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No hoof, no horse. From Xenophon in ancient Greece to every horse-owner in the world today, this truth remains: if a horse does not have healthy hooves, it's useless and eventually doomed.

Horses must stand and move in order to stay healthy, and they do that on one toe-which has a toenail-otherwise called a hoof. Many other hoofed animals-cattle, sheep, goats, deer, antelope-stand on two toes, and have two toenails-they have a divided, or "cloven" hoof. But horses have only one, and this hoof is at the foundation of what a horse can do. Every part of the hoof contributes to its function...every part must work, or the whole hoof doesn't work. And the hoof must be large enough for that horse.

Starting with the exterior of the hoof, what you can see on the outside, there's the hoof wall, the sole, and the frog.

What you can see of a horse's hoof, when it is standing with all four of them on the ground, is a hornlike substance made up of laminae-layers and strands, like those that form your own toenails and fingernails. This is the hoof wall. A clean, healthy hoof wall is slightly glossy, hard and smooth, with minimal or no ridges or bulges, shaped a like a section of a truncated cone. Like a toenail, it has no nerves or blood supply, and thus-if it's as thick as it should be-a horseshoe can be attached to the hoof wall without any pain to the horse. As with us, the "toenail" that is the hoof grows out of skin at the top-there's a little ridge of hairy, softer tissue from which the hoof wall grows down.

If you look at a hoofprint on the ground, the ideal front-foot print is almost circular, and shows a V in the back. That V is not hoof wall-the wall does not go all the way around the hoof. Most front hooves curve out more on the outside and a little less on the inside, but a good round shape is important so that the line of weight coming down from above is evenly divided between the inside and outside halves of the feet.

The front, or "toe" of the hoof wall is longer than the back, and meets the ground at an angle. That angle is important; a hoof that slants back too sharply, or is too upright, places strains on other parts of the horse's leg, and within the hoof capsule. The back, or "heel" of the hoof wall is shorter. Horses often strike the ground with the heel first, their hoof rolling over as they pick it up, just as we walk with a heel-strike and our feet roll up, with the toes leaving the ground last. But with all the weight coming onto a horse's hoof-many

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