Although it's ideal to use boots when icing a horse's hooves, many other items around your home can be used such as jeans, plastic grocery bags and inner tubes from large truck tires.

Foot problems can commonly cause horses to be scratched from a race, lose training days, overload other structures and have shortened careers.

Quebec farrier Christian Roy shows a shoe modification to a Kerckhaert DF, adding support for a horse with a deep digital flexor tendon injury.

Quebec farrier Christian Roy shows a modification he made to a clipped machine-made horse shoe that helps a horse with a navicular problem.

Penn Vet's Farrier Service at New Bolton Center is one of the oldest and well-respected programs in the country. Our farriers have created pioneering techniques using glue-on shoes and synthetic polymers for hoof reconstruction, and continue to conduct groundbreaking research on hoof care.

Poultices have been in use as long as horses have been domesticated. In fact, they used to be a very common human remedy as well. With the long history of their use, you might expect good research would be available to support their use, but this isn't the case. The medical literature is actually pretty scarce, but it does support the ability of clays in poultices to draw out harmful minerals as well as proteins that would accumulate in areas of inflammation.

Farriers moving from horse to horse commonly encounter hoof abscesses. Often during treatment, a severe hoof abscess or other foot problem will expose sensitive tissue, necessitating more extensive measures such as a veterinary examination and the application of a hospital plate.

The stifle joint in a horse's hind leg corresponds anatomically to the knee joint in the human leg. However, instead of appearing halfway down the limb like the human knee, the horse's stifle doesn't even look like a joint because it is hidden within the structure of the horse's upper hind leg.