06/07/2025
A tragedy, happening everywhere you look - all because of imbalanced hoof care.
Educate yourself, join The Phoenix Way: Path 2 Hoof Health and help HM stop this.
The BHM Team ☹️
🩻 X-Ray Breakdown: What Really Happened to This Foot? 🩻
This x-ray was shared in the comments of one of our posts - we didn't put the white arrow or the text on the x-ray - the person who posted it asked a simple but vital question:
"How did the foot end up like this?"
👉The answer? Chronic, long-term imbalanced hoof care.
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What Are We Looking At?
This is a tragic case of severe osteonecrosis of P3 (the pedal/coffin bone) caused by chronic rotation that was never corrected.
Over time, the tip of P3 pressed down on its vital blood supply - eventually killing off the bone. In human medicine, this is called avascular necrosis, it usually happens in hips and toes and other bones in the human foot, and its sadly not rare and due mostly to injury - another word for it is osteonecrosis.
In the horse? It’s a devastating, entirely preventable outcome. It's called P3 osteonecrosis. Not caused by diet, caused by chronic imbalance. Severe injury, just like in humans.
Yet the world blames everything from diet, to sepsis to toxicity, to the lamellar wedge - everything but what is actually causing it.
The dorsal laminae attaching the hoof wall to P3 became stretched and separated under tremendous strain as P3 is fixed into a chronically hyper-positive position.
It is unable to get out of this position because the incorrectly trimmed hoof capsule is keeping it there.
> Bottom left x-ray - Line Meanings:
🟡 Yellow lines = Where the hoof wall should have been if hoof care had respected natural parameters.
🔵 Blue lines = The original, healthy shape of P3 before bone death.
🟢 Green line = The current, shortened, distorted dorsal wall.
🔴 Red line = The position of the coronary band.
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Key Points to Understand
The foot appears to have “sunk”, but in reality, the back of the foot was left high, and the front was excessively lowered over time. The coronary band at the back rises with the heel, engulfing more of P2 in the capsule, furthering the belief visually that P3 has "sunk".
Because of this loss of bone, and removal of hoof capsule, the foot has now lost vital vertical depth - and it’s now physically impossible to bring the heels and coronary band back into a balanced position.
We see this classically presented on severe P3 osteonecrosis cases regularly, where the coronary band appears to stay more or less horizontal no matter how much you lower the heels.
The green dorsal wall is drastically shortened compared to the yellow guide of a healthy capsule.
💔 This wasn’t a sudden event folks - it wasn't sinking - it wasn't loss of suspension - it WAS the result of gradual, consistent over-trimming at the toe and ignoring the signs of separation and distortion.
And the real cause?
.. Human Hands
The hoof care professional (HCP) believed they were achieving correct balance by aligning the visible dorsal wall with the pastern axis. But they were trimming away the true balance - removing the toe and leaving the heels, shifting P3 into a permanently hyper-rotated position.
They didn’t recognise the warning signs:
⚠️ Capsule separation (lamellar wedge - they usually cut that off)
⚠️ Distorted growth (between front and back of the hoof capsule)
⚠️ Loss of depth (vertically)
⚠️ Dorsopalmar imbalance (they had no balance point from the moment they removed the toe wall)
And they didn’t understand how to read natural ratios or anatomical constants.
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💔 The Consequences
This horse would have suffered needlessly and terribly. And we mean, really suffered.
Not because of diet.
Not because of “laminitis.”
But because of well-meaning but misguided trimming - reinforced by outdated beliefs and unchecked confidence.
Everyone assumed the HCP knew best. But no one questioned the slow destruction that was unfolding under their care.
This horse would have been chornically unsound, and yet still they persisted on removing more toe wall, and sole with it, under the belief that lever forces were somehow making the situation worse.
Lever forces were just a red herring.
Most would label this foot a "sinker." But when you rotate the capsule to the true yellow guideline (x-ray bottom right), the mistake becomes heartbreakingly obvious.
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We Must Stop the Cycle!
🛑 It is not metabolism
🛑 It is not P3’s mythical “suspensory apparatus” failing
🛑 It is not mysterious rotation triggered by laminitis
👉🏼 It is imbalanced hoof care.
👉🏼 It is humans causing chronic mechanical trauma.
👉🏼 And it is preventable.
If you want proof, go watch hoof care videos on social media. Count how many times you see the sole at the toe being carved past the Hard Sole Plane (HSP), while the heels remain barely touched and unnaturally high. This is the blueprint for disaster - and it’s everywhere.
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🔁 We Won’t End This Until We Face It
This is chronic imbalance at its absolute worst - and we must face it to stop it.
Education is our only way forward.
We need to stop the myth-making.
Stop protecting professional egos.
And start protecting horses.
Until we do that, those who believe the contrary, are all complicit.
We are doing our best to bring this tragedy to the surface, under great scrutiny and terrible online backlashes by those hell-bent on fooling you to believe (as they believe it themselves) that this appalling suffering was an inevitable consequence of metabolic breakdown.
It wasn't. It was human error. And it's happening everywhere, right under your noses.
HM.
Learn how to read balance correctly - please join our free rehab group The Phoenix Way: Path 2 Hoof Health and start educating yourself now - don't trust that your horses' hooves are safe ever.
