Difference between Barefoot and no shoes?

Away from this forum the people I know whos horses are barefoot are always saying their way is right and anyone else is wrong whereas those who say their horses are unshod just get on with life and dont preach about it. they all look after the horses diet as best they can but the unshod are nicer to be around and more helpful without being ott and putting people off asking questions
 
crabbymare said:
Away from this forum the people I know whos horses are barefoot are always saying their way is right and anyone else is wrong whereas those who say their horses are unshod just get on with life and dont preach about it. they all look after the horses diet as best they can but the unshod are nicer to be around and more helpful without being ott and putting people off asking questions
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I agree with you to an extent.

But on this forum and away from it I find that the people who insist their horses are unshod are more likely to be the people who go straight for shoes if their horse goes a bit footie, rather than see if there is something that they can change which will allow the horse to continue without the shoes.

It is very difficult not to sound like an evangelist once you have recovered one horse that the best vets, medicine and farriery could not resolve. I'm about to jump my second tomorrow and then it'll be even more difficult.

But I do wish we could get away from thinking that the terms unshod and barefoot, when applied to a working horse, mean anything different.
 
My mare doesn't wear shoes. I have described her both as "barefoot" and "unshod", but I think a lot of people would refer to her as "barefoot" because having her shoes taken off was a conscious decision that I made with her welfare in mind. Yes I have adapted her diet, no she has not spent months and months limping around in agony unless she's wearing boots. In fact, I don't even own any boots for her. She had her shoes taken off about 14 months ago, and within 2 months of taking them off I was back to a pretty normal level of hacking, on varied surfaces. I avoided extremely stony surfaces, but I certainly wasn't riding exclusively on smooth tarmac or grass. But now she is to all intents and purposes a "rock crunching" horse. Where she is stabled, the yard itself is extremely stony and so are parts of the path to the field, yet she prances over them with no difficulty whatsoever! I hacked her out today, and she went along a very stony bridlepath without batting an eyelid. Horses CAN cope without shoes, I hate this idea that "barefoot" means keeping a horse in discomfort :rolleyes:
 
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