Tags: Anatomical Structure.
The pastern is a part of the leg of a horse between the fetlock and the top of the hoof. It incorporates the long pastern bone (proximal phalanx) and the short pastern bone (middle phalanx) which are held together by two sets of paired ligaments to form the pastern joint (proximal interphalangeal joint). Anatomically homologous to the two largest bones found in the human finger the pastern was famously mis-defined by Samuel Johnson in his dictionary as the knee of a horse.
