white line

Question
Please help me. I have just read your response to someone else and you sound very knowledgeable. I am so confused as everyone is telling me different things. My horse has a stretched white line (does this mean she has 'white line disease'?) on ONE foot and has had for about 5 months now. She is barefoot and lives out 24/7. She gets trimmed, but not as often as she should possibly. Once during this 5 month period she experinced an abscess on this foot which worked its way up to the coronet and burst out. What is the best treatement for this foot and how long will it take? Currently I am using Keretex Hoof Hardner. Some people say I should put a shoe on? Other people say she should be stabled as the conditions are very wet out at the moment. Please Help!!

Answer
Hi Jessica!  I'm sorry you've gotten confused. That can easily happen when there are alot of people responding with their opinions and what has worked for them! *smile* Thank you for writing to *me* !  It's best to find one person in whom you trust and work with that one person (or a team with your vet, farrier and confidant) -- that way you're all on the same page.

A stretched white line does not always mean White Line Disease. It merely means that the walls have been left too long for too long of a time. Just as if you were to walk on a long fingernail it would soon, from the leverage place upon it, begin to separate from the nail bed. The same applies to horses' hooves. The walls are not designed to be weight bearing all on their own - they should be sharing that load with the white line.

There are a couple of good trim instructions for this. One is the "White Line Strategy" at Marjorie Smith's website http://www.barefoothorse.com and another trim that would help would be Gene Ovnicek's, "Natural Trim" at http://www.hopeforsoundness.com

Now, if your horse DOES have White Line Disease you'll find either a lot of black gooey stuff in the white line area or white, crumbly stuff that will smell badly. Also, when the hoofwall is tapped on the outside you'll notice a distinct hollow sound to it.

White Lightning or Clean Trax are both excellent treatments for this. But its imperative that the trim is correct otherwise the situation will just not remediate properly or/and will reoccur.

I have a visual page at www.barefoottrim.com under "Educational" on Balanced Hooves. That will give you some good guidelines of what the hooves should resemble. Take a look there and compare with your own horse's hooves.

Oh, and just to encourage you -- I have 9 critters all barefoot; they all have lived in severe mud in New England. Right now we're a combination of mud, snow and ice. None of them have any issues with their hooves (other than they all need to be trimmed! haha) ... and they never have as long as their hooves are trimmed properly and they're getting the correct diet of forages. (I feed fresh foods - veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds plus free choice hay) AND ... they're all out 24/7. Even the almost-50 year old Sicilian donkey, my 28+ yo. OTTB and my 25 yo. mare. The others range from 3 years old to 12. Only the 3 older guys get processed feeds; the rest just veggies once a day and all the hay they want to eat. They do have shelter they can go into if they wish. But mostly, they hang outdoors.

I hope this will help you some.
Have an awesome day!

:) -- Gwen