Legendary baseball player William “Wee Willie” Keeler, one of the game’s great place hitters, was known for the axiom, “Hit ’em where they ain’t.”

Simon Curtis from Newmarket, England, a member of the International Horseshoeing Hall Of Fame, may never have heard of the Baseball Hall Of Famer, but he paraphrased him during January’s International Hoof-Care Summit while discussing the use of shoe extensions in treating foals.

“When I was a young farrier, I was told you put extensions where the foot should be,” he told those in attendance. “You increase the ground surface.”

But Curtis believes that explanation is a little oversimplistic when it comes to treating foals. He says there’s more going on than that.

“I believe that extensions work because you move the foot in relation to the ground in the direction of the extension,” he says. A medial or lateral extension being used to help correct a medio-lateral limb deformity, for instance, helps ease excessive compression on the foal’s limb that is causing the problem.

Taking On Compression

“We’re not getting rid of compression,” he says. “We’re reducing it to an acceptable range for growth, so that the foal can fix…