What is Applied Equine Podiatry?
The essence of Applied Equine Podiatry is :
'The conscientious study of the equine foot, always striving to expose it to proper environmental stimuli, making every effort to promote proper structure and function, as we attempt to achieve high performance. It is accepting the fact that the horse has the innate ability to heal itself and that the act of domestication has caused imbalance and broken the golden rule of "Do No Harm".'
Students assessing a foot
The Institute of Applied Equine Podiatry was set up by K C LaPierre in 2003 to teach an alternative approach to equine foot care. KC has taken existing knowledge and recent research, put the many disparate theories together, thrown out the ones that do not make sense, and turned the rest into a well thought out understanding of the equine foot. He has taken this understanding plus 20 years of farriery experience and his own research, applied the science to the practice, and then turned this into a well thought out program of education. This is followed up by continuing professional development.
AEP takes an in-depth look at the internal structures of feet as well as the structures that can be seen on the outside, and looks at how they all function and interact. This knowledge is then used to work out what can be done to stimulate strong healthy growth using exercise, environment, and trimming. One of the most important tools that is taught is the spectrum of usability, which is a means of evaluating what work a horse should do to stimulate good healthy growth without causing damage or pain. This is especially useful for rehabilitating feet with problems such as infected frogs, contracted heels and navicular syndrome.
Important principles of AEP
- The horse has the innate ability to heal itself - this is a fact that often seems to be forgotten, not only with horses but with people as well, and we try to interfere with medicines, surgery & gadgets. AEP aims to use this self healing ability as much as possible.
Photographing feet
- Correct pressure is the stimulus for correct growth - It is generally thought that pressure is bad, but a lack of pressure can lead to atrophying of structures. Like muscles, feet (including hoof wall & cartilage) will change their strength and growth in response to environment and exercise.
- Structure + Function = Performance - This is the basis on which AEP was built. All structures of a foot have a use and the better they function, the better the overall performance. Applying this formula to all parts of the equine foot has has lead KC to many of his theories.
- Time is an important dimension - Improved health does not happen over night, patience is required.
- Balance means an equilibrium of function - It is no good having some good structures and some poor ones. Everything needs to work together, with evenly distributed forces.
- Do no harm - Sometimes our understanding of things changes and we realise that we got things wrong in the past, but AEP aims to keep this to a minimum by being as un-invasive as possible. Trimming is kept to minimum, and structures are never cut away to obtain more deformation to increase blood flow.
What makes Applied Equine Podiatry different?
Applied Equine Podiatry follows the philosophy of aiming to emulate the best feet obtainable in high performance domesticated horses. 'Best' is defined as strong, disease free, good at distributing impact energy, resistant to wear, and free from trauma. This is most important for the internal structures such as co-lateral cartilages, digital cushion, other soft tissues and blood supply.
Discussing feet
Callouses, worn off toes & non-uniform shapes that may be found in wild or feral horses' feet are regarded as being indications of issues that need to be understood and possibly rectified. The aim is for smooth shapes, uniform load distribution, good proportions and strong structures. Rather than making recommendations from the point of view of what is 'normal' for feral horses, AEP looks at what is best for each individual horse's feet considering conformation, usage, health, diet and environmental limitations.
Instead of trying to balance the pedal bone by aligning the hoof wall (the angle of which varies with foot conformation & health) with the pastern (which is highly flexible, and only held in place by muscle tone and elastic ligaments), AEP balances the pedal bone with reference to the ground using well researched landmarks on the sole and frog. From a lateral viewpoint it is positioned at a slight angle to the ground when at rest so that it levels out when heavily loaded.
AEP is about being pro-active rather than reactive. Exercise and trimming are aimed at changing the structures within the feet to give good health. If something goes wrong with a foot the root cause is investigated, instead of just applying a different type of shoe to unload the damaged structures and hoping the problem will go away.
Continuing professional development
An alumni association has been set up by the institute to help & support qualified AEPs, and to maintain & improve standards. All members of the alumni must improve their knowledge with continuing professional development. They may attend first level courses free of charge to brush up on their knowledge, and more advanced courses are available for learning how to deal with the more severe pathologies such as founder.