Do Horseshoes Affect the Foot Skeleton?

the superficial digital flexor tendon and the suspensory ligament of shod horses further suggesting that shoes may disrupt the natural ability of horses feet to maintain tendon and maybe other tissue strains at lower levels. 
The tests involved walking a Thoroughbred horse between threedimensional radiographs an imaging technique developed by Professor Stephen Gatesy and his colleagues at Brown University and used previously to view bone interaction in small animals such as fish and birds. Each test lasted two to four seconds during which the horse was led across a customdesigned platform. The unshod horse was guided 344 times across the experimental platform over a period of two weeks. Following the end of the experiments for the unshod condition the horses forefeet received mild trimming and were each fitted with a stainless steel shoe with toe clips five inches wide and six nails. The identical procedure was then followed to guide the shod horse over the platform 65 times on a subsequent day. The difference in trial numbers between the unshod 344 strides and the shod 65 strides conditions was due to the large number of spatially incomplete data for the unshod test
The focus was on the effect of the shoe when the horses foot came in contact with the ground or at midstance in the cycle of limb movement. During movement every limb of the horse has a stance phase when it is in contact with the ground and a swing phase when it is in forward motion toward the next stance contact phase. 
Panagiotopoulou then used film industry animation techniques to transform that data into a lifesize threedimensional model. 
Our preliminary results suggest that the stainless steel shoe shifts craniocaudal mediolateral and vertical GRFs at midstance she writes. We document a similar pattern of flexionextension in the PIP pastern and DIP coffin joints between the unshod and shod conditions with slight variation in rotation angles throughout the stance phase. For both conditions the PIP and DIP joints begin in a flexed posture and extend over the entire stance phase. At midstance small differences in joint angle are observed in the PIP joint with the shod condition being more extended than the unshod horse whereas the DIP joint is extended more in the unshod than the shod condition. We also document that the DIP joint extends more than the PIP after midstance and until the end of the stance in