It’s a cool, crisp, peaceful May morning somewhere in the Southeast. The sun has yet to burn off the fog that blankets the sky and ground. The air is still and moderately heavy. A horse owner is just making her way out to the barn, coffee cup in hand, wearing her favorite barn sweats and green rubber muck boots for another routine morning of mucking stalls and caring for her horses. She enters the barn and begins her morning ritual of petting heads and giving kisses to each horse as she walks down the line of stalls. In the third stall is a sorrel-colored Arab mare. She’s down and her eyes tell the story of a bad night of intense pain. The owner becomes somewhat alarmed. The mare is reluctant to stand, but the owner manages to get her up. The mare is trembling as she attempts to keep the weight off her front end and shift it to her hind end. The horse is in excruciating pain. The owner tries not to panic and attempts to determine the problem. She remembers seeing a friend’s horse with a similar stance and look of pain. She checks the horse over and concludes there are no external problems. Her hands trace the contours of the front legs, following each leg down to the hoof. They are warmer than usual. She feels for a pulse. Sure enough, there is a constant throbbing pulse. Now she begins to panic a bit. Her horse is in the process of foundering. The symptoms are the same as her friend’s horse. But what did her friend do? She couldn’t remember. She was at a loss as to what to do.

The owner quickly runs to the house. Her morning routine has been thrown to the wind. Her mare is all that’s on her mind. She calls the vet and asks what to do and please hurry here. Some time later, the vet arrives to find the owner frantic and the mare in pain and again lying down. The vet goes to work; the usual treatment for a horse in this condition. Banamine and Bute, keep the horse in the stall on soft shavings, and call the farrier as soon as possible. She instructs the owner to have the farrier apply heart-bar shoes. It’s been the standard practice for decades. The vet informs the owner that this is very important and that the horse must have these shoes in order to survive the founder. The vet explains founder to the owner stating that if the horse doesn’t have the bar shoes, the coffin bone could rotate through the sole. If this happens, the horse will have to be put down.

The frantic owner contacts her farrier and informs him of the situation. The farrier says that he will be out first thing in the morning. In the mean time, keep the horse quiet and comfortable in the stall. The owner does as she has been instructed to do by both the vet and the farrier. The mare gets progressively worse throughout the day and night.
The next morning, the farrier arrives along with the vet. They review the situation and prepare for a course of action. This is nothing new to either of them. They are both well seasoned and experienced. And this has been a particularly bad season for founder.
The farrier goes to work, as he has many times. He begins by paring out sole, removing excess frog and trimming down the hoof wall. He measures and prepares a heart-bar shoe for the foot. The mare is standing in excruciating pain, but she does her best to stand without fighting or pulling. With each drive of the hammer and nail, the horse flinches in response to the pain that is resonating through her hoof and leg. Once the shoes are finally in place, the farrier injects a sole support concoction in order to further apply pressure to the sole and thusly, to the coffin bone, in order to keep the rotation from penetrating the sole.

Finally, the ordeal is over. The horse is sore from the farrier’s hard work and well-meaning intentions. A day or two later, the horse is walking and eating and the owner is happy that the problem is resolved. She knows it isn’t over this easily, but she feels her beloved horse will now make a good recovery.

A few days later, the mare begins to show signs of trouble again, but nothing overly serious yet, until one morning. The owner comes to the barn expecting to see her mare standing and ready for breakfast. Instead, she is sweating and lying on the stall floor in considerable pain. She makes a call to the vet, who arrives that morning. The vet finds an elevated pulse, heat in the feet and finds that the horse is refusing to stand. She removes the sole packing and sees that the sole is bulging. The vet tells the owner that her mare is foundering again and that the coffin bone is about to protrude through the sole. In turn, the vet requests the farrier put a denser material under the shoe to prevent the coffin bone from protruding through. The farrier will comply when he gets there. The vet takes x-rays and is confident that she is correct, P-3 is about to rotate through the sole.

This has been the bad news vets and farriers have been telling horse owners for years now. But is this truly the way it has to be? Is this the proper way to treat founder? Is there a better way?

This is a fairly typical scenario, which unfortunately, I hear frequently. There are many variables that may cause the situation to differ from time to time, horse to horse, vet to vet, and /or farrier to farrier. But over all, this is pretty much the way it plays out. However, there is NO NEED to put any horse through the pain of shoeing a foundered foot or any sore foot. This scenario need no longer be true. We can finally help these horses! We can finally ease their pain! We can finally, fully fix horses with such ailments! Please continue reading.

The above scenario is reasonably accurate regardless of the cause of the founder (be it from so-called grass founder, winter founder, concussion founder, etc.) or the time of year in which it occurs. I, too, learned that the cure for a foundered hoof was to shoe it. But I learned not to apply bar shoes, but reverse shoes instead. The idea was to remove the pressure from the toe and allow the heels to bear the weight. I had reasonable success in every case. I was able to make the horse comfortable until such time as I felt the horse could stand to go barefoot. To date, I do not know of a single horse that had to be put down while in my farrier care. But I always felt there had to be a better way. Why put a horse, which is already in horrible pain, through the further trauma of being shod? It never made sense to me. There must be a better way, but what? Well, that question has finally been answered. The ‘cure’ is produced by Mr. Tommy Lee Osha of Osha Products, Inc. The system is called the ‘Comfort Management System’ and it means everything to the horse, perhaps even his life!

Think to yourself of all the horses you’ve heard about that have had to be put down because they foundered and there was ‘nothing more that could be done’. That was because the vets and farriers who worked on those cases had limited knowledge of how to bring a hoof back from founder. All they know, or knew, was what had been taught by their schools and/or mentors. The knowledge, and the technology, is decades, even centuries, old. Today we know better. We now know how to support the hoof and how to bring the horse back. We understand how the hoof works, inside and outside, and we’re learning more every day. The bottom line is this, without the Comfort Management System, it is virtually impossible to bring any horse back completely. The Comfort Management System, or the TLO System (Tender Loving Orthotics), as I like to call it, is the very key to success with virtually every horse that has been treated with this system. Dr. Robert Bowker of Michigan State University, has clinically studied and documented case after case, where the horses were not just comforted and sustained by the TLO System, but actually brought back into full service. What’s more, many of these horses were going to be put down because of what, because there was ‘nothing more that could be done.’ Folks, if you love horses, THIS is what it’s all about!

Today’s horse owners love and care for their horses perhaps better than they love and care for their husbands. Don’t believe me? Ask the husbands! Today’s horse owners are becoming much more knowledgeable about their equine companions, too. And they are becoming much less tolerant of equine professionals who are not up to date on the latest products and procedures. They expect every professional to be just that, professional. They expect them to be well trained, well versed, well spoken and well seasoned. They have little patience for the “equine professionals” who don’t know what they are doing. Many of these horse owners have similar stories; stories of frustration and anguish. As each process they try fails, they learn more about the symptoms, the problems and compile a list of what to do and not to try again. They get more and more frustrated at the fact there are so many vets and farriers who actually know very little about founder. Yet these horse owners persevere and refuse to give up hope. They continue to seek someone who can help them understand what happened, why it happened and how it can be corrected. Somehow, they find their way to the TLO Team. We listen to their stories and the ordeals they have put their horses through. We sympathize with them greatly. We process the information they have provided. So far, happily, our response has been the same each time, “Ma’am, we can bring your horse back.’ We can fix Koko or Beau or Sandy. Please listen to us, follow our guidance, trust us. For us, the TLO Team, it’s all about the horses.

Why, you may ask, am I so positive about Osha Products? Well, I learned about Osha Products a couple of years ago. I saw the product line available at that time. I could see the potential it had for comforting horses. I KNEW there was a place in my shoeing practice for this system and that I could start ‘fixing’ horses, not just getting them to a point of tolerable comfort. Now, two plus years later, as a member of the TLO Team, I’m able to do what I vowed to my own horse I would do, help other horses and their owners the best way I can.

What makes this system so special, you may ask? The TLO System is designed in such a way that it’s not just a product line for farriers to keep on hand in their trucks or to clutter up their shops. It’s designed in such a way to be a complete system, from beginning to end. The system helps take a lot of the guess work out of what to do for the horse. Instead of applying shoes and impression materials of varying concoctions, hoping you get the support where it’s needed, and how much is needed, the farrier, or horse owner, need do nothing more than observe the horse on one foam pad configuration or another. The HORSE will tell you if he’s comfortable. The more comfortable he is, the more he will be able to move around and the better and faster he will recover. Plus, what is comfortable for the horse today may NOT be what’s comfortable for him tomorrow, or even the next day. The system is easy enough to accommodate the horse’s changing needs as often as necessary. This can’t be done with shoes, dental impression materials, or any other product currently on the market.

So what does this mean for the horse and owner? Well, it means that the horse can be trimmed, balanced and comforted with a lot less pain and suffering for the horse, the farrier and the owner. Fewer traumas equal faster recovery. Plus, the horse is able to apply the pressure he wants, where he wants and how he wants. All we have to do is interpret the signs to understand the horse’s present need. The system is simple enough and adaptable enough that modifications can be made on the fly. The only limit to the use of this system is the limit of one’s own ability to think ‘outside the box’. Does this mean that by simply applying the proper pads that the horse will be well in a few day or weeks? No! Founder is a traumatic event that affects the complete structure of the hoof. It takes time to repair these structures. The hoof has to regenerate and repair all the damaged tissue. This can take up to a year or more. That fact has never changed. It still depends on how fast the horse can recover and re-grow its hoof. But the TLO System can support the horse better, help the horse regenerate its feet faster and do it better than any shoe on the market or by applying nothing at all.

I am fully convinced that the TLO System is the one system that can comfort any horse with hoof-related pain. It can provide the support they need the way they need it. It can help bring horses back from the brink of death due to founder and make them well again. That fact has been proven time and again. But remember, this is a system, not a miracle product. The product alone can not bring the horses back, it requires the system. In my opinion, never before has there ever been a true recovery system for foundered horses. Never before has there been a system so simple that farriers, vets and owners could use. Never before has there been a system so versatile that the variations and possibilities are virtually limitless. Never, has any steel, rubber, titanium or aluminum shoe allowed a farrier to bring back a horse from complete rotation to complete soundness like the TLO System. Never, have I ever, been able to say with confidence, ‘Yes Ma’am, we can help your horse’.

For more information on Tender Loving Orthotics Products and the TLO System - click here.

If you have problems or questions and would like to speak with Keith, please call him at 770-312-6909, or e-mail him at keith@keithseeley.com.

Keith