In like manner the movements of the animal will vary with the feet affected.  With only the front-feet diseased the animal is, comparatively speaking, comfortable.  The hind-feet take the weight, and the animal stands for long periods together, resting alternately first one fore-foot and then the other, moving often in a circle of which his body is the radius, and his hind-limbs the centre.  If urged to move forward, then immediately his countenance and movements manifest the pain to which he is put.  Only with reluctance does he cause the fore-feet to take weight.  They are shuffled forward quickly one after the other, so that weight may not be placed upon them for one instant longer than is necessary, and the hind-limbs immediately brought again with two short, awkward movements beneath the body.  Progress thus takes place in a succession of movements ‘half hobble,’ ‘half jump.’

Painful though this may appear, progress is still more difficult when the hind-feet alone are diseased.  Afraid that, in placing his fore-members freely forward, he will add to the pain in his hind, the walk takes place in a series of extremely short steps, with the feet more or less closely approximated.  The gait is thus rendered extremely awkward, and Zundel, by saying that ‘the animal appears as if treading on sharp needles,’ most fitly describes it.

Movement with all four feet affected, though less awkward in appearance, is doubtless more painful than in either of the other conditions.  Here the animal can hardly be induced to shift his position at all.  Only by flogging, and that severe, can he be made to go forward.  When so induced to move, the agonizing pain to which the patient is subjected may be gathered by noting his countenance and manner of progression.

With each movement forward, muscular tremors affect the limbs; each step is short, jerky, and convulsive; the respirations and pulse are almost immediately greatly quickened, and the lower lip is hung pendulous, and moved almost unconsciously up and down with a flapping noise against the upper.  A patchy perspiration breaks out about the body and quarters, and the tail is outstretched and quivering.  At the same time the lines of the face become drawn, the commissures of the lips pulled upwards, the eyes staring and haggard, the eyelids puckered, the nostrils extended, and the whole expression indicative of the intense and agonizing pain of the disease.

One can perhaps better give one’s client some vague idea of the patient’s suffering by likening the pain to the throbbing sensation of a festered finger-nail.  Tell him that each hoof of the horse is similarly, or, if anything, more delicately, constructed, that in each foot the same process of ‘festering’ is going on, and that upon them the animal has perforce to stand.

As one might expect, the position of greatest ease is the decumbent.  Strange to say, though, in many cases of laminitis the animal persists in maintaining a standing posture.  Once down, however, one has sometimes the greatest difficulty in persuading him again to rise.  The lying position is so long maintained that bedsores begin to make their appearance, and the animal rapidly loses flesh, not only by reason of the fever and the pain, but by giving to rest the time he should normally give to feeding.