So far, we have seven items left to finish our shoe display. The square-toe hind with a trailer we’ll describe here will satisfy two of the remaining modifications.

This is a pretty simple shoe, so we are going to fuller (crease) the shoe in order to demonstrate our ability to do so for the American Farrier’s Association (AFA) examiner. Fullering is also a way to make a shoe that seems unbalanced look better.

Shoe Function

Square toes and trailers are very useful modifications for everyday shoeing. By applying a square toe, you can move the breakover point for the foot back without affecting the angle of the coffin bone. Doing this can give you the best of both worlds: easy breakover and a correct natural angle.

This is a very useful shoe for the hind feet of horses that have any sort of front-to-rear interference problems. By moving the breakover of the hind feet back a little, you gain two things. First, the toe is shorter, which means that an overreaching horse has less of a weapon to hit the front feet with. Second, if the hoof tends to land heel first, adding extensions or trailers to the back of the shoe will widen the distance between the front and hind feet. The extension will make the foot hit a split second earlier, which will change the placement of the foot compared to a foot without an extension or trailer. Adding traction to the hind shoes will enhance this even…