Iv just shod my horse after 2 yrs bare foot and he's a different horse

SusieT said:
cptrayes- you are convinced of a lot but rarely (if ever) manage to back it up with anything other than anecdotal (and on a forum, that can mean totally made up..) evidence.
Rockley Farm is interesting but is not neccessarily getting horses 100% sound, so yes they are trying but without shod horses to comare to, you could just as easily say its the extra care and attentino that is helping them recover.
Which brings me to an important point0 All this about barefoot being better only if you have the time and dedication, I would be very interested in a study that compared shod and unshod horses under IDENTICAL regimes, rather than just barefoot horses under the 'barefoot' regime, as only then can you see if it is shoes or regime causing changes.
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Sixteen of the seventeen were shod horses when they arrived SusieT

Check other threads for the scientific research argument, there is plenty. There is no scientific evidence for shoes either, it's all anecdotal :)
 
0ldmare said:
You are making the assumption that a good farrier won't take into account the limb conformation when shoeing a horse. Of course they do! My grey has a slightly turned near side foot, the farrier doesn't try to straighten it, he trims and shoes taking this into account. It isn't just Barefoot trimmers who assess and deal accordingly.
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The best farrier in the world does not have an inbuilt MRI scanner. Your horse was easy - its leg is bent and can clearly be seen. Some of the horses Rockley has rescued from the bullet were "bent" in much less conspicuous ways. No farrier could have seen what was wrong with my hunter, either, you had to be on his back to feel it. Farriers can only do the best with what they see, and most of them try. They can never get it as perfect as the horse can sculpt a foot for itself, if only because the shoe is only perfectly set the day it goes on, and from then onward becomes increasingly, if minutely, unbalanced.

I had a big horse with spavined hocks a few years back. The old-fashioned shoeing for spavins is to build up the depth of the inside edge of the foot with a wedge. My horse had a varying depth of collateral groove on that side, which came and went as his level of lameness came and went. If we had a long warm dry spell where his hock did not hurt, it disappeared. Rain and cold brought it back. The problem with a shoe in his case is that you simply could not make those adjustments "on the hoof" :) like that, so his shoe would have been optimum for his hock problem one week but not the next. Seeing him adjust his foot for himself like that is one of the reasons I love barefoot so much.
 
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cptrayes said:
Most foot abcesses are contained inside the foot and do not enter the bloodstream. If left, they generally pop at the heel or coronet and resolve with few issues. We put it down to "gravel" getting in from outside, but who knows what dead stuff inside the foot an abscess could have started from? Sceptic shock from a foot abscess is rare.

It is my understanding also that necrosis alone does not necessarily cause a problem. If there is no infectious agent present, necrotic tissue can be benign and reabsorbed into the body. Can anyone medically trained confirm or correct that?
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I did come across a shod horse which had maggots eating its foot. It was still being ridden, but tripped a lot (because the feet were so tall).

And while I don't agree with everything that anyone says, including CPTRayes, I would like to point out that as far as I am aware CP has no financial interest in barefoot, beyond what may or may not have been saved in vets bills and shoes.
 
LucyPriory said:
And while I don't agree with everything that anyone says, including CPTRayes, I would like to point out that as far as I am aware CP has no financial interest in barefoot, beyond what may or may not have been saved in vets bills and shoes.
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Let's ask, shall we? I am sure she will be honest.
Cptrayes, do you have any financial interest in barefoot in particular, and Rockley Farm specifically? Do you make any income or receive any 'services in kind' from either?
S :D
 
When they arrived at rockley? That's all very well but they weren't kept shod and tried on the rockley farm management scheme were they?
If the necrosis is happening say in the sole yes, your just going to get an abcess, but if as you imply, the blood supply to the entire hoof and it's internal structures is being cut off, then the supporting tendons and ligaments, which support the pedal bone, and the laminae would be necrotic. If all that tissue dies then there is a major problem.
Actually, at what part of the anatomy are you suggesting this ischaemia is happening? As just reviewing the processes in my head I'm struggling to see where you mean..
 
Shilasdair said:
Tissue is either starved of blood, or it isn't. There is no 'extent'. If tissue is starved of blood, it dies; in the case of the foot, if the sensitive laminae die then this is called 'laminitis'. The sensitive and insensitive laminae part company, and the pedal bone can rotate.
Laminitis is NOT caused by shoeing - how ridiculous.
Concussive forces are the same regardless of whether your horse is shod or not. If I drop a grand piano on your head from the tenth floor of a skyscraper, it hits you with the same force whether you are stood on the concrete pavement, or on a feather bed.
(You say the frog 'absorbs the impact' - where do the forces go? Up the leg, of course).
S :D

PS And on that note, I'm off out to buy a grand piano :p :D
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On the contrary,yes a horse can have the tissue starved to an extent.The blood is not getting pumped correctly round the hoof with shoes on.In my posts i have never once said laminitis is caused by shoeing.The piano thing isn't really a good example.Obviously a pianos gonna squash you no matter what.But metal does not absorb shock,rather it vibrates with it jarring all the force up the leg.Go and get a metal object(hammer,whatever) and bang it on the ground.tell me where does the force go?If you tried it with something like rubber it wouldnt be half so much.The frog is designed to take the impact for the horse.It is to an extent slightly spongey/soft.Yes,some force will go up the leg,but not so much as with shoes on.The majority should be mellowed and absorbed by the frog,which was of course designed to do this for the horse.
 
Shilasdair said:
Let's ask, shall we? I am sure she will be honest.
Cptrayes, do you have any financial interest in barefoot in particular, and Rockley Farm specifically? Do you make any income or receive any 'services in kind' from either?
S :D
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No and no.

I used to be a friend of Nic Barker, Rockley Farm and a supporter in a conceptual, not a monetary sense, of the UKNHCP but I am now neither. It cost me money to support them in driving to an event I attended, not the other way around. The organisation has to work closely with vets and farriers is unable to reconcile my outspoken views on both and we have parted company, though George and I are the main cover photo on the first edition of Feet First. What Rockley achieves with horses that have already been through the gamut of veterinary and farriery attention and are still lame is, in my opinion, nothing short of amazing. I've replicated what they do with one horse, and so have dozens of other people. When another commercial rehab yard starts doing the same I will wax lyrical equally about all of them which are as generous with their time and information as Nic Barker is on rockleyfarm.blogspot.com

I do not trim anyone's horses but my own and, if requested, to help a friend on a one-off basis and I do not trim for money or any kind of reward unless you count a cup of coffee and a bowl of porridge :)

I receive no services in kind or remuneration from any barefoot organisation or indeed any organisation connected in any way with horses.

I am motivated to post on here:

1. for the good of the horse, in particular to save horses from being put down unnecessarily due to lameness in the foot that vets and farriers cannot cure that might be cured barefoot.

2. to inform people that many of them are paying for shoes unnecessarily. Boy was I ANGRY when I found out that more than 25 years of being told that all horses need shoes to do serious amounts of roadwork was not the truth!

3. to save any more owners who have had their horses put down due to foot lameness from the added heartache of looking back and saying "what if someone had told me about barefoot?"


Can I just say, since I have been asked to get personal, that you may feel as if you know me (you in general here, not Shils in particular) but you don't. You know only the posts of mine that you have read, which are probably not all the posts I have written. You don't know if I go home and kick my granny so she'll give me money to feed my heroin habit or if I go home and change her nappy and spoon feed her. Only one person on this board is a friend of mine and she rarely posts, the rest of you do not know "me" at all so please go easy on the personal jibes and judgemental stuff, OK?
 
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SusieT said:
When they arrived at rockley? That's all very well but they weren't kept shod and tried on the rockley farm management scheme were they?
If the necrosis is happening say in the sole yes, your just going to get an abcess, but if as you imply, the blood supply to the entire hoof and it's internal structures is being cut off, then the supporting tendons and ligaments, which support the pedal bone, and the laminae would be necrotic. If all that tissue dies then there is a major problem.
Actually, at what part of the anatomy are you suggesting this ischaemia is happening? As just reviewing the processes in my head I'm struggling to see where you mean..
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SusieT you were answered by me not the original poster of the blood supply point. I didn't make any comment about cut off blood supply, though I do think it is reduced in a shod foot because research has shown thermographic and doppler ultrasound evidence that this is the case.

They are all asked to go on a good diet for at least six weeks before they go there. The other major difference in treatment from when at home is to remove the shoes. The fact that I and many others have replicated their success shows that it is not the Rockley environment, but the removal of the shoes, that is the major reason that these horses recover.
 
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Shilasdair said:
This makes the rather sweeping assumption that shoeing traumatises the foot and permanently alters proprioception - not so.
Where you say 'a horse not SHOD perfectly in balance' causes trauma to the foot, I could equally say 'a horse not TRIMMED perfectly in balance' causes trauma to the foot.
But that's not a worry as barefoot trimmers have the same years of training as a farrier...oh wait... :p
All parts of the body are being constantly renewed through a process of cell death, as I hope you know, nerves, blood cells, etc.
It may be a surprise to barefooters, but both unshod and shod horses 'create their own feet'. Really. :p
S :D
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I agree that a bad trimmer/farrier will damage feet.So theres no point in anyone arguing about that.And yes,all horses to an extent ''make their own feet'' as their makeup when their born causes them all to be different.
 
cptrayes said:
I didn't make any comment about cut off blood supply, though I do think it is reduced in a shod foot because research has shown thermographic and doppler ultrasound evidence that this is the case.

.
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horserider said:
The point the farrier makes in my above link, is that contrary to Stassers evidence, there is no difference in the reaction of the shod and unshod hoof to hoof testers thereby indicating that the foot is not numb. The temperature measured by a thermometor shows no difference in the shod and unshod hoof either.
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??????????????
 
competitiondiva said:
??????????????
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From the article, written by an American President of the Guild of Farriers.

"I have taken thermometer readings from shod and barefoot legs in numerous horses and can find no pattern of difference in temperature-typically shod and barefoot have the same temperature. Her results are apparently not repeatable and no studies of circulation comparing shod and barefoot legs has been done. "

The doppler ultrasound research was presented by Dr Bob Bowker at a barefoot conference and is unpulbished, so is of about the same weight as unpublished research using measurements taken by a Farrier with a thermometer (by which I take it that he means optical pyrometer since you can't stick a thermometer into a horse's foot, but he does not say). One had little to gain by saying shoes made a difference and was a scientist, the other was a farrier with everything to lose by finding that shoes made a difference. Make of that what you will, but I know that it is my experience that, in general, horses with bare feet have warmer feet than horses with shod feet and growth rates are typically 60-100% faster.

The thermography I am trying to find now. There is one image which proves nothing, one that shows an interesting result if the text is correct but this is impossible to know, and one where the front and back feet on the same horse have been pictured which is pretty useless because it needed to be both feet on one side to be meaningful for the shoe debate.
 
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So taking the barefoot argument to its logical conclusion, if the horse can deal best with its own feet, should we stop dicking around with them and cancel the farrier/barefoot trimmer and just let them get on with it! God wouldn't that be a cost saving! :D
 
0ldmare said:
So taking the barefoot argument to its logical conclusion, if the horse can deal best with its own feet, should we stop dicking around with them and cancel the farrier/barefoot trimmer and just let them get on with it! God wouldn't that be a cost saving! :D
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If only,shame they keep growing.(actually probably not a bad thing);)
 
use a name said:
If only,shame they keep growing.(actually probably not a bad thing);)
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Some of my lot are very close to self maintaining, they do a lot of road work - and one or two wouldn't require any visits at all if they worked a bit harder. But as you said the hoof keeps growing and few do enough work to keep up with it
 
use a name said:
If only,shame they keep growing.(actually probably not a bad thing);)
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Ah but harking back (rather boringly I admit) to my earlier post about when I lived somewhere where there were no farriers, the horses didn't have their feet trimmed at all, other than my dad occasionally getting a knife and a hammer and lopping a corner off if it was badly broken - while the horse stood on it since none of them had ever had a foot lifted up in their lives! Sure bits broke off and the horses no doubt wore naturally while out at grass (24/7) and being ridden, but that was it. Curiously despite living there until I was 17 I have no recollection of any of the horses ever being lame.

Oh well the arguement rages on... Oddly I'm not opposed to unshod, barefoot or shod horses....
 
0ldmare said:
So taking the barefoot argument to its logical conclusion, if the horse can deal best with its own feet, should we stop dicking around with them and cancel the farrier/barefoot trimmer and just let them get on with it! God wouldn't that be a cost saving! :D
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I think there are a surprising number of people doing just that, but how many would dare admit it here, they'd be slaughtered on this forum :) !

My hunter is self trimming I only ever round off the edges. Any horse I work on the road enough is self trimming. I sometimes make myself hack out my dressage horse so that I can avoid having to rasp.

If people could all perfectly balance growth with wear you are correct, few horses would need a farrier or trimmer, only the ones who have really serious gait abnormalities. But that's easier said than done unless you have all the time in the world to work your horse "perfectly".
 
cptrayes said:
I think there are a surprising number of people doing just that, but how many would dare admit it here, they'd be slaughtered on this forum :) !

My hunter is self trimming I only ever round off the edges. Any horse I work on the road enough is self trimming. I sometimes make myself hack out my dressage horse so that I can avoid having to rasp.

If people could all perfectly balance growth with wear you are correct, few horses would need a farrier or trimmer, only the ones who have really serious gait abnormalities. But that's easier said than done unless you have all the time in the world to work your horse "perfectly".
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well I am quite prepared to be slaughtered!! no problems at all as I have the sound barefoot ridden horses and have had for years. Horses can self trim quite adequately and the ones I have trimmed have had minimal trimming and are usually the rescue pasture pets.

CPT wrote: to inform people that many of them are paying for shoes unnecessarily. Boy was I ANGRY when I found out that more than 25 years of being told that all horses need shoes to do serious amounts of roadwork was not the truth!


that sentence really made my day! It has cheered me up no end. On average I have always had at least 3 riding horses on the go at the same time for over 30 years. Now if they had all been shod???!
 
me too :-)

Although my mare arrived with feet that had the texture and strength of stilton (and she had laminitis) they are now so hard I positively encourage her to self trim. Even if it means extra legging it up and down the farm tracks in the p'ing rain. Helps her EPSM too.
 
cptrayes said:
Make of that what you will, but I know that it is my experience that, in general, horses with bare feet have warmer feet than horses with shod feet.
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Well turning that arguement on it's head, warm feet could also indicate, pain, soreness, discomfort, infection!!!!!????? x

At the end of this debate, as with most things 'horsey' everyone has methods that work for them. And I'm glad that the industry is so diverse to be able to cope with different situations and problems in different ways. What people don't like is when someone of one method says their way is the only way and everyone else is wrong or uneducated.
 
competitiondiva said:
Well turning that arguement on it's head, warm feet could also indicate, pain, soreness, discomfort, infection!!!!!????? x

At the end of this debate, as with most things 'horsey' everyone has methods that work for them. And I'm glad that the industry is so diverse to be able to cope with different situations and problems in different ways. What people don't like is when someone of one method says their way is the only way and everyone else is wrong or uneducated.
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Agree with that last point especially.

Now. I have a bottle of red I've just opened, if anyone's interested?:D
 
So taking the barefoot argument to its logical conclusion, if the horse can deal best with its own feet, should we stop dicking around with them and cancel the farrier/barefoot trimmer and just let them get on with it! God wouldn't that be a cost saving!
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I have 2 of my 4 pretty much there now. Still need a tidy up on occasion to smooth out the roll, but pretty close to self trimming.

I let the first go without trimming because I'd had abdominal surgery and couldn't do it for a while - and to my surprise, he managed perfectly well and kep himself in order.
 
Mines is pretty well self trimming (hunting fit), saw farrier after 12 weeks and all he did was run the rasp around and charged me a £5 :-) he checks up on him every 7 weeks but rarely needs anything doing. I'm happy, horse is happy, what more could i ask for?
 
cptrayes said:
Exactly that, yes. Do you think horses don't know how to grow their own feet? :).........................

The horse will grow a foot which is perfectly tuned to the idiosyncracies of the body that is above it.
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horserider said:
In that case foals would not need trimming to rectify conformation deviations.
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How can you then reply saying I prove your point ? I think my point contradicts your point.
You go on to say that a farrier will trim the horses hoof straight without balancing it to the conformation of the leg. ????? What ? Any farrier incapable of balancing a hoof correctly would find me wrapping the rasp around the back of his head. Not all owners and farriers are completely ignorant.
You criticise the competence and integrity of farriers and vets and while there will always be those who fall short, but by the same token, shouldn't you highlight the failings of those trimmers poorly trained or inept that trim badly, causing discomfort or absesses and worse.
 
LucyPriory said:
Some of my lot are very close to self maintaining, they do a lot of road work - and one or two wouldn't require any visits at all if they worked a bit harder. But as you said the hoof keeps growing and few do enough work to keep up with it
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Unfortunately neither of mine can be ridden,so they have to get trimmed quite often!Its worse in the summer when their feet grow more.
 
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