Rachel,

I've found that with horses with contracted heels, the best thing to do, is not do too much.  I'm rehabbing a herd of horses whose feet were in terrible shape due to a trimmer doing too much all the time.  Thinning the soles to create "flex", trimming heels and attempting to widen them to the point that the heels were thinned to collapse.  I only beveled the walls, left the sole completely alone as they all had zero clearance at the collateral groove at the tip of the frog, and trimmed the heels as far as they could safely be trimmed.  I did nothing else to the heels.  In one month, the heels on the two horses with contractions have at least leveled and are no longer collapsed on one side.  The soles are concaving naturally to the point that I can finally start removing dead sole and the feet themselves are looking much healthier.  The two horses with severely contracted heels may never have "normal" heels, but they are no longer lame and I've found that over time, if you just keep the heels down and the toe from coming forward, the heels will "de-contract" on their own.  Sometimes it's all of a sudden.  You go to trim, and you realize, that the heels are well....normal.  I have one horse I trim that is no longer contracted and one of my own that had one foot with a contracted heel due to poor shoeing before I got him.  He's all of a sudden spread out on his own and I did nothing more than trim the heels down, keep the bars from getting too high ( I don't trim them down farther than I can feel with my palm if I lay it across the foot) and leave it alone otherwise.  You can't "make" a heel get wider, you can only trim the foot in as normal and healthy a manner as you can, and allow the horse the chance to heal.  If you could get pictures of the hoof in profile, it would also be helpful.  I'd like to see the toe, if there's still lamilar wedge or if the toe looks long.  The foot doesn't look that bad underneath.  Yes the heel is contracted, but you have a sole that is coming along nicely.  I would probably bring back the toe from the top more and bring the heel down a bit more. It looks like you have quite a bit of depth at the collateral groove.  I would also bevel a lot more than what the photo looks like.  It doesn't look like much bevel on the hoof and you'll end up with pressure on the walls.

 

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