March 2007.  This photo is of a 12 year old gelding named "Montana".  It shows a broad toe and heels that are almost at the back of the foot.  They are well with in acceptable parameters.

This picture shows that he has rockered off his foot on his own.  It clearly shows that the break over is about 1/4 of an inch in front of the tip of the frog.  I was suppose to trim this horse ... he needs to have only his heels taken back just a slight bit.  He has done the rest on his own through being turned out and ridden.

This photo shows that the shape of the shoe and its corresponding break over point; if placed on the foot would very closely match the natural break over that Montana fashioned for himself.  Notice the break over point that we highlighted just ahead of the tip of the frog.  The base of  break over spans the whole foot from one side to the other.

This photo shows that Montana had kept his feet worn down.  Ther're no flares or distortions.  If you look closely at the front of the foot you can see where the rocker starts, just back from the front of the foot.  We hadn't trimmed Montana for three months!

This photo shows the over all measurement of the foot.  The size of this foot is a 00.  This measurement is consistent with the wild horse research stating over length of this size of foot.  Yet Montana is a domestic gelding!

This is the shoe that we originally pulled off of Montana for the winter.  The farrier that did the work did a very nice and clean job.  I tried to draw where the natural break over was but the pen wouldn't work as the foot was slightly wet.  I scratched it in and as you can see the break over point of the shoe is over an inch ahead of where Montana naturally wore his feet off.

This is the most dramatic photo of all.  To be fair to traditional methods we trimmed the heels back so as to be able to set the shoe back as far as possible. This is where outdated information and traditional methods fail the horse and create pathology. You can clearly see that the natural break over is over an inch behind the break over of this shoe.  By setting the shoe out ahead of the natural break over this creates leverage against the deep flexor tendon, thus creating a dysfunction in this foot.  Dysfunction leads to pathology!