25/02/2026
Hoven och hästen är inte två separata saker. De är ett system.
Vi pratar ofta om hoven som något hovslagaren “skapar” – och kroppen som något som formas av träning, hållning eller skador.
Men hovbalans är inte en form eller ett ideal.
Det är ett ögonblick av jämvikt mellan krafter.
När den jämvikten inte finns – då kompenserar hästen.
Och kompensation går åt båda håll.
Hoven påverkar kroppen.
Kroppen påverkar hur hoven belastas.
Det är därför en hovförändring kan ge effekt i ryggen.
Och därför en kroppslig obalans kan synas i hovformen.
Det handlar inte om hov eller kropp.
Det handlar om helhet.
Did you know? The hoof and the horse are always connected!?
Sounds silly right but…
I still regularly see compartmentalised thinking in this industry. The hoof is treated as something created by the farrier, while the body is treated as something shaped by training, posture, management, or pathology somewhere else. As if these are separate problems that occasionally influence one another rather than parts of the same system.
Hoof balance is not a shape, a measurement, or a visual ideal. It is a moment condition. The distal limb must satisfy an equilibrium between external ground reaction forces and internal tissue moments. When that equilibrium is met, phalangeal alignment, hoof–pastern axis, palmar angle, and capsule morphology emerge as consequences rather than targets. When it is not met, the system does not immediately fail. It compensates.
That compensation is bi-directional. Forces do not only travel upward from the hoof. Posture, neuromuscular tone, limb orientation, and movement strategy all influence how the hoof is loaded in the first place. The hoof receives force from the ground, but it also feeds information back into the system through mechanical strain and sensory input. Hoof form and whole-horse organisation continuously shape one another.
However, the hoof is a persistent boundary condition. Posture and movement can vary from stride to stride, but hoof geometry influences every step the horse takes. If the hoof alters the timing or direction of force, the limb must change strategy, the trunk must stabilise differently, and the nervous system will preserve that solution. This is why compensation can appear functional for long periods of time, even as tissue cost accumulates elsewhere.
The point is not that the hoof is everything, or that the body is irrelevant. The point is that separating them is the mistake. Farriery alters boundary conditions at the ground. Those conditions either allow the horse to resolve forces within its elastic and biological reserve, or they force the system to organise around constraint. Hoof balance is therefore neither purely local nor purely global. It is the interface where mechanics, biology, and behaviour meet.
That is why the last webinar with Dr Haussler was so important, understanding the difference between compensation and maladaption!
https://equineeducationhub.thinkific.com/courses/compensations