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Originally Posted by Danzig
grabbing a quarter is when a horse basically trips himself up, usually one of his back feet hitting one of his front, and possibly taking off a piece of hoof, or the shoe, in the process.
war admiraly famously grabbed a quarter in the belmont, came back to the winners circle with blood all over his underside. the injury was serious enough that they almost retired him. luckily (or else seasbiscuit might not be quite so famous) he was able to return to racing.
a quarter crack is a flaw in the hoof wall, which of course everyone probably saw on big brown-it's like a hangnail in a human, only in this case, a horse is putting about two hundred and fifty pounds on the hoof. it can get pretty serious-and a horse can lose time letting one grow out. a horses hoof is actually made of the same tissue as a fingernail-he basically stands on an evolved toe nail--horses used to have toes, now they stand on tiptoe on the one toe they have left.
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I understand all that. What I was wondering is why a quarter crack is worse than a grabbed quarter. My guess is that it's not always worse. It probably just depends on the severity of each. If one horse grabs a quarter badly and takes a huge chunk out of his foot, that would probably be much worse than a minor quarter crack. But if a horse slightly grabs a quarter, that's not going to be a big deal compared to a bad quarter crack.
That would be my guess, but I'm not positive. That's why I was asking Chuck. I do know that in the case of Touch Gold as compared to BB, Hofmans said that the grabbed quarter was nothing compared to BB's quarter crack.