Dissertation Research Questionnaire on Barefoot Horses

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emmabinnian

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Hello,
I would be very grateful if anyone could spare five minutes to complete this short survey for me. It's for my dissertation on the number of barefooted horses competing across the various disciplines in the UK. Please follow this link/copy and paste the URL: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TSPMJRJ . Thank you very much, any help is much appreciated!
Emma.
 
You could do with multi choice options, and 'other' options. Q3 I would need more than one option, Q5 having more than one horse I use more than one of those options, Q7 my timescale isnt listed and theres no 'other' box to clarify. I've not gone any further as I can't answer accurately and will just mess up your data set.
 
If you drive a carriage pony how can you answer the Q's about riding on grass? What are the age categories about? Does everyone pop off after age 55? Just asking! I tried to do the survey but stopped as the Q's got worded in ways I could not answer when it got the bit about main reasons for choosing barefoot eg good hoof quality, poor hoof quality, what did it mean? Sorry. Try again?
 
I tried to do this but couldn't complete it partly because there were no suitable answers and partly when no answer suited and I wrote in the "other" box it wouldn't accept it.
 
Done but struggled to answer some questions. Need more 'others' and my biggest gripe was on the hoof boots direction - I stopped being barefoot as conformationally my horse struggled and became lame, therefore is now shod, and sound.

Your questionnaire is very biased and it would appear one could easily fill it out and you get your ideal answers ;)
 
Gloi said:
I tried to do this but couldn't complete it partly because there were no suitable answers and partly when no answer suited and I wrote in the "other" box it wouldn't accept it.
Click to expand...

Same problem, your questions come from the wrong angle, the whole reason mine are barefoot is for their health and longevity, not because they're remedial, not because a vet suggested it, and they haven't seen a farrier for many many many years.

I have 3 horses barefoot, some answers I need to tick multiple boxes as they're all different.

Sorry.
 
Done, but did struggle as wouldn't consider my horse barefoot with fronts shod but you did. Then reasons for it seemed confusing (might just be me!)
 
Well I have done it, but couldn't answer question 20.
I used boots to improve his feet and to protect whilst transitioning and so I could continue to give him lots of exercise!
 
I couldn't answer a couple correctly as currently my horse self trims so I have written this in the other box but I still have to pick farrier or barefoot trimmer
 
Tried, but couldn't complete it:
---difficult if you have more than one horse in more than one discipine
---lots of the reasons given for choosing to go barefoot/boot are not relevant to me; I can't put 5 considerations that I don't have in an order of most to least important!

To answer some questions in prose:

I have two horses, that compete in different disciplines. Neither is shod, because I firmly believe that shoeing is not in the best interests of the long-term health of the horse, and because I believe that there are sufficiently effective alternatives so that performance need not be compromised, and because I believe that keeping horses as sport or leisure animals imposes a greater ethical burden on us to compromise our ambitions for their welfare, than might be the case if our survival depended on their continuing to work.

I boot the Endurance horse because I ride over hard or rough terrain whereas he lives in a muddy field, and because I can't take the necessary time to condition his feet fully to the hard/rough terrain. Using boots enables me to ride at speed over such terrain without worrying about bruises and the like. It has nothing whatsoever to do with hoof quality, the advice of various people, or any of the other reasons you listed; it's purely for performance.

There's far more to hoof conformation than "upright/normal/flat". And glue-ons come in several varieties which all have different features; some I would consider, some not.

You'll find that your survey, as it stands, isn't going to give you well-balanced data. Most of the serious barefooters will have trouble answering it, because their approach to hoof care will be a lot more nuanced than your survey allows for.

Hope the comments help you in designing your survey! :)
 
done, but you need to sort out question 7 about how often people have the farrier, I had to check 4 weeks, because i only have a farrier twice a year to check his hooves, he is self trimming, I wrote this in the other box but you have to check an option... there is no check box for other. so you need to make sure that you change this so people can check other... or if they check one of the 4 week, 6, week, 8 week boxes make sure you look to see if infact they filled out other so you dont get false results.
 
The ranking questions for the reasons for going BF are bizarre. Even if they wern't relevent you couldn't leave them out.

This is the second BF survey that has been on the forum in the last couple of days and neither has been very well desgined.
 
I filled it in but as the others have said, the questions didn't really fit my personal situation. It's a very difficult survey to answer if you have multiple horses of different ages or in different disciplines. I've tried to explain using the few available free text boxes. I'm not anti shoe, but even when I did use shoes as my primary means of foot protection they were only shod if they needed it and for six months of the year max.

Horses don't stay in the same amount of work all year round, either, and asking what work horses are in now (depths of winter, when much of the country is underwater) is maybe not representative of what work they would be in during the height of summer.

Also, asking when I first competed a horse barefoot - again not really representative as all the breeding horses I've worked with since I was a teenager have had nothing on their feet, so whenever we've shown them they've been bare. But that doesn't tell you the answer to when I first did a long distance ride with nothing on a horse's feet. And because I managed a 30km with nothing on the horse's feet once, it doesn't mean I have sworn off foot protection for life. Indeed, like Spookypony I use boots for performance reasons; and, for our particular horse, boots offer better foot protection than shoes would.

As a tip for the future, it's maybe a good idea to do a pilot study on a few people who you know have very different equine situations, so that you can check if your questions work.
 
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