thought on the whole shoes/barefoot thing

'I work with diabetologists and have been in diabetes for 4 years.' What does this mean? Receptionist? I'm not sure jut working in the general area of diabetoligists makes you an expert..
 
Paulag said:
Cptrayes So I see that you've quoted the meta analysis of randomised controlled trials that proved scientific significance for the statements that you've made here. Oh no, wait a minute, you haven't - why bother you have all your lovely proof by vigorous assertion to rely on. You might be ae to bully other people with your aggressiveness, but I'm used to uneducated twerps in my day job.
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How very pleasant you are :D

Paulag said:
And no magnesium oxide is not used to treat type 2 diabetes you silly person. I'd be struck off if I claimed that.
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I stand to be corrected on oxide being the delivery medium but magnesium most certainly IS being used to treat type II diabetes, I have a friend whose husband has been prescribed it.


Paulag said:
I doubt there's a great deal of sugar in the feed my horse gets - you are aware that grass and hay is digested down to sugar aren't you?
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I'm beginning to doubt your knowledge here. Grass and hay contain sugar in the first place, it's not a product of grass digestion, it's already there.



Paulag said:
Don't be so damn aggressive if you don't want to look an idiot. Forums are about adult conversations, not bullying other owners.

Paula
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Ooooooooooh get you sweetheart :D! Bad evening are we having, love?

Pots, kettles ?
 
Pale Rider said:
Shod horses on tarmac are a nightmare, and to be safe even in walk you need road nails. Others may have a different opinion, but that is erroneous, whether they mean to be or not.
Barefoot horses are a lot safer on tarmac a slip very little, in all gaits.
A lot has been said about competition and the need for studded shoes in certain conditions. Of course the right and proper thing to do would be not to compete in theses conditions. This however, is too big an ask for the majority, better to use artificial means like shoes and studs to ensure that the show goes on.
My personal view is to withdraw from competitions where the ground required shoes and studs.
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I'm sure all the pros who jumped in the main ring at Hickstead last week will be interested to hear that they should have withdrawn rather than used shoes/studs, I'm sure they will take that brilliant advice on board next time they are jumping in international classes. These are professional riders at the top of their game, its their living, not a hobby, if the ground is bad then yes, of course they would withdraw like at Kent County a few weekends ago when they ran the Area Trial over only 8 fences & reduced the height to take into account the wet ground, some riders chose not to jump at all. But in general terms expecting top pros to withdraw rather than use studs is unrealistic. Your other post about using studs to take the horse beyond its natural ability is just hilarious, as for CPT stating she had a nice jolly round a novice but didn't mind not making the time, thats fine for an amateur rider out for a nice time, a pro needs to get results, keep their rides & make a living. I don't mean by ragging the horses round, but they need to be competitive.
 
merlinsquest said:
I'm sure all the pros who jumped in the main ring at Hickstead last week will be interested to hear that they should have withdrawn rather than used shoes/studs, I'm sure they will take that brilliant advice on board next time they are jumping in international classes. These are professional riders at the top of their game, its their living, not a hobby, if the ground is bad then yes, of course they would withdraw like at Kent County a few weekends ago when they ran the Area Trial over only 8 fences & reduced the height to take into account the wet ground, some riders chose not to jump at all. But in general terms expecting top pros to withdraw rather than use studs is unrealistic. Your other post about using studs to take the horse beyond its natural ability is just hilarious, as for CPT stating she had a nice jolly round a novice but didn't mind not making the time, thats fine for an amateur rider out for a nice time, a pro needs to get results, keep their rides & make a living. I don't mean by ragging the horses round, but they need to be competitive.
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No-one has a problem with people using shoes and studs to compete. We don't expect anyone, least of all pros with a living to earn, to "do" anything.

We only have a problem with people who say that they have no choice but to use shoes and studs, when they do.

Which bit of that don't you get?
 
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SusieT said:
'I work with diabetologists and have been in diabetes for 4 years.' What does this mean? Receptionist? I'm not sure jut working in the general area of diabetoligists makes you an expert..
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General area of diabetologists? That doesn't even make sense.

A diabetologist is a clinician who specialises in diabetes. They are not areas.

I am an expert. A very well trained one and it is none of your business what I do.
 
cptrayes said:
How very pleasant you are :D
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I'm sorry but you were the one that started with the aggressive

cptrayes said:
I stand to be corrected on oxide being the delivery medium but magnesium most certainly IS being used to treat type II diabetes, I have a friend whose husband has been prescribed it.
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Not by a doctor or a dietitian he wasn't - maybe by someone calling themselves a nutritional therapist or some such name with no professional regulation and no danger of being struck off for selling expensive supplements that are at best useless. And tallyho! no trained nurses recommend magnesium supplements - not if they've read the nutritional guidelines by both the American and British Diabetes and Dietetic associations. A qualified diabetes specialist dietitian should be giving dietary advice anyhow.

cptrayes said:
I'm beginning to doubt your knowledge here. Grass and hay contain sugar in the first place, it's not a product of grass digestion, it's already there.
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Herbivores, unlike humans, can digest the carbohydrate cellulose in plant material down to it's constituent part glucose (the primary dietary sugar). If you don't understand this very basic fact of digestion you most definitely should not be giving advice on nutrition. There's plenty of books out there on the biochemistry of metabolism if you look.

cptrayes said:
Ooooooooooh get you sweetheart :D! Bad evening are we having, love?

Pots, kettles ?
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Nope I just don't like being attacked by someone with no scientific training giving advice that could cause problems. I also don't like being told that I am mistreating my horse because I acted in its best interests.

Its also common practice for supplement companies to pay people to aggressively push their expensive products online and attack anyone that points out that they are a waste of money. While I doubt this is the case here, they must be challenged at all times.

Paula
 
Paulag said:
I agree and I never said supplements to mean tablets or pills. It was through diet. In any case, it isn't the only mineral that is beneficial to pts with t2d and a well balanced diet.... But sorry i digress, it's not humans we are discussing.
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cptrayes said:
No-one has a problem with people using shoes and studs to compete. We don't expect anyone to "do" anything.

We only have a problem with people who say that they have no choice but to use shoes and studs, when they do.

Which bit of that don't you get?
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I actually can't even be bothered to try & justify why top level pros jumping 1.60m tracks would have no choice but to stud/shoe, I expect it could be something to do with "slow down, take wider turns" as in your earlier post.
 
but really, very few people are top level pros so for the majority that isn't really relevant I spose.

Can we shift the science so I can join in please?.. we aren't really on my international specialism currently :rolleyes:
 
Paulag said:
I doubt there's a great deal of sugar in the feed my horse gets - Paula
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Do you not know how much sugar is in your horse's diet?

One thing that strikes me again and again with so many aspects of horse care is how little I know and how little even the experts know. Optimum nutrition is still ongoing research. All I can do is study the latest findings and draw my own conclusions. As so many other posters have said,it is down to personal choice. I want my horses to be as well as they can in 'capitivity' and therefore study their diet with care and consideration.
I would do this regardless of whether they were shod or not.
 
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Paulag said:
I'm sorry but you were the one that started with the aggressive
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"claptrap" is an OK expression to use for advising people to give yeast to horses to help them cope with grass digestion, is it? Or warn that high manganese/iron or low copper can cause a horse to develop laminitis due to problems with insulin regulation? If you do a search you will find the specialist who described exactly what the two inflammation reducing effects of yeast on the gut are together with all the big words you like to know.


Let's face it, you're just pee'd off with me because I criticized you for running straight to shoe your horse instead of making any effort to find out if you could remove her footiness any other way. And I only did that because you ridiculed those people who do with your very first "claptrap" post.

Paulag said:
Not by a doctor or a dietitian he wasn't
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Well he must have been included in one of the studies that has been/is being run then because the advice was medical.



On the sugar in grass issue, you said that sugar is produced by digestion of grass as if the grass had no sugar in it in the first place. That was the impression that I was trying to correct. As far as I am aware, provided the horse is not receiving excess calories over need, the production of sugar from digestion will not cause problems to a normal barefoot horse. But there are many which cannot produce rock-crunching performance in summer on grass too high in the sugar already present in what is coming off the field.


Paulag said:
Nope I just don't like being attacked by someone with no scientific training giving advice that could cause problems. I also don't like being told that I am mistreating my horse because I acted in its best interests.
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Ah, yes, sorry "claptrap" is a well known scientific term, I forgot. :D

I did not tell you you mistreated your horse, though it's clear from the vitriol of your replies that you feel that I did, I think you need to question the strength of your reaction. If you are perfectly clear that you did the right thing for your horse why are you so upset?

What I was unhappy about was not the fact that you shod your horse without attempting to find out if you could make her happy some other way but that you ridiculed people who do not do that and people who try to help others who want to know how to do it.


Paulag said:
Its also common practice for supplement companies to pay people to aggressively push their expensive products online and attack anyone that points out that they are a waste of money. While I doubt this is the case here, they must be challenged at all times.
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So challenge it, but there is no need to be gratuitously rude when you do it.
If you read barefoot threads you will find that the majority of advice is that commercial supplements should not be fed, but that a tailored diet of additional specific minerals/yeast/linseed/ etc is likely to achieve a better result. But you have already written all that off as "claptrap" so I doubt you would be interested in reading it.
 
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merlinsquest said:
I actually can't even be bothered to try & justify why top level pros jumping 1.60m tracks would have no choice but to stud/shoe, I expect it could be something to do with "slow down, take wider turns" as in your earlier post.
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But they DO

They have a choice to do a different job. It isn't one they want to take. Fine. No problem whatsoever.

But there is no man with a gun at their head forcing them to have shoes or studs on their horses. It is a choice.
 
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Pseudoscientific claptrap is the term used bt scientists for advice that's given with a shallow veneer of something that sounds like science but does not stand up to any scrutiny. Very common in the nutrition therapy business where they make money out of 'prescribing' ie selling supplements to people.

I don't want a self proclaimed 'specialist' or threads on forums where they attack anyone who disagrees to tell me what to feed my horse, I want scientific studies. I'd love to know the exact metabolic pathway by which yeast reduces but inflammation because it seems to be unknown to science. It's a bloody eukaryotic cell for goodness sake.

The vitriol has nothing to do with defensiveness and everything to do with the right to challenge this sort of stuff when it happens. I stated an experience and was attacked for it. In no way did I criticize anyone who has their horse barefoot in contrast to your several attacks on me for half not continuing with it. I merely stated that a lot of the stuff stated on nutrition here is clearly claptrap to someone professionally trained in the field.

Paula
 
Pale Rider said:
Shod horses on tarmac are a nightmare, and to be safe even in walk you need road nails. Others may have a different opinion, but that is erroneous, whether they mean to be or not.
Barefoot horses are a lot safer on tarmac a slip very little, in all gaits.
A lot has been said about competition and the need for studded shoes in certain conditions. Of course the right and proper thing to do would be not to compete in theses conditions. This however, is too big an ask for the majority, better to use artificial means like shoes and studs to ensure that the show goes on.
My personal view is to withdraw from competitions where the ground required shoes and studs.
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I had shoes all round and road studs on our old Shire, we used to do wagon rides on the lanes around here and the small roads are dire, never re-surfaced only top dressed with gravel, and very hilly, In hot weather they melt, and when they harden again its like an ice rink! :( so with a wagon behind he really needed them! Even the unshod ponies slip, i have had the back end go from under me to the point that one nearly sat down!
My opinion is that a horse without shoes can slip just as easily as one with shoes on some surfaces!
 
I don't get the problem here.

I've had horses a long time and worked professionally with them for years.

Now, I don't have a degree in the biomechanics of a horses foot, or in nutrition, but I do have life experience.

I've had many horses shod all their lives, live totally problem free into their thirties.
I've had ponies with hard feet and left them without shoes to save money and time.

Now surely shoeing horses doesn't kill them. Neither does barefoot.

Why don't people just do whatever they want and what works for them.....but wait........WITHOUT forcing their ideas on others and berating/guilt tripping people for not doing it their way??

I will carry on shoeing my horses in work because I believe, and IME, it is more comfortable for them and easier for me to manage.
I will continue taking their shoes off when they're on holiday as I think it does them good to have a break.

And whatever anyone else wants to do.....go for it.

I think it's great to have different views on things but sometimes, really......you can do things more than one way without one side being wrong.
 
but if you know that the woolly science behind it wouldn't actually stand up to any sort of scrutiny what does it matter if it seems to work for your horse. Its all about choice at the end of the day and sometimes if people waited for proper, peer reviewed trials for everything they would miss out.

ooh just remembered fab discussion of the Dr who sorted the H. pylori thing on the infinite monkey cage last week. n=1 and a discussion about things you can and can't prove.

As I said you have a choice, its up to you what you feed your horse and I don't think most who preport to be pro. nutritionists based with companys know that much either because they have to rely on the already existing science too.

Just don't mention bifidus digestivum to me ;) ..
 
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cptrayes said:
But they DO

They have a choice to do a different job. It isn't one they want to take. Fine. No problem whatsoever.

But there is no man with a gun at their head forcing them to have shoes or studs on their horses. It is a choice.
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Next time I'm at a big show I'll suggest to them that they should all become cleaners or lollipop men as this is a logical choice rather than putting shoes & studs on, no there is no man with a gun, but there are owners/sponsors expecting results & a return on their £0000000000 of investment. Actually I doubt many of them do have a choice to do something else, as in the majority this is all they know, so I very much doubt it would be "no problem whatsover" to just do something else. I actually can't wait to talk about this thread between classes next week, some of these statements are hysterical. Could you just do another job just like that, & would you want to if you had spent years working your way to the top?
 
Owners, sponsors and cash, the cause of quite a lot of bad practice in lots of sports.

Talking about these folk, the professionals at the top of their game is interesting. Judging by the Stressage I watched today, I think the opinion of lots of these professionals isn't worth a light.
The horse to them is just something to compete on, and that's all.
I watched everyone today after their event and took note of how they treated the horse. Apart from slapping them on the neck at the end, nearly everyone just dismounted and started laughing and talking to those around them. Not even looking at the horse.
WFP ignored his horse completely, Todd, ran up one stirrup and walked off. Zara Phillips was the only one who took any real time for her horse.
Most top professionals don't care about shoeing, barefoot studs or anything else.
 
Most top professionals don't care about shoeing, barefoot studs or anything else.[/QUOTE]

Is there any chance of you giving any substance to thus statement, other than what you saw on the TV this morning?
 
Pale Rider said:
Shod horses on tarmac are a nightmare, and to be safe even in walk you need road nails. Others may have a different opinion, but that is erroneous, whether they mean to be or not.
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Thank you for pointing this out to me :rolleyes: Are all my opinions erroneous or just this one? I just need to be clear on this so that I can proceed in life without burdening people with yet more incorrect opinions (whether I mean them to be or not).

Also, do you have the monopoly on correct opinions or are they on rotation? If so, do I get a turn?
 
YorksG said:
Thought not, this is presumably yet another example of posters making assertions, based on nothing other than their opinions, presented as fact.
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Not really an assertion, just an opinion based on witnessing the behaviour exhibited by the particular group subject of the post. It could be argued that based on this behaviour any third party would find it difficult to see any difference in these people getting off their horse to getting off a motorcycle or out of a car. The impression their behaviour gives is that the horse is just another piece of equipment they use to achieve their goal.
I did say 'most' rather than 'all', and gave an example of one person who behaved quite differently in the same circumstances, there were others, but their names escape me at the moment.


Herpesas said:
Thank you for pointing this out to me :rolleyes: Are all my opinions erroneous or just this one? I just need to be clear on this so that I can proceed in life without burdening people with yet more incorrect opinions (whether I mean them to be or not).

Also, do you have the monopoly on correct opinions or are they on rotation? If so, do I get a turn?
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To be frank I've no idea what your opinions are, but if you think that shod horses don't slip on tarmac, you're wrong, so changing this one would be a start.
Obviously there is no monopoly on correct opinions, unfortunately there is no rotation, you're either correct or you're not. So if you sharpen up a little, you may proceed in life without burdening people with yet more incorrect opinions (whether you mean them to be or not).:D (I am joking bye the way,:))
 
Pale Rider you ASTONISH me.

When you produce a horse to international level and know many of the people riding at that level, then you can comment with authority.

I have, and can categorically say that your statements about event riders 'not caring' about their horses is RIDICULOUS, naive, and downright wrong.

Words fail me........
 
Patterdale, words obviously don't fail you.

Your assumption of who I know and who I don't is quite strange.

A horse I've had a hand in training was being ridden by someone who I have every confidence will do well at these games, only a couple of months ago.

There are others who have been very high profile in the past, I wouldn't trust with a goldfish.

Not everyone at the top of their game where animals are concerned, have the animal's best interest at heart, just look st the kennel club.
 
ester said:
but if you know that the woolly science behind it wouldn't actually stand up to any sort of scrutiny what does it matter if it seems to work for your horse. ..
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I completely agree with this - hell I'm the first one to reach for the echinacea when I get a cold. :o

However it is important to ensure no harm is done - which s why I tend to warn agains massive supplements of single minerals as they can block absorption of other minerals, cause stomach upsets or very occasionally be toxic if used by someone who feels more is better.

Also it is not an alternative to good vetinary care - they had to make it illegal to claim to be able to cure cancer in the end die to

Paula
 
patterdale said:
Pale Rider you ASTONISH me.

When you produce a horse to international level and know many of the people riding at that level, then you can comment with authority.

I have, and can categorically say that your statements about event riders 'not caring' about their horses is RIDICULOUS, naive, and downright wrong.

Words fail me........
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Patterdale I completely agree, & would be interested to know if the horse Pale Rider has produced to Olympic level is shod, does it wear studs?.....

Last week at Hickstead my friend & coach won a big class in the main ring, horsie got hugs & pats & polos, was walked off by the rider & then we untacked, washed off, gave a drink etc together. I came round the back of the lorry & found the rider with his arms round horses neck hugging him, it was one of those real special moments, a little snap shot into how much the horses mean when they have a real partnership at this level. Oh, we did also remember to take his studs out...... Can't wait to tell him how uncaring he is, & how he's just in it for the money, yeah right working sometimes a 16 hour day, lorry loads of horses to shows in the pouring rain, teaching people of all levels in all weathers, I think some people really have no idea....
 
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