Tag: barefoot horse

My motto for 2017

My motto for 2017, thanks to a Facebook friend I have not yet met: it is to “Shout Louder in my Own Space”.

My motto for 2017 is a reaction to recent online experiences. We have all been subject to the effects of the Echo Chamber recently. Modern media allows us to connect with people with similar interests all over the world. I have barefoot and Classical Dressage friends all over the planet now with whom to discuss issues and ask for advice.

A peculiar phenomenon has occurred. Humans like to belong, so we naturally select friends with views and interests similar to our own, and although we feel very connected, we may actually be isolating ourselves in a virtual bunker where everyone agrees.  This is not good for learning, or for discussion. To expand our consciousness and knowledge we need challenge, not reassurance.

It was  a great surprise to me when Hilary Clinton won the Democrat nomination my US friends all supported Bernie Sanders. It was a terrible shock when Trump won; from my Facebook feed that seemed inconceivable, as did Brexit prevailing in the UK referendum.

Facebook groups are a funny beast. There can be such great discussions, and also such emotive howling between people who disagree. I have been personally attacked, belittled, stalked and ridiculed for disagreeing with eminent media commentators who frankly should have better things to do with their time. I regretfully left one Classical Dressage Facebook site when it became apparent that the “owner” of the page had views diametrically opposed to my own experience and learning. It seemed rude to be on their page constantly questioning their ‘expert’ opinion. Unfortunately the person in question only intreacts on their own site so there is no way to have a rational discussion in a neutral space where questioning their views in a friendly and enquiring and educating way would seem less disrespectful.

And therein lies the rub- how do we discuss without dissing, how do we discuss training and husbandry in a non combative way when people insist on taking different viewpoints as personal attacks and seeing criticism when questioned?

Maybe I need to learn to ask better questions?

Or maybe I need to save my energy for furthering my own knowledge, concentrate on my own learning, and listen most intently to those that never lie; the horses themselves.

Classical training as a journey is about so much more than just dancing horses. The mindset required is one we might recognise more as a martial art: absolute humility,  self-control, responsibility for oneself and an understanding that every action has consequences. We cannot choose how others react to us, we can only control how we react to others. Each challenge is an opportunity, from every difficulty comes the chance to change.

Hence my motto for 2017- Shout Louder in my Own Space.

The purpose of this blog is not to preach, or to bang about how great barefoot is for horses and how Classical Training is the only way. The purpose of this blog is to share my journey, and that of our horses, abscesses, warts and challenges and all.

When we arrived at out what was our last livery yard before we got our own space, we were the odd ones out. Our horses were barefoot, on a funny diet, and we were training with a strange foreign lady no one had heard of, who didn’t compete anymore, and who had us doing strange self lunging exercises at the slowest trot imaginable. We were learning about biomechanics, and the correct seat, and had inadvertently enrolled on a 4 year programme that I now liken to a Master’s degree in Classical Equitation and Dressage Training.

We didn’t preach, or gush, or bore, we just quietly did the do. The old black horse should have been crippled with arthritis, but looked better and better as each month passed and his crooked body blossomed with the application therapeutic gymnastic training. The grey horse went from nearly having kissing spines to eventing up to BE100 and filling his draft frame with the appropriate muscle. And the baby bay horse got the best start as a riding horse that one could wish for.

It hasn’t all been easy.

Cal the grey has continued to be plagued by difficult feet syndrome. He has X-rays due tomorrow I hope to report on vast improvements in his sole thickness with targeted consistent boot use. He is sounder on tough surfaces but the pictures will tell the unadulterated truth.

The baby bay had me on the floor a couple of times and went through a mild napping stage. A week treating his hindgut and a saddle fitting seemed to sort that out. He hacked out beautifully on his own on walk and trot on our last jolly a week ago. He’s now on a growing break and I can’t wait to get him into work again once the nights get a bit lighter.

However Gary’s new horse Beat the ex -racer responded quickly to a short lesson on rein aids and working on the connection forward to the bit. The relaxations and improvements in his walk achieved in two short lessons illustrated yet again how quickly correct training works, and how beneficial it is to the horse’s body and mind.

So this blog will be my effort to live out my motto for 2017. I will shout loudly in my own space, about our problems, challenges and solutions, doing my best for my horses in the best way I can do now, on every new day, with what I have learned to date. I will continue to learn and to study and to seek and to question, and if the answers I find can help any single one of you to solve a conundrum on your journey with your horses, or your life outside of horses, then that will be worth it.

Whatever else happens, let’s have some fun doing it too, because horses are meant to be fun. They are such noble and sentient beings that they should bring out the best in us, if we could just stop to listen and learn, and not allow ourselves to get caught up in competition and ego and ambition.

So thanks to Max for my motto for 2017.

Not the best photo at the end but look at the changes in his balance…

Barefoot Brain-ache

Barefoot brain-ache is an annoying condition, well-known to the owner of the barefoot horse. Barefoot brain-ache occurs when the answer to a supposedly simple question is no longer simple because certain dogmas are no longer taken as truth.

My barefoot brain-ache is caused, again, by the fact that Cal the gorgeous grey is completely stomping-around sound on a surface, on grass, and on smooth tarmac but not on stoney surfaces. In the last fourteen days he has stormed around the farm ride at Somerford, jumping everything, raced around the Stafford Horse Trials at 80(T) level, competed in the Delamere Forest XC jump training at 90cm, had a day of SJ and XC training organised by Equine Adventures at Somerford and done about 25 miles hacking around Delamere Forest.


Yet had you been there watching me walk him onto the truck for any of those days out you would have pulled him off the lorry and put him back in his stable (oops he doesn’t have one). Our Tarmac is quite rough from the paddock gate to the truck parking place and he tiptoes across it. The yard at Crossmere Livery where we had the SJ training is hard-core- he teetered into the arena and then jumped like a pro. The landings at Somerford XC are gravelled and prepared, none of those bother him but we have to walk down to the XC course on the grass verge because the hard-core track is too rough for him. Although to be fair he would walk on the stones now, but very slowly and carefully like an old man. His ears are still pricked, he doesn’t wear a pain face when he’s creeping down the gravel road, he just really takes his time and care. Then he steps onto the grass and sets off like a pocket rocket. He was jumping out of his skin the other day; so much so we are now on the waiting list for Skipton BE90.


So if any other barefooters out there have any tips or tricks to share, I would love to hear them.
Barefoot brain ache answers to date:

We are building a hard-core feed area in the field to counteract the winter mud; hopefully this will help to toughen up his feet and get him used to rougher surfaces.

These symptoms can reflect low-grade laminitis: the laminar connection at the coronary band and the top inch of hoof always looks good and tight but by the time the hoof wall hits the ground, the white line is a bit stretched and the toes are a bit like slippers. I can counteract the slipper tendency by light trimming with a radius rasp every couple of weeks, so his feet look very good most of the time now. I have tested for all forms of metabolic compromise, he has never been positive for insulin resistance, his ACTH was borderline for Cushing’s once but a trial of treatment with Agnus Castis,  Freestep Superfix and then Pergolide for 3 months didn’t make much difference so we have now stopped.

We changed the haylage to organic with a much better mineral analysis profile, as described in a previous post, and the foot sensitivity definitely improved but hasn’t vanished. Other parameters are vastly improved after the haylage change though; muscle tone, coat quality, general well-being.

His sole is thickening up nicely- he shed a load of sole at the end of winter but still has a good toe callous. He does have some minimal thrush around his frogs but nothing too horrible, and this goes altogether when the ground is dry.

So continues the barefoot brain ache: is Cal lame? What does lame mean?

Definition from Wikiepedia

“Lameness is an abnormal gait or stance of an animal that is the result of dysfunction of the locomotor system. In the horse, it is most commonly caused by pain, but can be due to neurologic or mechanical dysfunction.”

So he does have an abnormal gait that is likely caused by pain but this only occurs on a very specific surface and resolves immediately when the surface changes with no lasting effects. It can also be prevented by wearing boots.

When is a horse lame?

So to be lame, I would guess the change has to be persistent, occur on different surfaces, and I suppose on both reins because we all know now that uncorrected crookedness can look like lameness on one side on particular, and in fact used to be called “bridle lameness” before slow motion film made this dysfunction really obvious in Olympic dressage horses.

When Paddy and I were doing our tour of polo yards with Mel, one place we were at had an arena where they had simply scraped the grass off the top and left the soil as the surface. This “arena” grew stones every time they harrowed it. Now Paddy has always been a rock cruncher but if he stepped on a big rock whilst schooling he would hop off it and carry on. Our host, a vet and barefoot sceptic, used to say he was always lame…but the mis-step was a protective mechanism and only lasted for a stride; is that really lame or just sensible?

“A sound horse is a one who has no lameness or illness.”

So a rock crunching barefoot horse is most definitely sound, because if we accept that the feet are the barometer of whole horse health, (no foot no horse) and if they are functioning correctly, the rest of the horse must be pretty healthy too.

So is a gimping barefoot horse sound?

“The horse is sound for the service intended by the owner or rider. By sound, I mean the horse is comfortable: He’s not going lame from performing his job (barring accident or acute injury).”

Said Phillip Dutton in a fab article “What is Serviceably Sound? “

http://practicalhorsemanmag.com/article/what-is-serviceably-sound-11664

Cal is definitely serviceable sound. For what I want to do (eventing on mostly grass), his feet are good enough. He is not going lame from performing his job.

If we wanted to do endurance we would have to boot, but that’s fine, many of the winning horses in the Tevis Cup are booted. Unfortunately Renegades aren’t made big enough for half Irish bog ponies. We have had two pairs of Old Macs in 5 years, although these have had a tendency to fly off at speed. I’m currently road testing a pair of Cavallo Trecs- they flap around a bit but stayed on cantering around the hayfields last night.

So my conclusion to the barefoot brain ache is that Cal is serviceably sound, and in fact is perfectly sound, according to those definitions I have found.

Would he pass a vetting?

Only if the lungeing on a circle on the hard was done on super smooth tarmac.

How then do you vet a barefoot horse?

 

 

“My horse won’t cope barefoot..”

“My horse won’t cope barefoot”…I would like a pound for every time I have heard this statement. I’m sure every horse can cope barefoot, and indeed I personally am running out of reasons why I might ever put a metal shoe on a horse, but I know not every owner can cope barefoot.

Barefoot can be a hard choice. It would have been very easy with Cal for me to believe that my horse won’t cope barefoot. It’s been incredibly hard for me to keep looking for the metabolic issue, to get to the diagnosis of the systemic problem that is stopping him from being a good rock crunching barefooter. It would have been so easy for me to slap shoes on it and just carry on but then I would have missed the ulcers, had even less warning about the COPD and would never have treated the boderline Cushings, luckily getting his ACTH levels down with herbal supplements. It is difficult for someone who hasn’t read about barefoot properly or thought to question the status quo to understand that everything they know about horse husbandry is designed to wreck the healthy hoof. Most of the ways that we choose to look after horses are for our convenience and not for the horse’s health. I know this, I have been there. I had the “best” looked after polo ponies within the M25 when I was grooming all those years ago. I hated some of the Argie methods but I learned a huge amount from the polo itinerants, and from other horseman in Australia, Scotland, Germany.  I have continued to listen and learn ever since, with a completely open mind. And I have checked the science, the research and the evidence, as I would for my human cancer patients. We should be in a Golden Age of horsemanship. We have rigorous scientific methods, amazing equipment and skills to analyse and interpret data. We are in a position to test every aspect of horse care and the effects on the horse’s health and mental wellbeing. Unfortunately much of the science is paid for by those with vested interests, and those who belive they know horses the best don’t feel the need to question their knowledge.

Horses are designed to move, 12-15-20 miles a day in the wild. Horses are built to trickle feed on a variety of poor grasses. They would choose outdoor life in stable social groups with a reassuring hierarchy and plenty of  space to get away from the dominant bully. They are not meant to stand overnight in shavings soaked in their own urine and faeces, eat too much sugary starchy food, go out for a few hours a day in an individual turnout paddock, deprived of crucial contact and rituals such as mutual grooming, stuff themselves full of lush grass and work for only a few hours a week.

A friend today told me how their half TB horse won’t cope barefoot because she has typical thoroughbred rubbish feet. I understand where she’s coming from- I used to feel the same way. Paddy had the worst feet in Cheshire: despite industrial amounts of farriers formula, he could never hold shoes and his hoof wall was thin and crumbly. Plenty of other people have felt the same way, watching their horse with his unconditioned hooves gimping across the yard when he loses a shoe. You would gimp in exactly the same way if I took your shoes off and asked to  you to walk on hardcore or gravel straightaway.

When I took Paddy’s shoes off, many people, including the vet and the farrier told me that I would find that my horse won’t cope barefoot. However, Paddy forced me to try barefoot, by nearly killing several farriers, including the horse whispering blacksmith, and what I found was that his hooves and his brain improved immeasurably. He became sure-footed, confident and healthier. He stopped rushing his fences and I could feel him balancing his body underneath me. It took time; in Paddy’s case about three months, to get him to rock-crunching go-anywhere status. Now at 20 he is sound and still going strong. He had four fantastic seasons eventing barefoot, then taught my husband Gary to ride, hunt and team chase and is now giving my step-daughter Lizzie the confidence to explore the forest.

Paddy is 7/8 TB; it’s nothing to do with TB genes. There is actually no significant genetic difference between all the modern horses around the world. Traits, yes, genetic alteration, no. The only exception is the recessive Hoof Wall Separation Syndrome in Connemaras, a recessive syndrome. This tragic syndrome would cause early death in the wild and therefore the aberrant gene would be weeded out as it is a disadvantage to survival.

The reason thoroughbreds are thought to have rubbish feet is that they are kept confined from a young age, fed starchy food and shod regularly  from the age of two. The hoof doesn’t finish developing until the horse is about 6; if it is compromised from an early age of course it will be sub-standard. Alois Podhajsky recommends that mares and foals  move daily from night pasture to day pasture a couple of miles down a rocky track to help the foals’ limbs and feet develop. In the wild foals hit the ground, stand up, suckle and immediately start travelling with the herd, quickly averaging 12 miles a day in their early lives. There are trainers successfully racing thoroughbreds barefoot

http://www.simonearleracing.com/how_we_train_our_horses.html

and many stories of off the track thoroughbreds being successfully rehabilitated to new lives barefoot.

http://blog.easycareinc.com/blog/notes-from-the-field/off-the-track-thoroughbreds-all-with-beautiful-rehabilitated-feet

Stacey, my neighbour, http://www.forestholidaycottages.co.uk/ put it beautifully today. She said “what we call footy, a person who didn’t understand barefoot would call lame.”

Better qualified people than me have answered the same question

http://www.unshod.co.uk/articles/guide_healthy_hooves.php

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1715697055340441&set=a.1715697018673778.1073741985.100007004891239&type=3&theater

So Con today was great on smooth tarmac, striding out beautifully on fine gravel and small stones but picked his way carefully and a bit more slowly over larger stones and hardcore. His ears never went back, he never made a pain face, if his foot landed on a sharp stone he hopped off it like a sensible pony and occasionally he chose to use the soft ground at the side of the path on the very challenging ground. Some might say that this means my horse can’t cope barefoot. We hacked for 45 minutes around Delamere and had a couple of good trots and a short canter. Once we turned for home he positively marched back to the house. Is he lame???

Which then leads me to more questions-

how do we define lameness?

how do we do a full five stage vetting on a barefoot horse?

 

 

Barefoot is best…..but it ain’t always easy

For humans or for horses. Paddy is the horse that started us on our barefoot journey, and the accelerated learning that ensued: feeding horses naturally, the prevalence and effects of gastric ulcers in horses, natural husbandry, paddock paradise, track systems…and ultimately all these factors were drivers that led us to the purchase of our beautiful forest cottage.

Traditionally horses wear metal shoes, unless they really don’t need them. I remember ponies at riding school with no shoes, and later my German sister’s Arab horse regularly doing miles through the forest with no shoes. In fact there were quite a few horses in my sister’s village with no shoes at all doing lots of work and looking very well. But I live in Britain, and I always wanted to go eventing, and eventers need studs to go cross country, and so we needed shoes.

Paddy was cheap to buy and came with a reputation. Part of the reputation was that he hated the farrier. We cold shod him for a bit with a bucket of feed to keep him occupied but when I started eventing him, he “needed” studs, hot shoeing was required and the problem gradually escalated. We got sacked by one farrier, then the farrier cum horse whisperer started asking for him to be sedated until one day the shoes came off but the horse whisperer couldn’t get them back on. We had two events looming so I got the vet out, we formally sedated him, shod him  for the last two events of the season and I tried to make a sensible plan. Call out and sedation put the cost of shoes to £100 a pair. His feet were weak, crumbly, looked terrible, barely held nails and we were on a 5 week shoeing cycle. I started to ask myself if we needed shoes? Did I really need to event? Could he find another job? Did I need to sell him?

We had a climbing friend who was married to a barefoot trimmer, Sarah then from Performance Barefoot, later known as Forageplus.

https://forageplus.co.uk/

A vaguely remembered conversation got me thinking about barefoot horses in Germany, managing without shoes, hacking and jumping and galloping. I started reading, started asking lots of questions, re-examined what I knew about shoes and horses, spoke to Sarah at length, changed his diet, started buying white powdered magnesium oxide by the kilo and six weeks later we pulled his shoes off. He was 12 years old.

He was obviously lame on stones, as you would be if we took your shoes off and sent you out running,  but we were surrounded by super smooth tarmac- suddenly, with no shoes, all the steep, narrow, country roads felt much safer. We had Little Budworth Common with a sand track to canter on, so Paddy never missed any work. He tottered down the gravel drive, zoomed down the smooth tarmac and pulled like a train around the common. After about 2 months he zoomed down the gravel drive too, then down the hard core. Paddy is not a ploddy horse! We started jumping barefoot and he actually felt better: he adjusted his balance automatically and stopped rushing his fences. Grip just didn’t seem to be an issue. His feet got stronger and stronger. He had a couple of amazing seasons eventing; he has never been the most consistent horse but we got to the Riding Club National Championships for Horse Trials, Hunter Trials and moved up to BE100, the third level of affiliated competition. He was a cross country machine on his good days.

paddy profile

In retrospect it is so obvious: the hate of the farrier was pain from thin soles, poor hoof quality due to poor nutrition (although it was a reputable feed brand, just not the right food for a sensitive horse), and from repetitive hot shoeing. From having the worst feet in Cheshire he now has the best, toughest, most functional feet you could wish for.

This January my 20 year old barefoot machine went charging around the hills above Colwyn Bay with the Flint and Denbigh. We had a great day, he galloped up the hills, trotted up the steep lanes, jumped most things and kept right up with the thrusters. Best of all he had fun.

When I bought Paddy, I was on a great livery yard with a crowd of really good friends and we all bought new horses around the same time. Paddy is the only one of our horses from those times still in work, although he does now choose his days. The rest of the cohort is dead or retired now, most have been PTS. Commonest problem/ cause of euthanasia; forelimb lameness due to arthritis.

So for him barefoot was the answer.

However the reason the old boy got dragged up the hill that day was because Cal, my good horse, is not quite such a barefoot legend. He bruised his soles on Boxing Day racing around Rivington Pike on really stoney paths with the Holcombe Harriers. Paddy would have been OK up there but for Cal it was all a bit too much and he was still ouchy. And for my poor husband Gary, who sorted out the invite, did a lot of the prep and got us to Wales, his horse was also a bit footsore from Boxing Day and so he turned around early and had to wait in the lorry for the happy crew to return. Pretty galling.

Why are Cal and Con not rock crunching barefoot horses? I’m not sure yet, we are still working that one out. Cal I’m sure has an underlying metabolic condition. He tested borderline high for Cushings, has had severe RAO this summer and always looks a bit fat. When I work him enough (20-30 miles a week) his feet are tolerable. We are not doing that this winter. Con is just getting fit; he arrived quite obese after two years of being nanny to a yard full of youngsters. His wind and muscle tone are improving, I think his  under performing barefoot hooves are probably acting as a protecting limiting factor while the rest of his physiology tones up. Very frustrating for a relatively newly horse obsessed husband who loves the idea of hunting!