Hoof, Body & Soul, Part III: Mission Impossible, unedited, by Gudrun Buchhofer. Blog 40, case # 40

CHAPTER 1 Atrophy, the fundamental cause for most all hoof pathology and upper body injuries

Fault in the conformation – standing under/standing out, x-legs

I found the underlying issue for most all conformational faults to be atrophy of the back of the foot.

Case # 40

Willow

trimmed from April 2011 until present 2025

Anglo Arab mare Willow is our cover girl from part I: My Search for the Truth of my book Hoof, Body & Soul. She was born outside in May 2009. Her hooves were long with long “false” heels. Her left front hoof was entirely white at birth.

Three months old: *Willow’s* bump was formed beautifully. Photo credit: Eva Ernst

Twenty months old. Photo credit: Katja Maas

Willow was raised on pasture on a cattle farm. She is under my hoof care wings since she was two years old. She had not been trimmed previously. With my first assessment I took notice of the following: the bones of her legs were not aligned (turning in to several different directions); she was toeing-out with all four (more with the right front and right hind); she braced on the medial side and toe with all four; she had weak fetlock joints; straight pasterns in the front; hocks close together; atrophy of the white line; atrophied bars; atrophy of the back of the foot.

The photo from when she was three months old shows that Willow’s bump was formed beautifully. At the age of two this was no longer the case. Her sacroiliac joint had shifted upwards forming a hunter’s bump (“An elevation of the part of the pelvis (tuber sacral) above the top line of the croup which may be normal conformation of appear because of luxation of the sacroiliac joint” Rooney, The Lame Horse 151). She held her tail bone tight; her tail hair was sticking up from the base and was partially broken off; the behaviour of her mane was weird due to tension in the nuchal ligament; the digital cushion in all four hooves was very thin. There was a lot of bruising in all four hooves (soles, bulbs, walls).

Willow’s hooves healed through many, many divergent hooves with some extreme changes taking place (especially in the toe of the right front as hoof mass shifted around the digit) from 2017 and onward.

April 2023 — the right hind is still toeing out

July 2024 — the left front is less bruised

The digital cushions in Willow’s hooves increased in thickness drastically after the track was textured with crusher dust in 2023. Around that time Willow also reversed her hoof angles. Her hoof angles in the hinds have always been lower than in the fronts and finally reversed, which is natural according to Jaime Jackson’s research data from live mustangs from the US Great Basin (Jackson, The Natural Horse, 81).

Left hind December 2019 — the lateral bar is still atrophied

Left hind — abscess at the lateral heel bulb in February 2023

I live on the same property as Willow and I am able to monitor her closely. Over the course of the last fourteen years I am supporting Willow's healing with Reiki sessions. What I can tell is that she was blocked bending her head to the right and that she was always tight along the nuchal ligament. She was always tight in her tail. Her body was imbalanced and crooked from the ground up and from head to tail. Healing just took time.

In December 2023 we observed abscessing from her hocks (guessing that was release of ossification). Then Willow went through something strange with her head and neck. The owner first noticed Willow having trouble swallowing her food. She had to lift her head way up in order to swallow. I noticed that Willow was counterbalancing something somewhere by placing her left hind way under her belly. Maybe she was releasing ossification/soft tissue ossification from around her TMJ? Ossification she had put in place when she was very young? We also watched her taking in large amounts of Diatomaceous Earth at that time. Was her body re-mineralizing? The owner fed soaked alfalfa pellets to Willow for about four days. Then, out of a sudden, she was able to chew and swallow hay properly and emptied a full hay net all at once as if nothing had happened.

Willow was first started traditionally at the age of four. Her training got cut short when she stepped into a nail with her left front foot. Then she was ridden only a few times before she developed laminitis from living on a cow pasture with free access to grass all year round. In 2014 Willow was sold to her forever home where she was kept off grass for good. She was also retrained from the ground up. Willow is trail ridden barefoot in rough terrain, treeless and bit-less (mainly with just a rope around her neck).

August 2025 — photo credit: Christina Fagin

Willow lives with another horse (Katie) outside 24/7 in a beautiful Paddock Paradise in the woods on top of a mountain. The owner encourages the horses to move by providing hay around the track in twenty-five slow feeding hay nets. The nets are filled daily with just small amounts of hay rather than being stuffed to the maximum. The nets are spread over the 4-acres-track area. There is no green grass in Willow's life. Her diet is considered fairly natural.

This case is still open and will be updated.

all remaining photos: Gudrun Buchhofer

Stay tuned for the upcoming cases (under my care for up to 20 years) in this blog series as a replacement for the unpublished part III: Mission Impossible of my trilogy Hoof, Body & Soul.

What did all my client horses over the last 20+ years have in common? They needed to heal from atrophy of the back of the foot as well as other atrophied hoof structures.

Q: Why do we need to change the upbringing of our baby horses and donkeys? A: To prevent senseless suffering.

Gudrun Buchhofer

Gudrun BuchhoferAugust 31, 2025Hufprobleme, horse, hoof problems, horses, the natural trim, nhc, natural horse care, natural hoof care, donkeys, donkey hoof, lessonsfromthewild, foal, foal hoof, Fohlenhuf, barhuf, barhufpflege

CHAPTER 1 Atrophy, the fundamental cause for most all hoof pathology and upper body injuries

Hoof contraction

Every foal hoof has long toes and high heels at birth (diving devices for a safe delivery). About half of the hoof capsule needs to be worn down after birth. This requires movement in a fairly natural environment beginning within the first hours after birth.

There is a lot out there in the trimmer world about fighting and treating thrush. But there is hardly any material there in the first place that could be eaten away by thrush. The back of the hoof is unfinished at birth. At the same time, as the hoof capsule needs to be worn down, proper stimulation of frogs, bulbs, walls, the white line, bars, internal structures need to happen. Otherwise structures will go in to atrophy. The activation of true heels also fails if those processes do not take place.

Atrophy of the frogs, bulbs and internal structures as well as lack of true heels are in direct relation to hoof contraction. Fixed metal shoes might contribute to further contraction but it is not the underlying cause. Over the years I dealt with many contracted hooves which never had any form of shoes attached to them. With or without shoes, the unreleased false heels can contract inwards in an atrophied foot. However, not every atrophied hoof contracts. It really depends on the enforced decision a foal makes very early on about how to compensate for the unfinished hoof.

Due to a failed reduction of the hoof capsule right after birth, combined with the unfinished back of the foot (true heels, bulbs, internal structures), a lot of foals tuck the front legs behind the vertical (enforced decision). The famous scenario of toe first landing is a result. Most horses have problems walking on their own bare feet in the front. Horses endure injuries from the unfinished back of the foot in the hinds as well but are able to compensate differently. Most horses toe out with the hinds (often turn out the entire hind leg) and use the medial half of the hoof capsule for weight loading. This is different from naturally asymmetric hind hooves. The front hooves usually need longer to heal than the hinds. The fundamental problem applies to fronts and hinds.

Case # 1 Ace

trimmed from July 2013 – December 2024

Quarter Horse Ace was born in June 2012 in western Canada. Ace was shipped across the country as a weanling. After his arrival on the east coast he was kept in a stall on wood shavings for quite a while. When I started trimming him in July of 2013 I found Ace stuck with his pasterns still stretched, weak fetlock joints, unfinished baby hooves with unreleased long shanks or false heels. (We can safely assume an unnatural environment at birth and lack of movement in the first months of his life.) There was complete atrophy of the frogs, bulbs, soles, bars and internal structures. The outside walls of the hoof capsules were severely bruised. Ace toed outwards with all four. His hooves were already deformed at such a young age. He further developed a broken back axis stance in the front and a crooked right hind pastern. He tent to lean on the side of the hoof capsules. Due to the lack of true heels, internal structures, frogs and bulbs the front hooves soon contracted. For quite some years, the soles and bars were protected by a hard (almost shell-like) layer of horn.

By 2020 Ace clearly entered an important phase of the healing journey. In April of 2021 the layer of shell-like horn turned into crumbly white sole horn which was then ready to be removed. Over the years Ace improved his stance and the bruising on the outer hoof walls as well as soft tissue bruising subsided. Compromised and compressed tissue was released through a few abscesses.

Ace is ridden barefoot since he was started under saddle. From 2021 onward this golden boy makes his young owner proud competing. In 2023 they took home a second place in barrel racing and a first place in pole bending. Photo credit: CKPhotography

Closing note: Ace lives in a herd in a large paddock without green grass pasture, over the summer months with 24/7 freedom to move and he is stalled overnight in the winter. Longer periods of standing (on wooden floor with shavings) caused set-backs in the healing. His hooves tend to re-contract and grow towards a wry-foot as Ace tends to lean on the side of his hoof capsules. In Ace's case hoof contraction was not caused by metal shoes as he never had any. Also it was not thrush eating away his frogs and bulbs as his hooves were in atrophy to begin with.

Image 1: Left front pre-trim July 2013

Image 2: Left front pre-trim July 2013

Image 3: Left front pre-trim December 2019 note the bruised soft tissue and the rubber like skin of the bulbs

Image 4: Left front pre-trim October 2024

Image 5: Left front lateral pre-trim July 2013

Image 6: Left front lateral post-trim November 2023 — he still shortens his feet via divergent hooves; healthier bulbs emerging from further back bringing the hooves more under the bone column.

Photos: Gudrun Buchhofer