Laminitis is one of the most painful conditions in horses — causing inflammation and tissue death within the hoof — and requires lifelong management once established.
Laminitis pain is among the most severe in veterinary medicine. In acute phases, horses cannot bear weight normally — they adopt a characteristic "sawhorse" stance to shift weight off their toes. Pain is constant, not episodic. Horses with chronic laminitis live with persistent pain that waxes and wanes but rarely fully resolves without excellent management. The hoof effectively becomes a site of ongoing tissue damage — a cycle that requires excellent nutrition management, careful trimming, and often therapeutic shoeing to interrupt. The welfare burden is compounded by the progressive nature of severe cases: each laminitis episode leaves the hoof in a more compromised state than before. Delay in euthanasia for horses with advanced, uncontrollable laminitis represents a significant welfare failure.