Is there a healthy balance between shod and barefoot?

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clevergirl

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I love my horse and I have come to believe that steel shoes are not great for their long term health... However for high impact sports such as jumping and hunting, I feel like my horse may need a little more support. My horse is on a great barefoot friendly diet, but even two years after removing shoes still feels stones, so I'm very much reconsidering having her shod when it's time to do some real hard work, with periods where we pull the shoes for light hacking and holidays. I imagine it means she will spend more time in boots during the off-season among other adjustments.

Is there anyone who shoes their horse seasonally- like just for competition/hunting with a rest period between? How do you manage them?
 
Shoes don't ever provide support that is a bit of a fallacy, they provide protection to the hoof and with the addition of studs grip.

Goldenstar on here shoes one for hunting iirc and then he has them off all summer without much issue I think. I have always said I would possibly have done the opposite with mine if we's still had transport to compete in the summer. I will always give them time out of shoes with any future beasts I think the old way of 6 months on 6 months off did the job quite well :).

Also what stones is she feeling, it is normal to some degree to be aware of them and I would be worried if mine didn't decide to move his hoof. He doesn't feel them hunting but you can tell the next day that he hunted ;).
 
I have one here, a tb, he arrived from training with rubbish feet, rested then rehabbed from his tendon injury without shoes, they went on while he returned to race for 6 months, came off when he rested and then came back to work being reschooled for RC stuff, he had 2 or 3 sets on this summer so he could wear studs to jump on grass and they came off a while ago as any competing over the winter will be on a surface.
His feet are great it doesn't bother him if he is shod or barefoot, there is no reason to not shoe when required but shoes will not "support" the foot the foot is more than capable of supporting itself but does not give much grip on a slippery grass surface hence shoeing so studs can be used.
 
clevergirl said:
However for high impact sports such as jumping and hunting, I feel like my horse may need a little more support.
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I think shoeing when necessary is probably much better than shoeing permanently, the hooves then get some recovery time from the effects of shoeing :)

Shoes providing support seems to be a common perception, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a right one. The horse’s hoof has all the necessary built in factors for shock absorption and protection of the limbs and it is probably more important that the hoof is allowed to function correctly the higher impact the work, to prevent damage to bones, ligaments and tendons. Put an inflexible, restrictive, non-shock absorbing metal shoe on a hoof and the function of those hoof structures is compromised. The physics of metal shoes being protective doesn’t really make sense. The only analogy I can think of just now is a pogo stick :) They have rubber on the bottom for a reason, just imagine replacing or covering that rubber with metal and bouncing around on the pavement, think of the shock and vibrations that would go through your body instead of being absorbed by the rubber :D

From looking at people on here and other places who are successful barefoot I get the impression that the harder the horse works, the better the feet cope, but it is important to increase the workload progressively, which is important for fitness per se anyway, but I guess shoes can mask discomfort of the workload being increased too quickly, whereas a barefoot horse would be obviously sore if you did too much too soon.
 
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My horse had shoes off for around 18 months, we did some hacking and schooling. He never progressed beyond being happy hacking for 40 minutes though, despite his feet looking glorious, various professionals approving (farrier, bare foot trimmer, vet) so when I wanted to do more work we shod May- November and he has just had them off again.

TBH he seems absolutely fine, some of his improved strength must still be there.

If he ups his work OK next year, or if he is not working, then he will stay barefoot. If he struggles and I want to work more then he can be shod.
 
clevergirl said:
I love my horse and I have come to believe that steel shoes are not great for their long term health... However for high impact sports such as jumping and hunting, I feel like my horse may need a little more support. My horse is on a great barefoot friendly diet, but even two years after removing shoes still feels stones, so I'm very much reconsidering having her shod when it's time to do some real hard work, with periods where we pull the shoes for light hacking and holidays. I imagine it means she will spend more time in boots during the off-season among other adjustments.

Is there anyone who shoes their horse seasonally- like just for competition/hunting with a rest period between? How do you manage them?
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Sounds like a sensible way to go and was always the way with hard working horses hunters/eventers - working season with shoes and off season unshod. Plenty of merit in it.

Die hard barefooters will try and tell you hard hunting / eventing is fine barefoot, but I would challenge tat it is a tiny tiny minority that can genuinely manage without having confidence/performance decline.
 
I think it is better to have time shod and time not shod if shoeing is deemed necessary, but the middle ground for me would be using boots for the hard ridden work. The range of boots is pretty huge now, with some really nice, close fitting styles that seem to be doing well in different disciplines so that would be the route I'd go down before going back to shoes - barefoot most of the time but booted when needs be. No more fuss than putting brushing boots on to ride and happy healthy feet that aren't compromise by steel shoes.
 
Die hard barefooters will try and tell you hard hunting / eventing is fine barefoot, but I would challenge tat it is a tiny tiny minority that can genuinely manage without having confidence/performance decline.
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I have had, I think, five hunters doing a hard fast drag hunt once a week and all the fittening work it entailed to be a front runner jumping everything. And five BE eventers, two at level four (laughably called 'novice' - that's a novice fence in my avatar).

I have not had a single horse which I tried to hunt or event barefoot fail to do it.

Not all horses can do it, but my experience is that it's the minority which can't, not the majority. Of course it depends what you mean by 'performance decline'. You'll probably lose some marks on very hard or wet, and therefore slippy dressage arenas. But for hunting, show jumping and cross country I saw no negative change in performance of the two which had evented shod first.

Hunting in particular, I saw so many horses slip over on the road and believe it's much safer, if you can, to hunt barefoot.
 
There's a difference between feeling stones and being sore. It's normal not to slam their foot down on a sharp stone and leave it there.

Personally I will aim to never shoe but if I got to a high enough level where I felt I needed studs that would be a reason to do so but it wouldn't be for support ever because shoes can't provide support. However every step my new and still shod horse takes on hard ground I feel that is damage to his joints and I hate it. He's also slipping around on the frost and ice and even on normal tarmac. I'm not used to that at all and I really don't like it. As to what level you can achieve with each horse I think it's different for each one. I've got a horse that never ever slips regardless of what she's doing. She's never been shod and I can't see that she ever will be. She turns on a sixpence on grass no problem. My other horse is more inclined to slip on the same ground and I believe that is because she's never out running around like a lunatic on grass like the first one is. The more they are on challenging terrain the better they cope with it but yes some will cope better than others naturally.
 
dollyanna said:
I think it is better to have time shod and time not shod if shoeing is deemed necessary, but the middle ground for me would be using boots for the hard ridden work. The range of boots is pretty huge now, with some really nice, close fitting styles that seem to be doing well in different disciplines so that would be the route I'd go down before going back to shoes - barefoot most of the time but booted when needs be. No more fuss than putting brushing boots on to ride and happy healthy feet that aren't compromise by steel shoes.
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You cannot use boots for dressage so that would not work for horses that event, the tb here needed studs to do dressage on grass a couple of times as well as for the jumping phases, he is fine going for long hacks doing mainly roadwork and has never worn boots, as ihatework said confidence is so important, a slip can cause a loss of confidence wearing studs gives a better grip and I have had no problems with taking shoes off/ putting them on with several different horses doing a variety of activities.
 
From looking at people on here and other places who are successful barefoot I get the impression that the harder the horse works, the better the feet cope, but it is important to increase the workload progressively, which is important for fitness per se anyway, but I guess shoes can mask discomfort of the workload being increased too quickly, whereas a barefoot horse would be obviously sore if you did too much too soon.
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Absolutely right.

One of my hunters would take a very long time to get enough growth to match fast wear. It was no good laying him off for a long break in the summer, he would have taken too long to get his foot growth back up a gear. He had a month off and was then back in work conditioning for the next season.
 
Hunting on the roads, yes barefoot advantageous.
This is not about whether you can condition feet to cope with the work level, I have no doubt that can be done, but particularly eventing in this day and age it just wouldn't be safe to try and run competitively without studs.
Your more recent results do not support my definition of performance and your novice results are over 12 years ago when course design was quite different, these days the angles and combinations really do require studding for anything other than crawling along at snails pace
 
ihatework said:
Hunting on the roads, yes barefoot advantageous.
This is not about whether you can condition feet to cope with the work level, I have no doubt that can be done, but particularly eventing in this day and age it just wouldn't be safe to try and run competitively without studs.
Your more recent results do not support my definition of performance and your novice results are over 12 years ago when course design was quite different, these days the angles and combinations really do require studding for anything other than crawling along at snails pace
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I take your point about modern course design.

You have no idea what horses I was riding, their level of ability or their experience, so you are in no position to make any judgments at all about the performance of any of my horses barefoot compared with how they might have gone shod and studded. How presumptuous :D !
 
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I think there is a healthy balance, I think if you go into with the aim of 'shoe if I have to' rather than shoeing as standard is a great place to start.

I have ridden plenty of barefoot and shod horses, and find the barefoot horses much more comfortable to hack - I can feel every step on tarmac on a shod horse, I can see the shoulders jar. I also find that shod horses slip a lot on roads, even flat ones. I dont hunt, but I think I'd worry about concussion with a shod horse.

Of course if you want studs you will have to shoe. I have done so, but I spent every minute of those 6 weeks worry about the feet, concussion, frog quality etc and couldn't wait to have them taken off.

I did read a very interesting article that I cant currently find, about how horses have to learn to slip and I certainly think that is true to an extent - with the usual caveat that each horse and rider are individuals. I know my smaller horse that is more compact and 'nippy' seems to not even notice that she is slipping, whereas the bigger one makes a meal out of it. I also think it is to do with engagement, balance etc which are perhaps missing in some of the lower levels of eventing/RC that I have seen, hence the feeling for the need of studs.
 
I'd rather not do something if it meant putting shoes back on my horse! I want many long happy comfortable years with him and the thought of going back to shoes makes me feel really sad that I'd let him down!
 
I have a friend who keeps hers barefoot most of the year and puts fronts with road studs on for the season. Seems to works well for them.

Of course, if you can keep yours barefoot full-time, fabulous, but it's fine to shoe part-time if you need to. Do what keeps your horse comfortable.
 
I would prefer to have my boy completely unshod, but we are on borrowed time, workwise, and I, maybe selfishly, want to enjoy him for however long we have together as riding partners, so he is shod in front. He is very happy unshod/with no hinds on on tarmac, but opts not to go on some of our local byways - he knows which ones are stony, and prefers to avoid them.
If he was 12, and had no orthopaedic issues, I'd persevere with taking him unshod, but he's 19, and has pretty knackered hindlegs - so we're doing what works for him right now.
 
Mine hunts bare and I have not had any issues. She isn't the only horse with our hunt who is barefoot, one of the whips horses hunts every week barefoot and jumps everything. The other whips horse is shod for the season and bare in summer.

The only things I would be tempted to shoe for would be SJ on grass or eventing. I have showjumped and gone XC bare but was very worried about slipping on wet grass.
 
My view has always been and is still do no harm. In my view if the hooves are good and can be worked unshod then brilliant but if the horse despite all best efforts is uncomfortable unshod then shoe. This is all with the proviso of a good farrier/trimmer, a poor one can do a great deal of harm.
 
If the horse is unable to work to the level the owner requires or is sore during that work -i.e over stones or after as the foot is bruised then it need protection and shoes offer more than boots for ridden competition horses. I hate to see or hear of horses struggilng to walk along a gravel path because its ' better for them' - animal welfare comes first. Boots for hacking I think can work fairly well but require a dedicated owner a lot of the time!
 
'but you can tell the next day that he hunted' thats a worrying statement - no horse shoul dbe doing work that makes it sore the next day on a regular basis :( it's up to us to know that adrenaline is masking pain at the time.
 
SusieT said:
If the horse is unable to work to the level the owner requires or is sore during that work -i.e over stones or after as the foot is bruised then it need protection and shoes offer more than boots for ridden competition horses. I hate to see or hear of horses struggilng to walk along a gravel path because its ' better for them' - animal welfare comes first. Boots for hacking I think can work fairly well but require a dedicated owner a lot of the time!
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the only protection that shoes offer (over boots) for any horse is the ability to put studs in. If people feel they need studs for confidence and performance issues then of course it is the right way to go.

Boots offer a lot more protection than shoes ever can. The whole of the sole is protected. With boots you could ride flat out over any degree of stones and know the feet will be protected rather than ending up with a bruised sole. (not that you would ride flat out) I am not suggesting boots are an alternative for high level competition just pointing out they offer more protection than shoes.

As for time I boot my horse for every ride. He is PPID and cannot cope without. After I have picked the foot up to clean it out then it takes me an extra 30 seconds a foot to put a boot on. That is around an extra 2 minutes a ride. That is not really a lot of time. It takes half that time to whip 4 boots off.
 
stencilface said:
Short term bruised foot better than long term issues for horses unable to cope in shoes though.
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sorry but if the work is resulting in a short term bruised foot it shouldn't be doing it IMHO. Either it should be performing within it's capabilities or have protection. Not only does it give the whole barefoot thing a bad image it also means the horse is in pain/discomfort. Horses live for the moment. I don't believe they have the capacity to think, "if I stay barefoot and put up with short term bruising/pain my feet will be a lot better in 5 years time than they would have been in shoes"
 
clevergirl said:
I love my horse and I have come to believe that steel shoes are not great for their long term health... However for high impact sports such as jumping and hunting, I feel like my horse may need a little more support. My horse is on a great barefoot friendly diet, but even two years after removing shoes still feels stones, so I'm very much reconsidering having her shod when it's time to do some real hard work, with periods where we pull the shoes for light hacking and holidays. I imagine it means she will spend more time in boots during the off-season among other adjustments.

Is there anyone who shoes their horse seasonally- like just for competition/hunting with a rest period between? How do you manage them?
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Thats how it used to be. Shod for in-season. Unshod for out of season.

However, whilst I think barefoot horses can and regularly achieve that "rock-crunching" ability, some "feel" is necessary. Mine regularly walk over any terrain but are careful over certain surfaces and I would expect that. They are protecting their soles. It's usually temporary and transient and once over a particular area it's back to clopping the tracks (and yes mine do actually make a clop sound). It's when it's consistently footy over any ground is when you tend to question what's going on...

Is it sole thickness? Is it imbalance? Is it the frog? Is it the placing of the foot? (which can be caused by hoof angle). So many factors. It can be wearing!!

So personally I think you can have it all - part-time shod/barefoot. However, it depends on the trim during the shod phase, how sucessful you will be when in-between shoeings.
 
I always assumed that shod feet don't feel the stones as the reduced blood flow results in partial numbness. A well respected farrier told me that, and personal observation tends to confirm it. This is after transition.
The use of studs brings it's own worries with the amount of torque it puts on the legs.
 
Regandal said:
I always assumed that shod feet don't feel the stones as the reduced blood flow results in partial numbness. A well respected farrier told me that, and personal observation tends to confirm it. This is after transition.
The use of studs brings it's own worries with the amount of torque it puts on the legs.
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I assumed it was the half inch of shoe raising the foot above the stones! Mine still feels stones if he treads on one thats taller than the height of his front shoes.
 
Auslander said:
I assumed it was the half inch of shoe raising the foot above the stones! Mine still feels stones if he treads on one thats taller than the height of his front shoes.
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I think it's both, depending on the horse.

I've had several, and there are dozens on this forum, where a horse has been completely sound out of shoes, is not in any work that would have caused bruises, and yet feels stones more after two or three weeks than they did at the beginning. It looks very like the foot is 'coming alive again' after being numbed, though I've no firm evidence of that, of course.
 
It is crazy to think that horses need shoes (or indeed food!) having just watched Pkanet Earth II with bands of horses wearing the most perfect feet on the most rocky terrain on earth.

Perhaps we are keeping horses in the wrong places ��
 
tallyho! said:
It is crazy to think that horses need shoes (or indeed food!) having just watched Pkanet Earth II with bands of horses wearing the most perfect feet on the most rocky terrain on earth.

Perhaps we are keeping horses in the wrong places ��
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Probably - but most of us don't have access to the "right" places.
 
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