When a performance horse slowly goes off form, any number of things can be the cause. Could he have ulcers? Is he being overtrained? Is something subtle and mysterious going on with his metabolism? The problem could be much simpler than that–his feet might just hurt.

A racehorse's feet and legs are subjected to unbelievably high stresses during racing. At the 2002 American Association of Equine Practitioners convention, Dr. David Nunamaker reported that peak bone strains in horses are higher than those previously reported in any animal species. When this level of stress over time is applied to the horse's foot, there are bound to be structural changes. The challenge is in preventing changes that impact performance (ideally) or shoeing an affected horse to get the foot back into a more functional conformation.

A good example is 5-year-old Early Flyer, who hadn't won a race in two years. A son of Gilded Time, Early Flyer is a grade II winner who placed in a grade I race as a 3-year-old. But he had no stakes wins or places as a 4-year-old. During that year, Dave Fiske, manager of Oakwind Farm near Lexington where Early Flyer was bred and kept, said the horse "gradually, race by race, went off form. No one could say what was wrong with him. Blood tests, bone scans, X-rays, everything was negative."

Fiske then had Early Flyer examined by veterinarian Ric Redden, founder of the International Equine Podiatry Clinic in Versailles, Ky."He knew exactly what was wrong," Fiske said. "He brought out (Early Flyer's) X-rays, protractors, rulers, and felt pens to give me a 90-minute tutorial on what the horse's measurements were and what they should be