Question:  My veterinarian has emphasized "shorter toe, not shorter foot" that he/she wants for my horse.  I believe that my veterinarian is looking for a steeper angle on the foot.  Can you do this for my horse?

(This question was from a specific client of mine via email for a specific horse that I had already shod.  I've altered the question and the response a little to leave out specifics, but my answer would be the same for most horses that I find in this condition.)

Answer:  Taking away more toe from the distal (bottom) portion of the toe of the front feet is not possible without removing so much insensitive sole that your horse would then have too little or no protection for the sensitive sole.  The sole including the sensitive and insensitive layers on the average horse is approximately .45 inches thick over the edge of the pedal (also known as the coffin bone or P3) bone.  Another way to change the angle (make it steeper) is to remove less heel when trimming before shoeing.  However, often the heels grow slower than the toes, are weaker and tend to crumble and bend in the hind quarters of the hoof area, and it can become difficult to build heels over several shoeings -- if that's even necessary at all in this particular situation.

Another way to change the angle is add a shim pad which would be thicker in the heals than the toe, which would cause the foot to land in the heal area instead of just flat to the ground.  It's also common for raised heels to cause narrower feet for lack of frog contact to the ground along with associated problems with thrush and crushed heels.  In other words, the heels start taking too much of the weight which they cannot support because they are thinner and have less structural support and begin to fold in under the horse, a condition commonly known as "crushed heels".  Because the frog is no longer bearing as much weight as before, the condition becomes even more exacerbated by the lack frog contact.  You can tell if a horse has crushed heels if you see the frog excessively protruding behind the heels (towards the back of the horse) or notice that the angle of the heels is more acute than the angle of the dorsal (front) hoof wall compared to the ground plane.  Healthy heels should be parallel to the angle of the dorsal hoof wall.  Crushed heels are particularly hard to get rid of once the structures have been bent and compromised under the horses weight.  The heels are taking weight from an angle instead of perpendicular to their structure, and they bend from it and fold under the hoof capsule.  Human fingernails are quite strong when pushed on at the end.  Push them from the side even ever so slightly, and they will bend.  The same thing happens to horses' hoof capsules when the angles don't directly support the horse's weight in the strongest possible position to the hoof and its internal structures.

 Another problem with raising the heels is that the fetlock will drop to the ground putting more stress on the suspensory ligaments.  A very simple test to prove this is to take a one inch piece of wood and slide it under both heels on one of your horse's front feet.  You might want to measure the distance to the ground of the fetlock before doing this for comparison purposes.  Notice with the raised heel that the fetlock is much closer to the ground even though the heels are higher.  This differences is even greater when the horse is moving, and in some horses with raised heels the fetlock will even hit the ground when loaded under movement. 

I trim to Uniform Sole Thickness (UST).  Here's a link to my Web site at Uniform Sole Thickness, an article written by Michael Savoldi, Director of Research for the American Farrier's Association, the only farrier organization recognized by the AAEP, (Equine Veterinarians Association) and the organization (AFA) that tested me for my Farrier's Certification.  It's a succession of 3 articles together that shows various stages of a hoof capsule with raised heels being dissected and the damage to internal structures on a horse with them.

Your horse has no more hoof capsule that can be removed from the distal (bottom) toe of without drawing blood.  The toe could be backed up from the dorsal (front) plane, but there is no evidence that the sole is stretched out in front of the frog (dropped sole) or that there is any separation of the hoof capsule away from the pedal bone  -- which is the only instance that I'd move back a shoe from the front to where the break over "should be" in this exception.

The only other way to change the angle would be to apply shim pads or shoes with elevated heels which are contraindicated based on my training and as articulated in the Uniform Sole Thickness article.

 I have a call into your veterinarian, but based on what I have heard so far, I can't follow his/her current directions because they make absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.  There is no room to take more toe from the bottom without making your horse bleed and no room to take toe from the front without moving the shoe back so that the front nail holes will no longer line up with the white line, the only place to drive a safe nail.  Removing hoof wall from the front will weaken the wall.  Placing the shoe over the bone can cause sole bruising (crushing of the solar corium) when the sole flexes toward the ground during weight bearing.

 Hopefully your veterinarian will return my call and we will be able to collaboratively come up with an acceptable solution for your horse's shoeing needs.