A woman’s ability to overcome her own impulse to remove a nail embedded in her mare’s hoof may have saved the horse’s life.
It was the type of Facebook post that makes you stop scrolling. Late last summer, Ruth Sobeck, DVM, posted a photo on her page of a horse’s hind hoof with a large nail protruding from it. Accompanying the photo was a simple question from Sobeck, “Would you remove this nail if you found it in your horse’s hoof?”
A veterinarian with a solo practice in Palos Verdes, California, Sobeck often uses her Facebook page to share experiences and pose questions to her friends and clients. Within hours, the post about the nail had more than 50 replies. Some people said they’d pull out the nail and soak the hoof, then monitor the horse for a few days, calling the veterinarian or farrier if significant lameness developed. A few offered anecdotes of having done just that successfully. Other people had the opposite reaction, and stated emphatically that they’d never pull a nail from a hoof and that they’d call the veterinarian immediately.
As the virtual conversation continued, Sobeck popped back into the comments briefly, promising an update soon. A few hours later, she posted a radiograph that showed the nail had penetrated to the coffin bone, the major bone within the hoof. Then the horse’s owner appeared in the thread and posted pictures of her mare in surgery, having the nail removed.
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