Beauty is an 8 year old Morgan mare who hadn't been trimmed in over 7 months. She lives in a 40x60 paddock with a sand base.

I knew I'd be back to adjust her trim in a week or two, so my goal with this setup trim was to shorten the toe, remove excess wall, remove flare and bevel the edge of the wall in the toe and quarters.

PLEASE NOTE: The pictures below are of an UNFINISHED TRIM!! Light rasping of the wall and heel buttress results in a smooth and polished appearance.

FLARED CORONET IN THE QUARTERS - The coronet on the hoof below flares upward, a condition caused by excess wall length.

RESOLUTION - I rasped most of the flare off of the hoof below, rolled the edge of the wall at the toe and quarters to bring the weight bearing edge back in line with the direction of growth from the top of the hoof wall.

I let the mare stand for 5 minutes, placed her hoof back on the stand and took the second picture, immediately below the untrimmed picture. A few minutes later, I took a 3rd picture from a 3/4 view.

The coronet band profile is smoother and has less upward flare in each successive picture.

Rasping the flare and beveling the edge of the hoof with a dramatic flare reveals the outermost surface of the white line. The first time I did this, I worried that I'd gone too far, however when I check the horse several days later, the quarters had worn away to form a mild "wild horse scoop", and the coronet had leveled out.

Now I routinely rasp flare and slightly bevel the edge at the base to encourage the wall to relax into a better position.

I corrected the heels slightly after taking these pictures by rasping across the heel buttress just enough to provide a nice landing pad for the foot.

What I don't do is extremely important! Taking off too much heel and carving into the live sole can cause pain and tenderness. I never thin the sole, trim the bars lower than the sole, or trim into the live sole. There are VERY rare exceptions!

The hoof to the right has lots of great sole callous material, and a fair amount of shedding sole. I let this horses movement take care of managing sole content and character.

I don't worry about decontracting heels, because contracted heels are a symptom of imbalance. Get rid of the imbalance and the contracted heels fix themselves.

These horses gallop away sound, and their hooves quickly evolve into very robust examples of what barefoot is all about - balance and gravel-crunching soundness.