04/12/2025
From Sylvia kornherr at EPC solutions
Negative palmar or plantar angle
GENETIC CONFORMATION FAULTS, LIMB DEVIATIONS, PERMANENT INJURY:
Genetic Faults and catastrophic injury can create secondary compensatory hoof distortions due to compromised way of going in said horses.
You can't fix, but much can be done to "maintain" in a better range of form and function.
Horses with conformation problems absolutely overload certain areas of the hoof due to body and limb deviations that cause changes in their way of going and standing around. These abnormal and asymmetrical loading centers on the foot change how the plasticity of sole and horn react to different areas being overloaded vs underloaded and it is absolutely correct that while we cannot correct genetic conformational deviances, regular body work to keep the horse in a better range of comfort, training to develop more symmetrical and stronger musculature to help the horse better self-carry to reduce the excess loading patterns and regular hoof care to reduce amount of distortion between cycles - though you cannot "fix" genetics, you can "maintain" the horse to move in a better range of comfort and movement when you keep on top of it.
COMPENSATION vs CONFORMATION
To assume Negative PA configurations are always due to conformational deficits however, is grossly misleading.
Thousands of horses are trimmed/shod by correcting the imbalanced hoof structures and achieve bony column alignment and do not resort back to negative PA once the farriery is corrected and a regular trim cycle maintained to touch up routine excess growth each month- to mimic what a horse would naturally wear away given access to adequate open terrain an varying ground surfaces. This tells us many cases of Negative PAs are not rooted in CONFORMATION but rather a cause and effect response to COMPENSATION in both body and hooves.
The reason so many horses deal with negative PA's and low PA's with broken-back bony alignment is due to our current farrier/trimmer trend to remove/lower heels to get to a good solid heel base back near the widest part of the frog, then take less than the same amount of sole/wall at the toe end in the misconception of providing "hoof mass" and toe protection.
Over consecutive such trimming techniques, even with regular intervals, the foot presents with more sole depth under the toe, compared to the heel plane which skews the solar plane and the result is excessive articulation around the coffin bone joint to which the coffin wings drop caudally and the broken-back bony column or negative PA is created. This then creates upper body and joint discomfort and pathology. Protective body compensation then leads to asymmetrical body development.
Now you have the chicken or the egg syndrome.
Which came first, changes from body compensation vs negative PA? Both then need addressing to end the cycle.
FRONT FEET COMPENSATION
In the case of overdue farrier cycles: if the farriery cycle gets too long, the horse will displace his front feet differently than the hind feet.
If the heel tubules don't bend, you will have equal sole depth across the foot, with minimal body compensation and very easy to trim back to balance. But most fore-feet are broken-back HPAs to begin with.
Over both a short interval or long interval trimming cycle, the front feet will develop a camped position (cannon bone no longer vertical to the ground- rather adopts a camped position where the cannon bone and hoof line up behind the shoulder) which reduces the horse's ability to engage their stay apparatus.
Over time, these horses develop excessive bulging musculature on the underside of their neck to hold up their front end instead of relying on their efficient stay apparatus.
HIND FEET COMPENSATION
For the hinds, to maintain comfort levels, (no joint space pinching) the broken-back or negative PA hind foot will rest camped further up under the body center. This creates a 'forced" better alignment of his bony column by forcing his limbs to move under the body, and upper body to change posture to accommodate this. It temporarily gives some comfort by relieving the pinching in the phalangeal joints but this awkward limb position comes at a cost to both hooves, limb and body.
Over time it crushes the heels and the horn tubules grow out at a bent configuration, collapsing and losing heel height and compressing solar growth, while the toe sole depth and horn tubules proliferate. This creates the imbalance in sole depth, breaks the bony column backwards, creates upper body discomfort and limb/hock/back pain and joint duress.
So over time, the body "compensates" and deteriorates over time along with the hooves if action is not taken to resolve and reverse the cause which was not genetic-conformation in nature.
