Help keeping shoes on!

[MouseInLux]

My horse is a disaster. All winter she keeps her shoes on but she’s in a small sand paddock. Now she’s on the field and has already pulled her shoe with a chunk of hoof with it. Her feet are good, she’s already on a hoof supplement, the farrier is good. She is accident prone. She wears over reach boots in the field but still manages to do this. Does anyone have any suggestions for something to help me and keep her shod?

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[Pinkvboots]

She is probably stepping on the back or side of the shoe with the other foot, a sausage boot can help as it stops the foot being able to get too close to the other one, over reach boots only really work if they hang low enough to where the shoe is, and most rarely do so they pretty much do nothing.

Your farrier may be leaving the shoe long at the back or setting it slightly wider than the hoof, you could ask him to change it slightly so there is less chance of them being pulled off.

 

[Annagain]

Sometimes, no matter how good a farrier is, their style just doesn't suit certain horses. We had terrible trouble with Mont doing this - 3 weeks was about the norm for him to keep shoes on. He was shod by an excellent farrier who tried everything. We then switched farriers as Arch needed remedial shoeing. The vet wanted us to use a certain farrier and we didn't want to be dealing with two farriers so switched both boys. Overnight, M's feet improved and he's lost 2 shoes in 12 years! Our new farrier doesn't seem to shoe him any differently but whatever he does, it works!

 

[TPO]

Take shoes off, use boots and pads if required, to let the nail holes grow out. If she is pulling shoes regularly they'll be getting nailed back onto a weaker and weaker structure (weakened by existing/previous holes) and even more so if she's taking chunks off with the shoes.

In good farriery texts they say that horses need 3mths/12wks a year with no shoes to repair the damage that shoes do. Back in the day this was summer for hunters and winter for comp/leisure horses but since the increase of surfaces and indoors horses no longer get the breaks/roughed off/turned away that they once used to. An excellent farrier up here (Ferries) wrote an article for the Scottish Farmer about the increase in seedy toe, white line disease and navicular that they see these days compared to when horses were given some time to repair.

I'd review the diet and hoof supplement too; lots of the packaged commercial feeds and supps aren't actually all the good and can be too high in things like iron. High sugars in the grass, if present, can also have an impact on horn quality.

I don't mean this to sound bad or come across the wrong way and I know I was guilty of this previously.... I've had the good farriers that were vet recommended and I've also paid vets to be there to advise while "tricky" horses were shod. I've been told that my horses have perfect foot balance and that nothing could be done to improve them and I've also lost those horses to navicular. With the benefit of hindsight I can clearly see that in no way were those feet balanced. I think we as owners can become blind to "normal" when we see it daily and some professionals can only operate out of a text book. Sometimes when you can either get fresh eyes or take a step back you can see things like underrun heels and bullnosed or long toes and those sort of things can be contributing factors to pulling shoes. Accidents and "oops" moments happen but if a horse is continuously pulling shoes then there is something else underlying.

 

[AUB]

Two pairs of over reach boots on each leg does the trick here. One is my mare's normal size and on top of that one that's a size too big.

 

[Goldenstar]

Oh that’s bad .
I think I would go for a shoeing break.
I also think that you get more horn loss with natural balance shoes .

 

[MouseInLux]

@TPO , I don’t think that using hoof boots really is an option when she’s jumping 1m10+ courses. She’s not a happy hacker. Our pony has no shoes on happily but this young lady is special and while she pulls shoes she’s also caused large amounts of damage to her feet without shoes!

 

[MouseInLux]

@annagain this is actually the second farrier who I’ve had since having her. We’ve tried a few different ways of shoeing and she’s managed to get them every time 😳 she’s “special”

 

[ester]

have you any pics of her shod?

 

[TPO]

@TPO , I don’t think that using hoof boots really is an option when she’s jumping 1m10+ courses. She’s not a happy hacker. Our pony has no shoes on happily but this young lady is special and while she pulls shoes she’s also caused large amounts of damage to her feet without shoes!

If she's mainly jumping on a surface and you're not studding anyway it might be ok? There are plenty of dressage, eventers and jumpers doing so successfully without shoes.

Just a suggestion to give the hoof time to repair as you can't jump 1.10m+ with a lame or footsore horse with no wall either. If her hooves are that badly damaged without shoes then there is without doubt an underlying issue that needs addressed. However your horse, your call, good luck with it.

 

[MouseInLux]

The damage is from her doing stupid things in the field, she kicked something or we don’t know what and split the hoof almost all the way up, blood and months of no jumping... it’s not the quality of the foot that caused the damage but the stupidity of the horse.

 

[MouseInLux]

No pictures of her shod and I don’t really want to get her out of her box onto the hard surface to get pictures.

 

[Alibear]

As she's jumping 1.10 I'm going to assume she's shod all round but if not it is worth trying. It seemed counter intuitive to me but once I had mine shod behind she stopped pulling the front shoes off. If not then as someone else mentioned double over reach boots can work.

 

[MouseInLux]

@Alibear she’s shod all around, once she moved up to bigger jumps and killed her back hoof in the field accident she was shod all around.

 

[EventingMum]

Shoesecure.com might be worth a look to wear when turned out. They were developed because the inventor had the same problem.

 

[asmp]

Probably a bit of silly comment with all this rain today but has it been really dry in your area? I got told off when the farrier came out last time for letting the hooves dry out - he said that the shoes would be more likely to come off if I didn't use hoof dressing. Of course, since he said that it's rained!

 

[MouseInLux]

Yes, she got it put back on today and the farrier said that they are rather dry, we will work on that now that it looks to be dry for quite a while. Apparently the reason so much of her hoof wall came off is because they are good quality and didn’t want to just drop the shoe off, it really wanted to keep it on.

 

[sbloom]

Sometimes when you can either get fresh eyes or take a step back you can see things like underrun heels and bullnosed or long toes and those sort of things can be contributing factors to pulling shoes. Accidents and "oops" moments happen but if a horse is continuously pulling shoes then there is something else underlying.

Including mild white line disease which is seldom mentioned by most farriers but can be real issue and cause great chunks of hoof to come away whether barefoot or shod (when losing a shoe).

 

[ohmissbrittany]

Too long of a toe in front can make this happen, as the front foot "sticks" to the ground longer and gets caught by the hind. It could just be poor quality hoof and maybe it's time to reassess diet. Overreach boots need to touch the floor to do anything- I went through them like you would not believe when mine was shod, but it was better than her catching herself or ripping off the special ultra expensive padded/packed shoes (which turns out she didn't need but that's another story). Hard to say without seeing the horse but those are the two most common causes.

I'd give her a break from shoes to let some better foot grow out before trying again.

 

[MouseInLux]

@ohmissbrittany its crazy that we go all winter jumping and in small turnout without any issues. She goes on the field and she pulls the shoe off. My farrier stands by that she has good feet. He sat that if she had bad feet she wouldn’t have damaged her foot as badly as the shoe would have fallen off easily.
We managed to get the shoe back on and she’s sound. We have longer bell boots on now and will cross our fingers.

 

[Twohorses]

No pictures of her shod and I don’t really want to get her out of her box onto the hard surface to get pictures.

Why not? The hard surface won't hurt her for the few moments you need to get clear pictures

I have owned Tennessee Walking Horses since the early 80's. THEY have over reach and they have it by birth -- there are you tube videos of new borns demonstrating that awesome over reach.

The only thing that ever interferes with their over reach is a farrier who doesn't know what he/she is doing. That can either be putting shoes on or barefoot trimming.

IMHO it's the farrier that's stupid not your horse