Toe Grab Study (cont'd) suspensory apparatus. Is there more involved than just the suspensory ligament? A: The suspensory apparatus is really a series of tissues that forms a complete system. The suspensory ligament is attached at the back of the knee and at the back of the cannon bone, and at the bottom of the cannon bone it splits and attaches to each sesamoid bone. Then you have ligaments off the bottom of the sesamoids that attach to the back of the pastern. This apparatus acts as a beautiful mechanical sling to help maintain the angle of the fetlock. You can damage the suspensory in many different ways. Fatigue, for example, on a perfectly shod horse, can certainly tear a suspensory ligament. Q: Fatigue alone could cause injury? A: Yes, let me give you an example. We\ve all seen a picture of a horse at the wire finishing a long race, and while you would like to see the leg in a correct position, you often see the weight-bearing front limb bent back at the knee in what we call a calf-legged conformation. Now, the horse wasn\t calf-legged to start with, but his muscles are fatigued and he is showing signs of stress. Imagine what would happen if you jack his toe up. By adding the toe grab to the equation of the fatigued horse, you\re asking various joints in the limb, not just the knee, to withstand more pressure. You\re changing the functional angles of the entire limb. The premise in the Kane work was to demonstrate the effect of toe grabsusing dead horses that actually broke down and the reasons could be pinpointedagainst horses that died from other causes. What he found was a correlation between toe grabs and breakdowns. Q: In a paper you presented in 1975, you pointed out the use of toe grabs as being detrimental. Why has it taken 20 years for someone to come up with a conclusive study?

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