I would think just relieving the pressure would give him some kind of relief. Does he have an underlying foot problem though? Why the special shoes?
He has a broken back hoof pastern axis with the accompanying long toe/low heel, a very common conformation fault. We need to raise his heels to make his hoof pastern axis more normal or he could have other lameness problems later on.
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:bYDqmjU3HFcJ:www.equipodiatry.com/topics.html+%22broken+back+hoof+pastern+axis%22&hl=en
Tuffy's foot looks like the first picture, but a little worse.