Whose Horseshoes Did CHIO Aachen Add to the Walk of Fame?

If you were a horseshoe, where would you like to spend eternity?

If you'd been on a sport horse, the answer is the hallowed Walk of Fame, a plaza at the showgrounds of CHIO Aachen, the national horse sport championships of Germany and international showcase of the competition horse.

What Is This? Can You Identify This Reader-Submitted Image?

by Fran Jurga | 10 February 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

What is this? If you know the answer, please send an email to fran@hoofcare.com and I'll publish your guesses and information from the reader who sent this in later this week. Please do NOT use the comments button to leave your answers because then the first correct answer will stop others from guessing! Super bonus points to anyone who can expound on this subject.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

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Boo! Halloween Hoof Face in German Farrier Shop

There's nothing funny about a keratoma but German farrier Loic Entwistle couldn't resist the temptation to turn this hoof into a jack o' lantern. Or is it the face of a ghost that made this photo suggest Halloween?

It looks like this foot may be growing out after a keratoma (hornsaule in German) in the toe of the hoof wall was surgically removed, and was brought back to the hospital for a trim and clean-up of the wall defect. The veterinarian probably marked the hoof wall area to be cleaned up with a marker...and it became a face!

A keratoma is a benign or non-cancerous tumor made of horn. I think they are either more commonly found in Europe or they are more aggressive in removing them as European farrier textbooks always have lots of photos of keratomas and they even explain the different types based on where in the wall the tumor is located and describe the common shapes the tumors will take depending on location.

Even though a keratoma can reside uneventfully inside a horse's hoof wall for a long time, it can also sometimes grow large enough to press against soft tissue and/or the coffin bone, or cause chronic abscessing.

To learn more about keratomas, read "Hoof Wall Resection and Reconstruction for a Tubular Defect" by Andrew Poyntom FWCF in Hoofcare and Lameness #78, and the chapter on different types of keratomas in the book Hoof Problems by Rob Van Nassau, available from Hoofcare Books. (Click here to learn more about this book and order your copy.)

If you read German, another excellent treatise on keratomas is in Uwe Lukas's Gesunde Hufe-kein Zufall available from the German Equestrian Federation's online bookshop.

Many thanks to Loic Entwistle and his amazing photo library for the loan of this image.