (you know, real complementary stuff). Turns out I was taking too big of bites and leaving the hoof wall jagged underneath, which caused all sorts of flaring issues. Once I switched to smaller, more precise cuts and learned to let the hoof tell me where to go, the cracks just... stopped showing up. Funny how the hardest lessons are the ones that actually stick, right?