Tag: remedial shoeing

The perfect barefoot trim; Keeping the Ridden Horse Barefoot

The perfect barefoot trim is a bit like rocking horse pooh. The perfect barefoot trim is an elusive and illusory premise. There is a very good reason why Trim is part 4 of “Keeping the Ridden Horse Barefoot”.

I have previously described the 4 pillars of barefoot performance- they are Diet, Exercise, Environment and now finally I’m going to talk about Trim. The perfect barefoot trim.

Time for another disclaimer. I am not a trained hoof care professional. I am pretty handy with a rasp by necessity. I do trim my two working horses as required, and then get some muscle (sorry trimming expert) in to do a check up every few months.

Call landing confidently a good way round the 80 at Eland Lodge

Over the years I have been the responsible human for a few barefoot horses, doing all sorts of work, both in Europe and in Australia, some a long time before the barefoot movement was even a thing! And one of the more recent horses has turned out to be a very tricky barefooter- through whom I have met more hoofcare professionals than I ever thought possible!

When I look back over the years, I have always known horses that didn’t need shoes. And back in my youth, I don’t remember the horses that didn’t wear shoes needing a special trimmer.

But in my youth I’d never known so many horses shod back to back literally for years without a break. I’d never seen 3 year olds shod as soon as they started work. We had really fast polo ponies in Australia that didn’t wear shoes. And some really classy show jumpers. Looking back I don’t think I ever met a farrier in Australia, despite working as a full time groom for a year. My sister and her friends have trekked hundreds of miles around the forests of Germany in unshod horses. The Argie polo grooms, the Australian farmers and the German happy hackers all had rasps in their grooming kit to tidy up any cracks or splits in the hooves.

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The reason I saved “Trim” until last is because if the Diet, Exercise and Environment are right, then radical trimming can become unnecessary. We can split hairs (or hooves) about the definition of a self trimming (or self maintaining) horse but life is pretty sweet when we achieve this; for the horse and the human

Another self trimming horse

And if the diet or environment aren’t good enough, then specialist or remedial trimming may be necessary to compensate or alleviate pathology to some degree; for example, navicular can be really successfully rehabbed barefooot

Navicular rehab at Rockley Farm

as can laminitis be treated and avoided

Laminitis- prevention first

Nic Barker at Rockley Farm has not trimmed any of her horses for about 9 years

The famous celery post

but I’m still not sure whether this approach is feasible for the majority of horse owners. The tracks at Rockley Farm are pretty unique, as is the rough Exmoor grass in between.

Over recent years trying to get Cal’s feet right I have met trimmers trained under all umbrellas: the UKNHCP, the EPA, trimmers who trained with Jaime Jackson (Mr Paddock Paradise) himself, others who followed KC La Pierre, and a couple of farriers, including one who practises under ‘grandfather’ rights. I spent years looking for the magic solution, the one person who would be able to make Cal’s weird feet look like nice round hooves and function better.

Cal 2016
They never look pretty, but they do now work

I drove myself, and many trimmers and hoof care professionals to distraction.

When I met Emma Bailey, I found someone I could have an ongoing conversation with. We tried every approach; super radical trims every 2-3 weeks, trying to model the hoof into a specific shape, we let the hoof wall get long to act like a natural version of rim shoes, we tried keeping the toes super short, controlling the flare, leaving the heels, balancing the heels, rasping the heels, taking down the bars, leaving the bars…..

Can I tell you a secret?

No matter what we did, the hoof always looked the same two weeks later….

Just like the horse grows enough foot to keep up with the wear created by work, the more you trim a hoof, the more exuberantly it grows!

The more you trim a particular flare, the more it responds, with more flare.

And you can’t force a pathological hoof to change to a healthy shape, until you remove the pathological stimulus. Sort the diet, correct the movement with training and bodywork, and then the foot will reflect the change inside and above.

Cal did grow better feet, eventually. Once I had the  inflammatory conditions damped down with a diet that is starch and sugar free, organic, and varied with plentiful anti oxidants. Once I knew to avoid combination wormers, fertilised forage and processed food. Once I understood the importance of hind gut health, and the role of the biome in driving or controlling inflammation, his feet improved immensely.

Cal storming the XC st Eland Lodge

The perfect barefoot husbandry regime leaves your horse sound, functional, comfortable, balanced and landing heel first confidently on most terrain.

Barefoot Hoof poetry in slow motion

True rock crunchers are a joy to behold, but not all horses will get there whilst living in England’s pleasant pastures and mountains green, particularly now rye grass, fertilisers, and pesticides are so ubiquitous.

My long and painful journey to get Cal to a point where his hooves are functional is the whole purpose of this blog- I hope by sharing the knowledge I have acquired I can save some of you either time, tears or money.

This was a lightbulb photo – this is a not just a funny shape it a sub clinical laminitic hoof- curved hair line, subtle event rings.

So here are my hard won words of wisdom:

  1. Hooves reflect what is going on in the physiology of the horse. If the horse is footsore, sensitive, tentative on challenging surfaces, there is an issue with the metabolism that has not been addressed. The short version is that there is inflammation somewhere in the body. The foot is quite possibly showing signs of sub clinical laminitis.
  2. Laminitis is a systemic disease- the horse’s feet are the affected end organ, like a diabetic foot in humans. It is not cured by focusing on the foot.
  3. The inflammation may require a holistic approach to damp it down. Putting shoes on a sore horse is like putting a sticking plaster on a pressure sore; it hides the wound but doesn’t address the problem.
  4. Inflammation can be addressed from the hindgut first; the more I learn about the biome, the more convinced I am that the answers to many diseases, both horse and human, are to be found in the micro-biome.
  5. Once the horse is healthy, GUT first remember, and there is no inflammation, then the feet reflect the biomechanics of the horse. This can be improved, by careful attention and good, classical gymnastic training.
  6. In the meantime you can trim those flares as much as you need to but until the loading pattern from above is altered, the wear pattern will persist and the flares will keep coming back. This stage is a bit chicken and egg; you may need to keep the flares under control to allow correct loading of the limb while the horse develops and changes.
  7. So to summarise: trim, as much as you need to, and as little as you can get away with. Take frequent photos and video. And if the feet aren’t performing, don’t just keep blaming the trim, sort out the rest of the horse first. SERIOUSLY. That particular nugget of truth has taken me 6 years to understand, accept, and completely internalise as a guide to keeping my horse well. Save yourselves the pain and learn from my journey.

If you do shoe your horse, please be aware that you miss many of the early warning signs that he is only just coping with our even warmer, wet weather giving us increasingly more lethal green, lush, rich British pastures.

And give him a shoeing break- this photo is the most scary I have ever seen

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This is a diagram from a book by Bracy Clark (1771-1860), an English Veterinary surgeon, who specialised in the hoof and wrote extensively about the harm caused by shoeing

There is no perfect barefoot trim. But once the Diet, Exercise and Environment are in balance, then the hoof will be healthy and we should be able to trim as little as possible and as rarely as required.

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Keeping Ridden Horses barefoot- the good the bad and the ugly

Every now and then I come across a new horsey friend who doesn’t know and understand why I am such a keen advocate for keeping ridden horses barefoot.

At these times,  I find myself re-telling the story that has got me and my horses to this point, and I think I should do a blog summary of the advantages and pitfalls of keeping ridden horses barefoot.

The good

The best thing, and I mean simply the best thing, about keeping ridden horses barefoot, and eventing said barefoot horses, is never having to worry about studs ever again.

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Not only do I eliminate hours of prep, cleaning out stud holes, tapping stud holes, packing stud holes, putting in studs, searching for studs in the long grass, chasing the foot around with the tap still in the hole and all the other nightmares associated with the logistics of studding a razzed up horse, I don’t have to worry about what size of stud to use, nor the possible damage done to foot and forelimb by the unnatural stress and shear force transmitted to the horse from a studded foot.

You know how footballers are always fracturing their tarsal bones? This is due to the foot gripping suddenly at speed and all that kinetic energy getting transmitted to the bones of the foot at an angle and intensity those bones are not meant to withstand. Horse’s feet are meant to flex, in order to absorb the concussion of landing, and are also designed to slide a little before gripping, to protect the bones of the foot and the more precious bones and ligaments above.

And without shoes and studs, I get the benefit of the horse’s own natural gripping mechanism. The horse’s hoof is beautifully designed to function on all surfaces when healthy. A concave sole with a pointed toe allows the foot to dig in for extra lift. The fully developed spongy frog provides grip, slows the sliding and acts as a cushion shock absorber, a bit like Nike Airs, that also helps to pump blood back up the limb. The bars and quarters act like the cleats in a pair of football boots.

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Keeping ridden horses barefoot also ensures that they have the benefit of optimal proprioception when we humans are on board.  Proprioception is ‘the perception of awareness of the position and movement of the body’, and a key component of the information required fir the horse, or any animal, is the ability to feel the ground beneath their feet. The ability to access and use that information to adjust to uneven or challenging terrain is an essential part of balance and of healthy movement.  Our human shoes are mostly supple and flex with our feet; horseshoes generally are not. I often think be by shod must feel like being permanently stuck in winter mountaineering boots with crampons- these have a completely rigid sole that does not flex at all; can you imagine trying to walk any distance in your ski boots? You have to do the funky chicken in the joints above to make up for the fact the foot doesn’t flex as it was meant to.

And can you remember how cold your feet get in ski boots, or even in wellies, in winter? That feeling when your feet are like blocks of ice, solid lumps with no fine touch sensation and it’s difficult to wriggle your toes? And you feel like you are walking on chunks of solid flesh rather than a fully functioning foot? That feeling is caused by impaired circulation; in the cold the blood flow to our extremities is reduced to prevent us losing excessive heat from those areas. The foot goes numb, and is less functional.

Thermal imaging allows us to compare the temperature difference, and therefore blood flow, between a shod foot and a barefoot hoof.

http://equinethermography.co.uk/galleries/horse_hoof_thermal_gallery.php

Immobility leads to impaired circulation. When your feet are cold you wiggle your toes to get the blood going; likewise a functioning equid foot flexes and contracts as it contacts the ground, pushing the blood around the hoof and limb.

The horn is still a living substance, more solid than our foot but certainly not rigid as we are led to believe.

Overly tight shoes also lead to impaired circulation. We know this from our own experience; why would horses be different?

What do steel horseshoes do? The rigidity of the steel limits the natural flexion of the foot, converting a conformable, dynamic structure into a fixed, immobilised structure. The nails and the tightness of the shoe impair circulation; even if the shoes are beautifully fitted to the hoof on day one of the shoeing cycle, as the hoof grows, the shoe and the nails become restrictive. Just observe how much the hoof grows out of shoes during your winter shoeing break compare to how slowly it grows in between shoeing cycles.

The impaired circulation from restrictive shoeing mimics chilled toes; the horse therefore suffers from impaired proprioception, both from cold feet and from being deprived of crucial mechanical contact between the sole of the foot and the ground.

In a healthy foot, the frogs act as extra pumps, moving blood around the foot and back up the limb, and also acting as a hydrostatic shock absorption mechanism. A cadaver model has actually shown that a barefoot hoof absorbs nearly ALL the concussion created by landing the limb, and therefore very little force is transmitted further up the limb, minimising damage and wear on the rest of the joints.

http://www.healthyhoof.com/articles/concussion_study.php

Another interesting fact is that steel horseshoes vibrate at the exact same frequency that causes the industrial injury “vibration white finger” in humans. It’s a frequency that causes necrosis or tissue death. Not all shoes do this- Cytek and other plastic shoes don’t have this effect, nor do aluminium racing plates. But steel horseshoes do.

The Bad

What are the disadvantages of keeping ridden horses barefoot? The main problem that I have observed is that we get instant feedback about how fit, well and sound our horses are.

Photo courtesy of V&T equine services

The motto above may not be an easy motto to live by, but it is the truth. Keeping ridden horses barefoot gives us really accurate information about our horse’s fitness to work.

Lucinda Green tells a great story about a racing trainer friend who has recently started legging up his horses barefoot. He is noticing fewer early season injuries, and much better longevity from his charges. Why?

Because shoeing had previously allowed him to work the horses harder than their bones, joints and tendons were ready for. By building up the work barefoot, he could only increase the intensity of work at the rate the feet were conditioned for; which accurately reflected the conditioning of the limbs above.

When keeping the ridden horse barefoot, we also get instant feedback about our horse’s general health. Event lines in the horn of the hoof document times of metabolic challenge. You will see a line for each dose of wormer, each vaccination, every flush of grass. If you’ve moved yards, or if your horse has had an injury, or another reason for a period of stress, there will be a ripple visible.

Is the horse footy on stones? Mostly it will have had too much sugar in its diet, or have a pro- inflammatory process going on. I am now ashamed that it took me a good few years to twig that Cal’s funny feet were actually borderline laminitic.

Laminitis is a funny disease- it’s much more akin to diabetes, a disorder of sugar metabolism that affects the whole body, than a disease limited to the foot. The horse’s foot is the end organ most often damaged by the systemic disturbance, a bit like diabetic foot injuries in humans. Cal had terrible airway inflammation, low level laminitic feet, probable ulcers and some very peculiar skin lumps- all of these are manifestations of systemic inflammation. Once I listened to the story his feet were telling me I found the answer to all his ailments.

The solution- strictly organic, low sugar low starch diet with wrapped late cut meadow hay and Phytorigins amazing supplements for hindgut health, maximum anti oxidant support and optimal digestive efficiency.

the results speak for themselves

So the main disadvantage of keeping ridden horses barefoot is that you will inevitably become much more in tune with your horse’s body. Once you start listening and observing, I warn you now, not all the information is welcome. You may have to adjust your plans and ambitions to fit in with the horse’s schedule, their current capabilities. Your ego may have to step aside. You may have to train at their rate. You may have to learn new skills, such as a little light hoof trimming. You may have to become a feed geek, or a grass geek 😜, or get a whole degree’s worth of knowledge from bitter experience!!

I say it’s worth it.

The ugly

My friend the vet said to me many years ago – “you do see some really odd shaped feet on barefoot horses”

He said this as if it was a problem, as if the trimming was at fault, or those misshapen hooves were dangerous to the horse’s long- term soundness. He was almost offended by the lack of symmetry, and that someone could allow it to persist.

My current level of understanding is that feet reflect both what’s going on inside the horse and also above in the musculoskeletal system.

Nic of Rockley Farm wrote a brilliant blog back in 2013 about flares and deviation; it’s probably the single most useful blog post I have ever read

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/03/flare-deviation-and-does-it-really.html

If the horse has funny looking feet, it’s likely because it needs funny looking feet, or because, at this moment, it can only grow funny looking feet. Fix the diet, treat the whole horse,allow and correct the movement, and beautiful feet will grow.

Simples

Nic writes from years of solid experience and is always a source of comfort and inspiration and power on badass barefoot days

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2017/10/ask-how-and-why-and-dont-be-afraid-to.html

Asking How? and Why? of any horse care professional is your right, and your duty as guardian of your horse.

if you are not yet ready to not shoe, do please burn this image on your brain. And give those feet a good long shoeing break every year, to keep the feet looking more like the healthy foot on the left of the picture than the right.

Educate yourself. Turn into a hoof geek. And a horse health geek. Ask questions. Be honest with yourself- what do you see when you look at your horse’s feet?

And remember- no foot no horse

A couple of book recommendations to get you started on your barefoot journey

Feet First by Nic Barker and Sarah Braithwaite

Barefoot Horse Keeping-the Integrated Horse by Anni Stonebridge & Jane Cumberlidge

This article is also available as a podcast

https://soundcloud.com/fran-mcnicol/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

 

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Another self trimming horse

After owning Cal for 7 years I am very proud and pleased to announce that I have another self trimming horse!!

And once again, now it’s a reality, I’m wondering why it took me so long to understand that even funny feet Cal could be a self trimming horse.

For any self respecting hoof nerd, a self trimming horse is the ultimate aim. The self trimming horse has a perfect balance between wear and growth, balances his own feet through work to the shape that suits him, and is sound in the work he does.

I never thought Cal could be a self trimming horse, until my barefoot life seemed to come full circle.

I’ve written previously about how my barefoot journey began

Barefoot Brain-ache

And about my trials and tribulations with funny feet Cal

Horse needs shoes and pads

Including the point where we thought we had really cracked it.

Barefoot Breakthrough

but all along, I was operating from within a false paradigm, despite hoof geeking obsessively all these years!

I thought a horse’s hooves had to be good before he could become a self trimming horse.

Barefoot beginnings

Now, I started my barefoot journey thanks to Sarah of Forageplus. Sarah wrote a book with Nic Barker (of Rockley Farm rehab fame) called Feet First

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feet-First-Barefoot-Performance-Rehabilitation/dp/0851319602

which was the original barefoot bible for those brave souls bucking the trend in the late 90’s!

Diet

It was early days- barefoot horse owners were considered eccentric freaks. Sarah drove around the county to trim clients horses with a huge tub of magnesium oxide in the back of her jeep and a set of scales. Who knows what the police would have made of her white powder delivery round?

We didn’t know as much about best nutrition for healthy feet as we do now, although we knew diet was the key.

As was work.

Exercise

When I transitioned Paddy he was being looked after by Mel the polo groom. He did at least 5 miles daily plus whatever I did with him in the evenings and weekends. And luckily, due to the facilities locally, he was able to do that comfortably from the first day his shoes came off. Glass smooth tarmac really is the best surface for conditioning rock crunching feet!!

Hoof boots were really hard to buy, really clumpy and mostly imported from America and made for little horses with dainty feet. I didn’t bother for Paddy- he never needed them.

Then along came Cal. He arrived from Ireland in the most horrific set of shoes. Looking back I’m really not sure how I didn’t spot the really funny feet.

I can’t find any early feet photos but believe me the whole of the hoof capsule sat in front of a line dropped down the cannon bone!!

This photo is from about 18months after I bought him. In that time he had fractured a carpal bone (in shoes) tripping over that toe, and was about a year into his barefoot rehab.

Now you would never say that foot could belong to a self trimming horse would you?

Environment

Shortly after this photo was taken we bought our own place and started applying everything we knew about creating the perfect feet. We had our six acre field which we proudly put a track around, our very own #paddockparadise

I mineral balanced to our now steady supply of late cut meadow hay, and then later Haylage.

We soil tested and actually applied the chemicals as recommended by the Albrecht protocol.

Grow your own….

We tried to do our rock crunching milage around the fabulous #Delamereforest and surrounding area.

Trim

and we kept looking for the perfect trim that would finally turn that peculiar set of feet into something functional. I went through a posse of trimmers over the first few years. Sarah wasn’t trimming much as her business grew, so we needed an alternative. My first choice wasn’t flexible enough to fit in around my hectic work schedule. The next was lovely but then got poorly and needed a couple of operations. I went back to a UKHNCP trimmer for an alternative view. The alternative then moved down south! I sought a couple of second opinions, one of whom did a really radical trim which left him sore for weeks. Then I eventually met Emma Bailey, who is a good listener, really knows her nutrition and is always keen to discuss with and learn from all horses and clients. She is also good friends with Nick Hill and Ralitsa, the holistic vet, so we got 3 heads to scratch.

We went through gentle trims, more invasive trims, leaving the flares, taking the flare off, trim the bars, leave the bars, attack the toe, swipe the heels… yet no matter what we tried, the feet improved a bit month by month yet remained stubbornly slipper like

With thin soles, shallow collateral grooves and little heel height.

He was surprisingly functional over the years, despite the feet looking flat and poor, he has worked hard on all surfaces except stones and we have had some great fun

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55sjNB8nhYVHUrASlthXCJkdGsqql_RF

Then Emma went on a workshop with Nic Barker and my barefoot life came full circle.

Any self respecting hoof nerd will know of Nic’s seminal blog piece ‘Celery’

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2011/04/dont-even-think-of-touching-that-hoof.html

And in the most recent blog follow up on that theme, not much in her learning and experience has changed

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2018/09/put-down-rasp-and-pick-up-celery.html

Now I always have believed in self trimming horses! Paddy was essentially self trimming apart from a check every 3 months, and a touch up for trips out, and Rocky looks like he will go the same way, but for some reason, it had never occurred to me with Cal. How could those pathological feet possibly become healthier without help?

Luckily Emma is a good listener. She cane back from the workshop and basically waved a rasp at all 3 horses. And told me to get out there and work them and see what occurs.

There’s been a sub solar abscess or something funky by my hand on this foot- there’s a load of false sole and a chip out of the bar

And guess what?

Cal’s finally growing the feet he needs.

Yes -there is lots of bar- he obviously needs it.

Yes -theoretically you could tighten the foot up to the white line…but it opens up again more or less straight away.

Yes -there looks like some flare from the top but from the bottom they are actually not too bad.

And yes- that toe can still come back, and it does, a few gentle swipes every time I ride.

And best of all- look at the depth of those collateral grooves!! That is new and special and exciting!

Now I’m not saying he’ll never get trimmed again. Those toes need touching up, as do any cracks and chips.

But the more we trimmed, the more hoof he grew, but exactly the same foot! Now we are not trimming so persistently, the foot is growing more slowly but is also building itself up, from the inside.

And so I’ve come full circle, back to celery – in a healthy horse, barefoot is never all about the trim.

I think I finally have a healthy horse- that’s been another journey, getting the diet right, and now we have stopped messing around ‘fixing’ his feet, we seem to have acquired another self trimming horse.

I’ll leave you with the Rockley rehabs for inspiration. The feet in this barefoot ‘hoof porn’ film are all self trimming, and all incredibly functional.

N.B. Until you’ve seen a horse move and the hoof land you cannot judge the level of function.

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/p/barefoot-in-slow-motion.html

Is your horse self trimming?

Does it land heel first?

If not, have you ever thought that less could be more?

Horse needs shoes and pads

Your horse needs shoes and pads….or does it?

Cal right fore Sept 2016

Cal left fore Sept 2016
These are Cal’s x-rays from the end of summer. He was sore on stoney ground, stopping when jumping, a bit stuffy generally. He was 100% sound on grass, soft ground and smooth tarmac in all 3 gaits. He had some white line separation, and long toes that seemed to take off forwards within a day or two of being trimmed. He didn’t have prominent event lines.

The vet who did the x-rays said “your horse needs shoes and pads” to increase sole thickness, and a rest from work while the feet grew. He also recommended taking the toe back.

Now as we know I am not the sort of person who gratuituously ignores experts, but I do want to know what benefits they expect to see with their recommended interventions. “Your horse needs shoes and pads”

Why shoes? and why pads? and do the two need to go together?

Lesson 1 from our barefoot experience- a hoof needs stimulus to grow. Stimulus requires movement.

Lesson 2- horses need movement to thrive.

Lesson 3- a stabled horse is a compromised horse.

What sort of rest? My version of rest is as much movement as is comfortable and safe. Walking around a field grazing is essentially rest for a horse. Anything involving less freedom is confinement and therefore not particularly restful. Please don’t get me wrong, confinement might be required if weightbearing or walking is to be prevented but that clearly wasn’t the case here.

Cal lives out 24/7.

“Your horse needs shoes and pads”

So what were the pads for?

The function of the pads is to provide constant sole stimulus to which the horse’s foot will respond by growing more sole. I consulted both farriers and barefoot trimmers and all agreed on the effectiveness of this intervention.

Do pads need to go under shoes or is there another effective way of padding soles? Did he really need shoes?

Pads can also go in hoof boots. The most time-efficient solution was 24/7 padding to grow sole as quickly as possible. Shoes are obviously a 24/7 solution. There are all sorts of shoes that can apply padding- from full steel to cyber plastic Eponas. I didn’t want to put nails in feet we have spent 3 years getting strong out of shoes. And glue-ons apparently aren’t a great solution in our wet UK climate. So really we needed hoof boots that could be worn 24/7.

Until I found Scoot Boots this would have been impossible for us- the draught feet are limited in the boots available and the previous clunky canvas boots would have rubbed or got lost. However Scoots are light, made of flexible rubber that doesn’t rub, drain well, don’t seem to trap stones or dirt, and so far have stayed put in all but the roughest horse play in silly mud.

Cal has worn his Scoot boots for 3 months, mostly. He had a couple of weeks off when the mud got very deep and then another week off recently when waiting for new pads. He had a few days off work but was so comfortable in his boots that we just went for it- the only way to ensure horses do decent mileage is to do some of it with them. The best barefoot performance feet are always those that do 20-30miles a week, ideally on bouncy tarmac to stimulate growth.

I haven’t jumped him since I saw those x-rays, but we have walked, trotted and cantered in our Scoot boots all over Delamere and Cheshire, and schooled diligently doing our Classical Riding homework.

It seems that Cal is determined to make me complete the journey to training a finished dressage horse, without pesky eventing distractions.

He is also determined to teach me to trim- those toes need weekly attention to keep them back there under control. But that is another story.

Cal right fore Dec 2016

Cal left fore Dec 2016
Now I will confess I was nervous when Cal went back for these X-rays. Had I wasted 3 months being stubborn? Should I just have had him shod?

I knew he was no worse, and in many ways he was much better, boucing around on tarmac, cruising slowly over stones, but I wanted to see a better toe angle and a thicker sole to give me the confidence to persevere with our alternative plan.

Thankfully the evidence is clear- our strategy is working. I’ll carry on with the regimen, and the journey, and the not jumping…for now (!). Next X-rays in another 12 weeks- in time for the start of the season.

So my horse didn’t need shoes, but he did need pads.

Educate yourselves, question everything, learn about alternatives.

The vet wasn’t wrong, he just has a huge experience of traditional remedial farriery methods and very little experience of alternative barefoot rehab. I’m sure they had no idea that this positive effect could be achieved without shoes “for support”, and how could they learn any different if they always recommend shoes.

We are delighted, but not smug. I’m just glad it’s working, and happy to spend the time putting the slow miles in and not leaving the ground too often…..for now!

horse doesn't need shoes and pads
Cal at Berriewood
Posted for inspiration for 2017 :-p