This horse was a galloper which won its owner a lot of money - I saw the photos below in the local paper when the horse was being prepared for a $100k race in Canterbury and was appalled at the state of the feet.
I found the photos again recently and wondered what had happened to the horse as I'd had a bet with myself that he wouldn't make it past the age of seven. I found out that he was put down in 2008 at the age of five.
He had fractured his off fore leg while recovering from surgery on the near-fore. According to the newspaper report, he was kicked in the leg two weeks earlier and was withdrawn from a race when it was discovered the injury was worse than first thought, then needed surgery because of its slow recovery - and while recovering from that, he fractured the other front leg.
I'd like to know the real story which I imagine has a lot to do with the grossly imbalanced feet - and that boxy, upright near fore in particular.
The poor animal was racing on distressingly bad hooves. He had the classic high/low syndrome in the fores and the equally classic, if less commented on, medio-lateral imbalance and long toe syndrome in the hinds.
That near fore is bolt upright and half the size of the splayed off fore; the near hind looks to be extremely inside high (or outside low), and the off hind is splayed and very long in the toe.
I can see enough just from these photos to know that this horse should not have been racing. Anyone with any understanding of equine anatomy and physiology will know that these sort of feet will be creating horrendous stresses on the rest of the body.
This horse could not land or break over evenly; he was deloading the near fore and over loading the off fore; his hind toes were too long, and the quality of the wall horn suggests there was an on-going and severe inflammation - metabolic or mechanical, or both.
And, importantly - he would have been unable to utilise his fore limb stay apparatus optimally - and very likely would have developed hindlimb complications as well if he had lived longer.
Either the trainer, farrier, owner, race vets and officials and newspaper reporter were all ignorant of the wide-ranging ill-effects of these sort of hooves, or they were aware, but didn't care.
I am reminded of an equine vet I once accompanied to do a vet check on a race horse; when asked if he was concerned about the horse's 'goat on a rock stance', he said, 'that's just the way he likes to stand'. When asked about the effects on the fore limb stay apparatus of standing under so severely, he said 'there is no stay apparatus in the fore limb, only the hind limbs.'
I was so gobsmacked, I was speechless.
I'd lay odds that the unnaturally skinny, three-year old harness racer en route to Australia never made it past his sixth birthday either.
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