In-Shoe Force Measurements Help Farriers Address Hoof Balance

The concept of a balanced foot can be subjective, but farriers are now using technological advances to take some of the guesswork out of the process. Patrick T. Reilly, chief of farrier services at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, discussed evaluating hoof balance with in-shoe force measurements.

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The concept of a balanced foot can be subjective, but farriers are now using technological advances to take some of the guesswork out of the process. Patrick T. Reilly, chief of farrier services at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, discussed evaluating hoof balance with in-shoe force measurements.

After volunteering to participate in a study on how the human foot hits the ground, Reilly experimented with using similar technology to measure how the equine foot lands when the horse moves across the ground. Researchers have already used force plates built into floors to measure forces between the shoe and the ground, but Reilly wanted to examine forces between the shoe and the hoof.

"If we put a shoe on, I really want to know what the effect of that shoe is going to be," said Reilly. "How is that going to change the tendencies of the horse to land, to load?"

By cutting an F-scan mobile in-shoe force measuring system (designed to measure forces between foot and footwear) to the shape of a horse's hoof and placing it between the hoof and the shoe, Reilly examined what the shoe does to the hoof. In this way, he explained, "We could see what the different shoes were going to do for us. How is an egg-bar shoe going to transmit force to the foot differently than, say, an open-heeled shoe? This could be very important information in the mechanical treatments of problems such as quarter cracks or navicular syndrome

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Tracy Gantz is a freelance writer based in Southern California. She is the Southern California correspondent for The Blood-Horse and a regular contributor to Paint Horse Journal, Paint Racing News, and Appaloosa Journal.

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