This is the hoof I trimmed and dissected. This is what it looked like after the trim.

This hoof is lacking sole depth, and the frog is slightly contracted, however there toe is nice and short in relation to the frog, and the white line is nice and tight. Something we were told to do in the clinic, but I wouldn't do when normally trimming is taking the bars down so aggressively. Especially in this case where the horse is lacking depth in the sole, the bars would be an important support structure that would help tell the hoof where the coffin bone needs to be in relation to surfaces this horse was moving on.

The deep crevice running from frog to hairline in the heel explains why the horse has some slight heel contraction. This is the symptom of a deep thrush infection of the frog and was probably quite painful for the horse to put full weight on the heel/frog. The treatment I mentioned in my client's photos, a 50/50 mixture of triple action antibiotic ointment, and athlete's foot cream, in a tipped syringe, putting the tip into the crevice to get as much of the cream in there as possible would help treat the problem.

Here you can see the lack of sole depth, the sole is quite flat with a shallow collateral groove. The sole does however have a good hard callus so the horse was probably fairly comfortable regardless.

I did a cross section of the hoof so I could use it as a demo piece later on. Visually it gives an excellent view of the inner workings of our horses feet. You can see that the sole thickness isn't great at the toe which was evident looking at the above photos. if there was more concavity and a thicker sole the coffin bone would be higher in the hoof and have more protection.

This is an excellent view of the wall, water line, white line and the coffin bone in relation to the hoof.

The coffin bone and digital cushion without the hoof capsule!