You know, Barbaro is a story that happened in 2006 in the United States.
He had won the Kentucky Derby.
Spectacular horse, people really thought he was
the next great chance for a triple crown.
In the initial stretch of the Preakness Stakes, he breaks his hind right leg.
And what happened was his hind right leg healed fine.
It's just he started going laminitic in all the rest of his feet.
And so, that, that's what really led to his demise.
And he was euthanized in January of 2007.
So, you know that's what directly caused him to, to no
longer be able to live, you know, he had no feet.
Now, looking at anatomy, you know, we're going to
start on the outside and work our way in.
And the first portion is just this outer hoof portion,
and this is what we call insensitive, or epidermal, tissue.
Now, it's insensitive because it doesn't have the
nerve structure or really a lot of blood flowing
in those areas, and I like to, to tell
students that it, it's almost like your long fingernails.
You know, we clip our, our long fingernails
all the time, and we don't feel anything.
You know, as long as it's the, the dead portion
or out, outgrowth portion, which is very similar to the horse.
So that's why we're able to put on, nail shoes on,
or, or trim their feet, and they, they feel no discomfort whatsoever.
Now, the bottom of the hoof anatomy is
really, really important to, to know different structures.
So, it's worth while to review this slide in detail.
You know, if you ever get in discussions with a fairer or your
veterinarian, you need to know, you know, what he or she is referencing to.
Now, just looking at the, the external part, you know, divide the hoof into
really three parts, and the first portion is called the toe.
So you can see here, the next portion is the quarters.
And then there is this, this final portion is what we call the heel.
So, we'll say heels, quarters, toe in reference to that.
And just going around, this right here, which I'll
highlight in later slides too, is called the frog.
We'll talk about that.
You know, here's the bars of the frog in here.
Most of this area, you know, is the sole.
So, you're looking at, you know, all the way
through here is, is really the, the concave portion of
the hoof, and then this outer portion, or the hoof
wall, you know, is really going all the way around.
And we'll talk about that too, especially when we talk about hoof care,
but that's where the horse rests, or should be resting, most of their weight.
They shouldn't be resting weight on the sole or the frog,
that outer wall should really be the part that's protruding down.
So, and we'll get to that when we talk about hoof care.
Now, in this slide, I just put up the bottom of a hoof
and just wanted to see if you could identify some structures on your own.
So you can pause the video and try to go
back through that, and just compare it to an actual hoof
on this slide and to the previous one, with all the
different structures, and see if you can find them on that.
Now one, one portion I did not talk about in the previous slide is this
area that you can kind of see starting right
here, and it goes all the way around.
And that's going to help lead us into,
you know, talking about the internal structure.
But that's called the white line.
And the white line is where you get you know,
the the inner hoof wall combining with the outer hoof wall.
Now, the coronary band is this region right here,
which you can see at the top of this hoof.
Okay.
And that's almost like our nail bed.
So, that's where the hoof grows out.
So, starting from there growing down is where the hoof kind of originates.
So, if we look at our own nail beds, you
know, that's kind of very similar to the coronary band.
Now, it's important to remember if, if this gets injured or, you know,
sometimes horses can clip their, their hooves
when, you know, exercising or what not.
You know, that can slow down or stop growth.
So you always want to be careful if you do have a horse that has
an injury there, to have a veterinarian or, or a fairer look at that area.