Flat feet are when the sole of the hoof is flat on the ground. Generally the sole is concaved. This concaved sole helps keep the horse sound because it lifts the sole off the ground preventing bruising, abscesses, etc. A horse with flat soles is more likely to come up lame, though possible to keep sound with the right care and environment. Flat footed horses are definitely harder to go back to bare feet with flat feet. This is because of the sole constantly hitting the ground.

 Why do horses get flat feet? Horses get flat feet from short/low heels, founder, and underrun heels.  Low heels can be caused by improper balance of the hoof or it can be the conformation of the horse. The improper balance can be easy to fix. The hoof has to grow heel. All you do is not cut the heel of the hoof. By all means balance them and make sure they are level but do not cut the heel if the heels are balanced and leveled.

Some people believe that if a hoof gets too long, as in straight down, that will lead to all kinds of problems. Not so if the horse has proper balance and a healthy hoof.  You can have a 6 inch toe and heel and the horses hoof will be fine. It is of this fear that horses get hooves cut short to begin with. The shorter the hoof the better you keep a shoe and the less flares and what not is not true. Those problems are caused by other things. You can have long heels and the horse will be ok if not better if properly balanced and right environment.

Conformation is hard to deal with. If the horse has long dropping fetlocks more than likely the horse’s heels are low too and they are flat footed, unless the fetlocks dropped later in life because of over use or not properly wrapping for protection but that is not conformation. That is miss or over use.   If your horse has some kind of conformation disorder your horse is just going to have what it has. There are some things one can do like egg bar shoes work well on dropping fetlocks and like I said wraps. These things will help support what you have so not to make this worse but not a fix.

Founder is a big thing to talk about. It would take more than a blog to do that. Just know that with founder your sole will hit the ground and the hoof will be flat footed. Founder is completely fixable too. If caught soon enough and you have someone working on it that knows what they are doing.  The flat foot and all can be gone in a year or two and you’ll never know anything happened. As long as you find out the why and how’s of the founder and change those.

Underrun heels can be fixed.  The horse has flat feet because of the lack of heel height on the hoof not the length.  People are always getting the height and the length confused when it comes to hoof balance. Some think height and length are the same. The height is how height the heel/toe is off the ground and the length is how long it is. Like you can have a long toe of 7 inches but the hoof is flat footed because there is only 2 inches from the ground to the hairline at the toe.  I have a blog on underrun heels which explains more on how to correct underrun heels and that will fix the flat feet too.

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