Ground reaction forces in the horse at the walk, trot and gallop measured with an instrumented shoe

摘要

Musculoskeletal injuries are the first cause of inability to perform in race and sport horses, and speed is known to contribute to the occurrence of these injuries. A relevant approach to assess the effect of the speed on the locomotor apparatus is to determine the limb loading characteristics, as well as the ground reaction force (GRF). Force plates are commonly used, but they are not practical in the horse, whose stride length exceeds 5 m at high speed. An instrumented treadmill is another approach, but it only measures the vertical GRF (Weishaupt et al. 2004). An instrumented horseshoe with a six-load component dynamometer is necessary to completely characterise the GRF (Roland et al. 2005). The objective of the present study was to describe the influence of the speed on the GRF using a custom-made 3D dynamometric horseshoe (Pacquet et al. 2007; Figure 1).