2 year old Percheron, turned out to grow up but had very little hoof attention for the first 2 years of his life. The first pic shows the results of a an untrimmed hoof. The excess wall was removed by the breeder before he came into my hoof care. The pictures below show what happened to these hooves 1 year of being trimmed with the HGM method. Every trim I followed the HGM trim rules. Beveled wall to sole level with a 20 degree bevel angle, to the white line or to the sole ridge ( if one is present ) from 4 o’clock to 8 o’clock, graduating up to the heels. Kept the heel height to a 1/4 of an inch above the sole at the seat of the corn. If one heel was higher than the other heel, I brought the higher heel down to match the height of the lower heel. You can see in my trim pics, I never trimmed his bars.... sometimes they are big and sometimes not.... the bars are there for a reason and bars take care of themselves! This horse was sound after every trim. It was amazing to see how quickly his hooves healed themselves. The last picture is the last trim I gave this giant. You can see the hooves have nice balance and the frogs are almost 50% of the sole.  April 2016  June pre trim pics.      
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The HGM or Hoof Gudied Method is a simple trim copying what the ground would do to hoof. The Concept and Philosophy. We only remove what the ground can not. Horses not running free in the wild will not have enough movement on the best terrain for self trimming their hooves. We trust the hoof will fix any problems itself, if we copy what the ground would do. We trust nature. We do address the wall and the toe, meaning we will rasp the wall with a shallow bevel to sole level and bring the toe back if it tells us to. We don’t rehab hooves, we let them fix themselves. We don’t cut the sole or bars, we know they are there for a reason. We never rasp the outer wall because this weakens the wall and will cause future problems, there is just not good reason to do this, the ground never rasps the outer wall or cuts into sole.... think about this. When we trim this way the heels stop growing or grow very little and almost never need to be trimmed. We don’t measure hoof angles, this trim method helps the hoof grow its correct hoof angle and will also correct hoof imbalance. We trim every hoof with the same trim rules. We ignore pathology. We are only as smart as the ground! WOW! These concepts and philosophy can be so difficult for people that many people cannot accept this trim. As humans we have very complex levels of thinking and we want to fix hooves ( with the best intentions of course ). We are highly intelligent! But with this trim all of that can be let go, and is let go. Through my experience with this trim, first starting with my own 6 horses then others horses I have seen how well this trim works. Following the rules of the trim I saw all hooves improve, pathologies heal and horses move soundly on all surfaces. Here is an example of HGM hooves post trim. These soles belong to my 4 year old mare, I got her when she was a foal and she has only ever been trimmed with this method. Her hooves have the correct angle, her frogs are a good size and she is totally sound on all types of footing. The most beautiful part about HGM hooves is the fact that when you address the toe and keep the wall trimmed to sole level the heels will take of themselves. In the 4 years that I have been trimming these hooves, I have almost never needed to trim her heels.  As you can see very little was done to these hooves, wall to sole level with a 20 degree bevel, toe addressed meaning I brought it back a little. The toe indicated it needed to be trimmed because of what we call a flat plateaux. |
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