The Bars...to Trim, or Not to Trim, That is the Question!

I have to confess that over the years, my opinion on whether the bars should be trimmed has run the gamut. Now, I believe that it depends on a lot of different things...first and foremost, what makes the horse most comfortable.

Early on in my learning, I gave some credence to the idea that the bars could become impacted, and that impacted bars could be a cause of heel pain, and even navicular syndrome. This thinking, for a while, had me frantic about keeping bars trimmed sloping tidily into the sole plane. But I kept looking at the dissected hoof capsules with purported "impacted bars" and I kept being bothered by it. Something just didn't work about that idea. As often happens, it came to me while I stared for about an hour at one such image on my computer screen (provided below, along with a beautiful sole/frog corium from Pete Ramey for your viewing pleasure). The thing is...the contraction of that hoof capsule is the problem. I don't care how short you trim the bars -- if the foot is contracted, the inner structures are still pinched and warped. I know people swear they've made navicular horses more comfortable after carving the bars down, but it's possible that what they've really addressed is retained/false sole. And the truth is, I've seen navicular horses that were making progress and were moderately comfortable with lots of bar do a serious backslide with their bars trimmed away.


























At this point I backed cautiously away from my hoof knife...BACK AWAY FROM THE KNIFE...

A little later in my trimming career, I tried the exact opposite approach -- NEVER trimming bar, except to keep it level with the heel and walls at the quarters. I'd spent plenty of months battling to grow sole in a bunch of horses; once I understood that a good portion of the sole grows forward from the bars, trimming bar sounded like pure sacrilege! With this new sacred view of the bars-as-sole, my untrimmed bars self-trimmed most of the time; some horses kept strong, well-formed bars (young horses with immature feet, and lots of newly de-shod horses that are working hard to develop the back of the foot, tend to like good stout bars to help support the back of the hoof while the lateral cartilages are under construction), and some kept none at all. Horses with inadequate sole built up big wads of bar/sole which would quickly push forward under P3 -- the trick is leaving that bar/sole wad in tact without leaving it longer than the rest of the foot. The ones in between seemed perfectly comfortable, but often trotted around with ragged bars in varying stages of exfoliation. Which makes me crazy, I admit. So I've relaxed a little bit -- I will now trim bar that is downright raggedy. I will also do a one-time aggressive trim on horses with very pronounced bars that do NOT need to build sole. If the bars pop back by next trim, I leave them alone. Having trouble getting a horse to grow sole under the coffin bone? STOP trimming the bars!!! Just STOP!!!

I'm taking a similar approach to sole on horses that I know have a good calloused foot -- I will use my knife to flake out a shallow layer of the chalky stuff. If I find an area that is chunking out, I will usually go ahead and even it out. But NEVER to the waxy live layer, and never ever on a horse that is building sole under a carved, unprotected foot.