Until recently, unless a farrier had a certain level of forging skills, it was a time-consuming and often messy process to get a proper fit on many therapeutic shoes. Add in the fact that many shoers don’t come across cases where they need to use corrective shoes frequently means they don’t get enough repetition to become efficient in using these shoes. As a result, the application and fitting of heart bar shoes often took many trips to and from the anvil to make sure that the shoe had the right amount of support.

As the popularity and use of heart bar shoes increased, suppliers looked for new ways to make using these shoes easier. Due to this growing demand, Vettec, of Oxnard, Calif., helped launch Jim Poor’s heart bar mold to work with its highly popular Super Fast adhesive. Since its inception, this mold has help farriers become more comfortable when using and fitting heart bar shoes.

Borne Of Necessity

One of the trickiest aspects of using a heart bar shoe is to achieve an exact fit to a horse’s hoof, regardless of whether the heart bar is used to apply or relieve pressure. On the “perfect foot,” a horse’s foot and frog would both be flat. In most instances — especially in cases where a horse needs a corrective shoe — something is causing the foot and the frog to be uneven. Fitting the heart bar to the frog, therefore, can be a tricky proposition.

Jim Poor, a veteran…