deshoeing by barefoot trimmers

Hi Pootler
Re:" the farriers I have access to in my area have a tendency to be unable to discuss horses feet without either feeling affronted that the owner dares ask a question, patronising to said owner or just down-right rude!"

And you still don't dislike farriers, you must be well chilled.

I am sorry to hear of your experience but glad you have found someone.
 
just using quick reply so not aimed at anyone specific and also this is just my opinion on this thread.
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why are so many people against barefoot trimming?
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is it because of the recent bad press it has had recently with the court cases?
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Im not going to lie, yes I was sceptical but after the problems im having with Ebi and her inspecified lameness ive been doing lots of research on the internet. Ive found loads of good info out but then there is the crap.

Ive had lots of discussions with Hoofsculpture and my NH trainer who also does barefoot trimming. Yes the chats with Hoofsculpture have been very good - ive checked out the info hes given me and hes not lying or telling people a load of crap. Hes honest and is just trying to advice people that there are other ways to help your horses feet rather than just farriers. A lot of horses who have problems have been helped by the barefoot methods.
My NH trainer acquired a horse that was going to PTS due to chronic navicular. She removed his shoes and treated him with barefoot methods - he is now being able to be ridden, jumped everything again. There must be something in it or things like this wouldnt happen.

Ive invested in 2 books that have been recommended to my by my NH trainer, before I make the decision on what to do:
Horse Owner's Guide to Natural Hoof Care by Jaime Jackson
Making Natural Hoof Care Work For You by Pete Ramey

So im making my way through the Jaime Jackson book first. WOW is all I can say. It is so interesting, the facts and studies he has done. Im not saying im a complete and utter convert but im not against it. Just after reading the first 2 chapters it has changed my thoughts on barefoot trimming. Its not all the way that the Strasser method is.
Im not saying that traditional farriers are rubbish. Im not ripping them apart. Im certainly not calling mine anything as they are both brilliant, but Ebi isnt happy with her feet and this could/couldnt be due to the shoeing/trimming. I have nothing to loose with trying barefoot trimming. Shes lame currently so if shes lame with the barefoot way then ive lost nothing. If she comes sound then ive gained everything.
 
Its a fair question.

You hardly ever hear the basis of shoeing mentioned in horsey mags or books so let's give it a quick run through:

Hoofs wear due to abrasion with the ground during travel. The limit to amount of travel a horse can do in a given time period is determined by the rate of hoof growth: when the rate of wear equals the rate of growth, that is the maximum limit. The limit can be increased almost indefinitely by shoeing, the principle being to cover the hoof with a material that wears instead. Of course that prevents hoof wear so you now have to trim the foot even if you aren't doing enough work to wear the shoe down.

So if you're over the work limit you need to shoe end of story. But why shoe if you're under the work limit ? Well there are several answers (like supporting the hoof etc) but I sometimes wonder whether the proportion of cases for which this is really necessary is quite small. Certainly horse shoes are the evil works of satan that Dr Strasser preaches, there's no evidence that they interfere with hoof function in a way that is detrimental to the horse, but they are an addition that is not required by nature to sustain normal function of the hoof. So I'm pretty neutral about the whole thing, if you want to try riding around without shoes on, good luck to you and if nothing else, if it works for you, you'll save a bit a money which could be spent on chocolate.
 
Nothing against barefoot trimming as long as it is done by someone who knows what they are talking about and not someone like Strasser who is to blame for who knows how many crippled horses.

Farriers spend years in training for a reason.
 
Cheers puddicat for replying
BUT
I now dont fully agree with what you have said about the amount of travel a horse can do.
yes it might be because im reading the Jaime Jackson book but it is all so simple with what he says.
Yes the metal shoes are the work of the devil. They stop the hoof from doing what it does naturally. Shoes do inhibit the natural functions of the hoof and its natural way of going along with the limb inteference with shoes can cause injury. The horses foot was designed to be unshod. Anything that we add on extra is going to interfere with its natural process.The shoes and all its nail and clips (however many it has put in) all help constrict the horses foot to epand and contract.
If the hoof was treat as it was in a natural state then the foot would become more callous therefore enabling it to work longer periods over different terrain. I know that this is all going to sound like im quoting the book but it really does make sense.
I understand what you are saying if the horse isnt doing much work but realistically it should be able to move forward to do much more work and still not suffer from this.
Yes there will be horses that cannot cope without shoes but im sure that they would be few and far between. Have a look at these photos that I took of an accident that my pony had to her foot:



after:


I forwarded these onto both my NH trainer and Hoofsculpture for their advice on whether the owner of said foot could ever go barefoot again.
What do you think there answer was??? what do you think??? could it or not??
 
im not saying that farriers arent good at what they do nor am I saying that the training they recieve isnt good. However there are some poor farriers, who I believe shouldnt be shoeing horses and some people could say that they are no better than the people who have been performing the strasser trim and who have had court proceedings against them. I am very lucky and have 2 very good farriers whoI believe do the best for my horses not their own pockets!!

Yes I agree - as long as the person nows what they are doing, not just pretending.

I dont fully agree with the Strasser comment. I will however agree that some of the people that have taken their training in the Strasser method and who have been recently in court over their cruelty are to blame. How many more strasser timmers are there out there that have never caused cruelty to their animals?? yes there may be a few or none but we dont know. We have only been shown the one that are in the news, which is a very biased opinion of the strasser trim.

I would not have the strasser trim done to any of my horses due to the bad publicity that has gone on however I wouldnt let anyone touch my horses that hasnt got a clue or doesnt seem fully aware of what they are doing or what damage could be done.

The people who I have spoken to about the barefoot trimmings are very highly skilled and I trust them 100% to do the job that I ask and do the best job they can with the skills and training they have had. Yes they arent trained like farriers are but a lot of them do great jobs and do not cause cruelty or harm to animals - some deserve a lot of praise for the work they do and what outcomes they can do eg in the case of the horse with navicular. How must this horse now feel, now he has the freedom in his feet and is no longer duffering like he was when he was shod?
 
Well, see if we can get to the reasons...

I now dont fully agree with what you have said about the amount of travel a horse can do.

Which bit don't you agree with and why. What I've said can be expressed in a mathematical equation and shown to be correct by collecting data from any hooved animal. The statements that travel causes wear and rate of wear must be less than rate of growth can be shown to be true. If you tell me where you think the problem is with that I'll go into more detail?


You're sounding very like the good Dr Strasser with your views on shoes so let me try to explain why they are baseless. You do what Strasser does, you draw incorrect conclusions from basically reasonable statements of the fairly obvious. Look:

They stop the hoof from doing what it does naturally.

Yes, taken literally that is true. Specificaly the function that is interfered with is expansion of the hoof capsule at the heels.

Shoes do inhibit the natural functions of the hoof and its natural way of going along with the limb inteference with shoes can cause injury.

No, properly fitted shoes don't interfere with the gait of the animal in any significant way this can and has been shown. Moreover in some cases shoes can be used beneficially to affect gait.

The horses foot was designed to be unshod.

Of course this is true, but isn't it a fatuous statement? Human feet weren't designed to be shod, horses weren't designed to carry riders, humans weren't designed to ride bycicles. There is no implications that can be drawn from this.

Anything that we add on extra is going to interfere with its natural process.

This statement is also true in a literal sense, but again it is not helpful because (1) the size of the effect needs to be established, it may be insignificant and (2) the effect can be positive. You are interfering with the natural process of your own heel when you wear shoes - so why don't you go barefoot to work? Might it be because shoes compliment the natural function of your heel by extending it function beyond the limitations of biological materials?

The shoes and all its nail and clips (however many it has put in) all help constrict the horses foot to epand and contract.

The questions you need to ask is, does the expansion of the heels serve any functional role. The best answer that science can give at the moment is - probably not. Heel expansion occurs as a consequence of the stiffness of hoof horn and the amount of material present in the hoof wall. Both these factors are determined by more important considerations. The determining factor is easily likely to be that the hoof wall is as stiff as it needs to be. There is nothing to say that adding a shoe to prevent expansion might enhance the function of the system in the same way that shoes help us to do more shopping.

 
puddicat, cant be arsed to copy the bits so will just put the bold bits in number order (being a bit lazy) dont want to offend you.
I agree with everything you have said. Dont know whether I agree with the Dr Strasser comment as I havent looked into any of his writings etc so cant say whether or not I do sound like him. Sorry if I do, dont mean too
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1)the reason I said i didnt full agree with the travel comment is surely the hoof wall should be strong enough to cause very little wear over different terrain. for example How do these endurance horses cope barefoot when doing lots of miles? they must be able to or they would be shod.
Now i agree that some horses seem to be unable to cope and therefore need shoeing.
2) we agree - goodo
3)i was more meaning of damage eg tendon strike, oeverreach etc. The damage wouldnt be half as much if there was no shoes. but then thinking about it how many farriers fit the hoof to a shoe rather than the shoe to the hoof. Sure there are some that are lazy and do not correctively fit the shoes to the horses, therefore causing problems?
4) yes can see that point. but if we were to walk barefoot it would difficult but we'd get used to it as our feet became harder. We then wouldnt feel the pain or anything assosciated with it. No horses werent meant to be ridden but look at the indians, theyre all barefoot horses and rider
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puddicat, didnt want to get into an argument or anything like that I just really wondered why a lot of people slated barefoot trimming when there is a lot that can be learnt from it. We do seem to have moved a long long way away from when all horses were barefoot. I think a lot of people only have their horses shod because everyone else does. It seems to be like the fashion statements when you go to any competition whether it be show jumping or dressage (only for example not meaning anything derogatory about it) - eg grakle nosebands were a big thing recently, same with spurs, the nice big fluffy wool half pads. Is it sometimes not classed as the thing to do because everyone else does it?? sheep??

btw - do you think the pony in the photos could go barefoot with that foot?
 
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btw - do you think the pony in the photos could go barefoot with that foot?

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I don't see why not. One of my horses badly injured his foot and the hoof grew back with the same deep scarring that your horse's hoof has. The moment my horse's hoof scars grew out, he was absolutely fine barefoot and has been ever since.
 
quote "puddicat, didnt want to get into an argument or anything like that.."

I'm not arguing I'm debating, it's fun and I might learn something. Anyone can say stuff and it doesn't necessarily mean anything at all so I'm always interested in getting into why people believe things and what their evidence is. That allows me to decide whether I think they have a valid point. OK I'll reply by points too.

1) It is but that doesn't contradict what I said. Its possible to make the statement that rate of hoof wear needs to be less than rate of hoof growth without saying what the rates are. If we get into numbers then there is a big difference between wear on endurance type terrain and wear on roads. Its no coincidence that the Romans invented roads and also started iron-shoeing horses. I think it was Horace Hayes who wrote that he always used to look to see if animals were shod when he landed in a foreign country (this is late C19th) as it told him whether the civilisation had got as far as building roads. I've always thought this was a nice observation.

3) Yes that happens but it's infrequent and it can be guarded against by using boots. I don't see it as a good argument against the whole idea of shoeing although its a good argument that shoeing should be done in a way to minimise the risk.

4) Yes thats true and people do in several parts of the world but we're talking about a continuous scale where there is a limit. Even after adaptation to barefoot there is still a level beyond which any animal cannot go and it is simply the level where tissue repair is overtaken by wear. This, incidentally, is the same process that leads to fatigue fractures of bones in athletes (equine or human) there is a rate at which biological tissues repair and adapt and if training exceeds, in the case of bone, the tissue's capacity to repair the microdamage created by training, ultimately the structure will fail. Where I think we agree is that the capacity for exercise barefoot is larger than people generally perceive. I think this is simply because the norm handed down for decades is that horses get shod for work and the only time they're unshod is if they get turned out and are doing nothing. So it's reasonable that people perceive that horses can't do much work if they're not shod, but this is far from reality. So...

I think a lot of people only have their horses shod because everyone else does.

yes I'm sure that's true.
 
QR -

I must either be more tolerant or stupid or something, because what the Hoofsculpture person is saying makes complete sense to me
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And yes I do believe that a person can learn how to care for their horse's feet in one week. I was taught by my fabulous farrier in the UK exactly how to trim my laminitic pony's feet which needed to be trimmed every 3 or 4 days. I never ever muffed it up and every time he came on his 6 weekly trips he told me how well her feet were looking and how much improvement he was seeing. The only thing that I never felt comfortable doing, so I didn't, was to trim beyond the white line. I had nowhere near the experience to do this, however in most normal instances an owner would never be required to cut behind the white line.
 
hi puddycat, thanks for you, response. i must say that i never intended to post anything on this forum, as it is mostly young people chatting about horses and very keen they are, they live for horses ,and that is very good indeed. so i find it difficult to know who has any real intrest in finding out things from someone who might know, and who is looking for a chance to argue about a subject they really dont know about. i take you,r point about my response to 2 others, but i would ask you to read why. even when i posted my trim model it wae rejected. i will say again that if you compare my example with anything you can find anywhere,written by any barefoot trimmer,you will find that my model is what everyone would like to acheive. it is fair to say that this is not always easy to acheive, and you can only w ork with what you,v got at the time, and growth takes time. but the end product does not vary. you say that 70 specmiens is no big deal and you would be more intrested in the findings.well these70 spesn,s were all taken from horses that were all pts suffering from laminitis, rotation,penetration sinking , navicular desease,even navic syndrome. each spec was examined under microscope for any vascular or musculo =skeletal abnormalities. this work resulted in an understanding of what really happens inside the foot when a horse develops any of the afore mentioned conditions. while how to prevent any of these conditions can not be accuratly stated, the management is very straighforward and i practice it every day of the week. by the way dd and hrt accused me of posting a trim ,do you want me to post my entire findings now, d d and hrt would love it. have you noticed how i have stopped talking about natural trimming, well puddicat, here is why, anyone who talks a lot about different trimming methods is a kid with a new toy. you get beyond that.natural trimming is very straightforward, and any farrier who has,nt learned about it should do so at once. A farrier has the customers, the tools,the ability to work with horses, he is the kid. now that still leaves the laminitic navic cases to the vets, and lets face it, its difficult to be an expert on cats and dogs one minute and foundered horses the next. the information on laminitis management is out there, i could tell you a site where it is. but it is in sombody,s intrest to teach the following repair kit. deep bed, stall rest, bute, heart bar shoes frog supports taped on, even raised heels. How does it come that if the horse is worth money, and the owner has money, everything changes, the horse all of a sudden is taken to hospital for a hoof resection to ease pressure under the wall in the lamina. if you would like to give me a good telling off you can pm me, dont toll d d or h r t
 
Oh sorry, the answer to the photos was there's not enough info for me to say anything with any basis so I won't. Try it and see. If you desperately want it to go barefoot then try stabilising the hoof using some other method ie bonding across the hoof wall.
 
Yes my horse had coronitis as a result of his accident too. He was kicked and the trauma went down his leg and "came out" at the coronary band. There was much talk of him having to have his hoof resectioned, but I decided to glue it back and hope that the hoof accepted it. It did thank goodness. On growing out, his hoof had a huge vertical line which dipped inwards by about 1cm and about a half inch across. He remained unshod until the scar line was about an inch from the sole and then I had shoes put on him to ride it through. Another 12 weeks and the scarring was no more and he had a totally healthy hoof again.

Good luck with your horsey.
 
I think aquestion to ask yourself is why the romans shod their horses.
They were hardy little caspian types - nothing like our great soft footed performance horses, and yet they went to all the expense and effort of shoeing them. Admittedly they covered a great many miles and some of it was on roads but lots of it was also on natural terrain.
Would they have done that if the horses were coping well with remaining unshod?
 
Cheers Tia. Unfortunately it didnt work for the little girl. We tried glue, stitches, everything. It kept bursting open. It was bound religioulsy throughout the healing process and that is as good as we got it. Im happy dont get me wrong but I wish the stupid little pony hadnt done it to herself!!! how blonde can she be?? standing on her own foot and not taking it off to walk off???
She was shod when it grew out due to the crack opening but feel that with the work she gets she could easily be barefoot if we could get her foot the support it needs to stop any further damage to the crack.
 
It took about a year for my guys hoof scar to grow out, just to give you an idea of timeframes.

The only thing with your girl is that unfortunately she has a semi-circular injury which could very well distort the growth of the hoof forever. Mine never had any scarring on his legs, purely coronitis resulting from the trauma of the kick on his shoulder.

I guess you will just have to wait and see. It's not the end of the world to keep her shod though, and the healing which has gone on so far is amazing!
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I think your trim model was well described and I don't really want to take issue with anything you've said. I'd say that there are many adults on this forum who are very knowledgable qualified and experienced (obviously I'm not including me in that) but there are some very good debates so I'd recommend you hang around if you're interested.

You've still not either given a reference for where your research was published or answered the less revealing question of whether is was in a peer reviewed journal or a non peer reviewed mag/periodical. I'd quite like to know the answer to at least one of those questions and it seems several other people are interested too!

I appreciate your description but to say "an understanding of what really happens inside the foot when a horse develops any of the afore mentioned conditions" is a bit vague and doesn't tell me anything useful.
 
yes she made a really good job of injuring herself. The accident was August 05 so roughly 18months ish ago. Her gait/action has now changed which is a shame.
She has a rather proud bulbus area on the top of her foot now which covers the whole semi circular area from front to back. It isnt as bad as it was but is still proud of her foot. Her feathers are slowly starting to cover it (theyve taken forever to regrow fully after being clipped every week) so at least thats some consolation. It doesnt look as horrendous as it was .
Yes the healing is amazing - the showing career is down the drain
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- only joking cant be doing with all that.
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No there is no real problem keeping her shod. Just that now her gait has changed she has a heavy foot - slams it down - and the shoe seems to be adding to this.
 
hi puddycat, you not as dumb as some thinkelpeep. the feet in the picture,can only get worse while shod. there are gripped in a ring of steel like a big jubilee clip. nailed through the sensative lamina. most likely hitting the bone. those shoes must come off nomatter about barefoot trimming or anything else. you mentioned other products, well you got in one. in the absence of absessing, it,s shoes off and a rim of vettec superfast to preserve what we, got ,allow hoof wall expansion, hold the cracks and encourage hoof wall growth. if the sole and frog are ok ,leave them. if not a layerof vettec equibuild on the sole will do the job. that,s the way to do it.
 
Have you considered using Camrosa for the proud scarring? I have used this with much success for the same thing.
 
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