Dr. Lisa Lancaster was a farrier before becoming a vet, her vet practice centers around hoof health. Her clinical work focuses on chiropractic and acupuncture for disease treatment as well as sport horse wellness. Dr. Lancaster’s academic work includes teaching and research on the hoof and acupuncture. She also teaches at the Medical Acupuncture for Veterinarians course at Colorado State University. This blog will begin with some farrier topics to give you a foundation of hoof basics. Additional topics will include hoof diseases, hoof research, acupuncture for the hoof and acupuncture for the whole horse. If there are specific topics you would like to see covered let WDAA know and I will try to address them.
Common Response or Cause for Concern? We know you love your horse and understand that vaccinations can help protect it from life-threatening diseases. But vaccines can come with side effects due to the immune stimulation they have to create. Most of these effects are mild and transient, but it’s important to be able to distinguish [...]
It’s that time of year, again, when horse owners need to schedule their vaccines with their veterinarian. Knowing which ones are necessary, and preparing for their administration is beneficial to everyone included: the horse, the vet, and the handler. “Don’t assume that because your horse has always been good for your vet, or has never [...]
You have probably heard about monitoring your horse’s digital pulse but are you confidant in how to find it? Do you know what your veterinarian is looking for when taking a digital pulse? This blog will give you the basic facts to help you understand and monitor your horse’s digital pulse. The pulse is a [...]
As discussed in previous blogs, treatment of the foot includes treating the whole horse, but in this week’s post I will focus on the hoof and limb specific points. Because the horse’s foot is enclosed within the hard hoof capsule, we cannot needle the foot directly as we can do for non-hoofed animals. Therefore traditional [...]
How does placing acupuncture needles into trigger points help a laminitic horse? As you learned in last week’s blog, acupuncture works on many different levels in the body by influencing all levels of the nervous system. The most well documented mechanisms involve pain relief and anti-inflammatory effects. Therefore regardless of the disease condition, if pain [...]
How does acupuncture work for horses feet? If you have a hand or foot problem that your doctor wants to treat with acupuncture, needles may be placed directly into your hands or feet. Since we cannot needle the horse’s foot directly, we place needles in various soft tissue locations that should influence foot physiology. I [...]
Last month’s blog introduced Dave Duckett’s principles of hoof balance. This week I review and expand a few of those concepts. If you can grasp the basics of Duckett’s balance evaluation you will be equipped to evaluate your horse’s overall hoof balance. You will also be able to enjoy an informed discussion about it with [...]
Most of the work on balance today has been influenced by farrier Dave Duckett who first presented his work in the 1980s. When you hear farriers talk about “setting the shoe back” to improve break-over, they are talking about one of Duckett’s core principles. If your farrier attended shoeing school, you can be certain that [...]
Previous blog posts presented hoof health assessment parameters based on tissue integrity. You have learned a few ways to look at hoof wall, sole, frog, white line, and coronary band to identify potential problems. You have also gained a few tips for assessing hoof pastern axis alignment, toe and heel length proportions, and postural tendencies [...]
A healthy frog usually appears broad and flat, with narrow clefts (also called sulci) along the side and a shallow central cleft. The central cleft should look more like a thumbprint, or a wide dip, rather than a deep narrow crack. The tip of your hoof pick should not disappear into the frog clefts when [...]
