Horse Conformation – Sickle Hocks

The horse is not sickle hocked, the horse is lame. The stance is very un-natural.
You can’t tell how uncomfortably the horse is standing ? I realize from the date
that this is all long gone, but should the need ever arise again, pick up the left
hind foot. If you use the left side of the frog as your sight line and make the
“notch” of the coronet band and the pastern your vertical plane, you will see that
the inside hoof wall from about the point of the FROG (not the toe of the hoof) back
to the heel stands out as “too high.” This can be anywhere from a quarter to half
of an inch. Just rasping this away will make all the difference in the world to the horse.

The outside heel would be rasped down as well, but not as far forward. Just as far
as to make a “Vee” with the inflected bar. This gets confusing because the outside
heel grows faster since the weight of the horse is on the inside of the foot. What you
do not do is try to “square this off” by looking down the center of the frog and using
maybe the back of the pastern as the vertical. Horses don’t stand that way.

One more thing. If the horse grazes leaning forward on its left fore foot, the wall will
appear to be straight down or maybe slightly flared. If, on the other hand, the horse
grazes with its right fore foot extended, this inside heel of the left hind foot will be
quite “run-under.” What you’re looking at is a form of contracted heel, without the
contraction, or navicular disease if you’d like to call it that. It takes more time to fix,
but it’s done the same way, just more vigilantly. Wish I could be more helpful.