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 Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
   
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | I've had better luck with rocker toes.
One mare I had was put in a wedge for a DDFT injury--vet wanted a rocker toe, farrier wedged instead. Her heels ended up crushed and we had to go barefoot to fix it. |
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 The Worst Seller Ever
Posts: 4138
Location: Oklahoma | I have one that I keep in Wedges when I am running her. I started about 4 years ago when it was suggested to me after having many pulled and sore suspensories. After time off and 2 degree wedges, my horse was sound and stayed sound. I can shoe her flat or leave ehr barefoot, but after about 8 runs she is sore and won't fire leaving. She is barefoot and pregnant right now, and I will reevaluate when I start riding her again. Vet and farrier can't understand why it works, but it does. My personal opinion is she is a big mare and really fires and pushes off out of the turn and her ankles overextend, but I don't know that there is any real facts behind that. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1028
| My good gelding is is an aluminum wedge rockered shoe to help overcome a long toe/low heel situation. I am lucky enough to have one of the best equine podiatrists in the state working on my horse, so I rarely disagree with anything he suggests for my horse. I do believe that some farriers are too quick to jump on the wedge bandwagon sometimes, without consulting with a vet who should take xrays and possibly a venogram before altering the horse's shoeing so drastically. Since my farrier is also a vet, I get to bypass that part, thankfully. |
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Expert
Posts: 2122
Location: The Great Northwest | My horse has under slung heels, foot grows forward - long toe and very low heel. Vets found soreness high on the suspensory. X-Rays were done and showed that a three degree wedge was needed to bring the coffin bone level. There are several types of wedges and I prefer a bar wedge pad over a shoe. I feel the wedge shoe has too much grab and puts frog pressure further away. If you do wedge, give them weeks to adjust. This horse was also sore in his rear heels, would have swelling pasterns to fetlocks at times. He is under slung behind too and kept himself sore. He wears 2 degree bar wedge pads on the hind feet. No problems after the problem was taken care of. |
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 Having Smokin Bandits
Posts: 4572
Location: Woodstown, NJ | 2H~QH - 2014-12-23 9:44 AM SmokinBandits - 2014-12-22 4:21 PM Thank you for all your replies. Hmm, I just don't know if my horses need them. My one guy was not having any soundness problems until he got the suspensory injury. May have just been a bit of bad luck. We were stepping up the pace of his training. The other guy was never lame but often stumbles. This has been going on for years. He grows a long toe. He definitely has an underrun heel. X-rays were inconclusive. Nothing blatant as far as navicular or rotation of the coffin bone however he does have sidebone but he's had it a long time and vet said it shouldn't be causing the stumbling. I might have to just trust this new farrier. When you say inconclusive I understand there is no rotation, but what was the angle of the coffin bone inside the foot? Sometimes they don't have to rotate at all for wedges to help. My mare doesn't have rotation per se, but the way her foot grows/grew the coffin bone was just a little more parallel with the ground than I like. She wasn't lame but we decided to go with the wedges (2 deg) to help the coffin bone sit a little better .... her feet are not great so we thought this might help. It has not made a *huge* difference, but she definitely is clocking better.
(I am a veterinarian, we do rads every 2nd reset)
As a previous poster said, I do recommend for the first 24 hours after they get new wedges stalling them. You do not want to go out and run that night. 
Oh boy, how do I describe the angle? The farrier was looking at the X-rays the vet took and called me in to show me. We always knew this horse grew a long toe and had underrun heels but you could see more space (I don't know how else to describe it!) in the toe area. The coffin bone was not quite parallel with the hoof. I am not sure how parallel it's supposed to be. The farrier was happy I had the X-rays because he said now he knew how much toe he could take off. And he's doing it gradually. I just feel like if we can get all these horses balanced properly with good trimming like he seems to be doing, we might not necessarily need things like wedges.
Streaky, okay, I understand--plain old steel shoes.
Fulltiltfilly, they are rubber wedges. Right now all my guys are barefoot. I haven't been riding the one who stumbles. Quite frankly, I was just going to retire him when I got the new farrier and he said "Don't give up on him--he's a nice horse! I can fix this!" And I pulled the shoes on the one who has the suspensory injury because winter was coming and I figured he was going to be laid up for a long time so he's barefoot too. But he got injected with some special stuff and it looks like we may be able to get back to work with him next month and the farrier is probably going to mention wedges because he loves them. So I was just wondering about them. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 502
| I can't believe this post! Today, my 13 yr old gelding got a wedge in the front for the first time. His front left hoof is very flat - like a pancake but he is sound on it. But my farrier thought he would benefit from a wedge. So, we are trying it. I will say I am nervous. Nice to see why others are using wedges I took a pic- I wish I could get it to load |
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 Born not Made
Posts: 2937
Location: North Dakota | My horse needs wedges for his heel pain.
He is in a normal rim shoe with a 2 degree pad.
I know that farriers will do things differently, but my farrier explained to me why he uses wedge pads (with a normal shoe) and does NOT use shoes that are wedges. You lose your heel support when you do it that way. Or if you try to trim the hood itself to have a "wedge", you also lose support.
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Sock Snob
Posts: 3021
| There are a lot of things you can do to get the heel off the ground. Natural balance, pads, my guy used the pour in pad, helped stop the heal crush problem. |
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