Trimmer prosecuted for 'shoeing'

If anyone would like to hear the full story and not just the FRC version, there is a thread on the IHDG.

If anyone believes the FRC took this action for welfare reasons, they are less cynical than I.

There was no welfare hearing here and these wraps have been successfully used for years without issue.

The use of the screws WAS imo pushing the boundary of the law in this county however.

It's a pity the 'us' and 'them' attitude still seems to be thriving.

If they are starting on wraps, who knows where this will end......
 
Interesting, as Mr Bowyer pleaded guilty to the allegation I don't feel that this case proves or disproves whether or not these casts amount to shoeing.

I would concede that the screwing on of the casts would strengthen the prosecution case. However, in the face of a 'not guilty' plea and robust defence, where expert witnesses would be called to refute the assertions made by the Council the magistrates would have difficulty in reaching a guilty verdict on that particular charge.

More appropriately, a charge of Causing Unnecessary Suffering would have more chance of being proven as the job appears to have been botched.

To include such casts as horse shoes is stretching the definition too far and would be worthy of an appeal to a higher court. Though I don't think this would be feasable in this particular case. It is quite interesting but not definitive in the circumstances.
 
Although not strictly against the HPC rules, I think the use of the term equine podiatrist is misleading as it implies greater training than is actually the case as human podiatrists do a full time 3 year degree and supervised clinical training.

I guess this case makes it clear that vetinary input should always be sought with a lame horse. I would certainly be very dubious to any practitioner like this who was not liaising with the horse's vet. It is one thing to give a healthy hoof a bit of a trim, entirely another to be treating a vetinary condition.
 
Can someone explain to me why, since barefoot people seem to think that shoeing is bad because it places a rigid structure on the hoof which doesn allow it to flex, doesn't let the base of the foot hit the floor, damages the wall of the hoof using nails etc - why then is it ok to effectively put the foot in a cast (which is rigid and doesn't let the foot flex), and use screws (which must damage the wall
In some way to work)?

This feels like blatant double standards to me. Either shoeing is bad and horses can be rehabbed not to need these rigid semi permenant structures or they can't. You can't have it both ways....
 
SpottedCat in basic terms a shoe goes under the hoof wall and the horse wears them for all activities and often a horse is shod all its working life, the wrap though going under are the foot are designed more to protect a crumbling hoof wall and are for use in the field/stable they are not tough enough to cope with hacking etc. and are used short term while the horse grows new hoof I suppose the easiest way to describe it is like very tough vet wrap.
Perhaps if you checked out the link provided by Oberon you would have a better idea of the job they do.
 
Paulag said:
I guess this case makes it clear that vetinary input should always be sought with a lame horse. I would certainly be very dubious to any practitioner like this who was not liaising with the horse's vet. It is one thing to give a healthy hoof a bit of a trim, entirely another to be treating a vetinary condition.
Click to expand...

I have already been amazed at the number of people who have posted saying their vet had been unable to help with regard to problems with hooves and lameness and in some cases the vet has recommended pts yet these same horses with time and attention to detail, mainly diet, have come sound when helped by a good openminded farrier or trimmer.
 
The owner of this horse is at fault as well and should have sought veterinary advice.
As pale rider says the case did not test in law if a wrap is a shoe as it never went to court but I think it could go either way .
However it's irrelevant as there's way no a horse should be having something like that done with out the vet being in charge and I would defiantly include having it done by a farrier in this , not a job for a farrier on his own either.
 
Last edited:
I am going to stick my neck out here and say I am little shocked by the attitude on the intelligent horsemanship forum, which is bias the other way. Forget the 'us' and 'them' attitude, what about the poor horse, which was obviously in agony.
I also don't get the 'wraps' for hooves either, or why they are 'screwed' on.
There is an awful lot of double standards and tension here, and everyone seems to be forgetting what the horse would have to say about it!
 
I dread to think what the implications are for users of hoof boots?
I've seen these wraps (minus screws), and certainly in that case they did the job they were supposed to, which was supporting a horse with poor hoof quality for a while. They came off easily with the help of scissors as far as I remember. In that case they were applied by a farrier, but I'd have no problems in having them applied by my very experienced trimmer should the need arise.
Touch wood I think I've anticipated possible problems that I might encounter as an owner with unshod horses. I've found a sympathetic vet who's taken the trouble to find out a bit about it.
Oh, I just went and had a read on page 9 of the Intelligent Horsemanship discussion group and there are some links to some interesting supplementary facts in one of the posts. My feeling is that whatever side of the fence us H+H'ers find ourselves, they gave an interesting and informative "other side" to the rather inflammatory article at the start of this thread.
 
Last edited:
Reading the IHDG forum, it appears that the customer was happy with this guys work :eek:

Personally, if my horse was continuously lame (11 Nov - 8 Dec), or even lame separately on those 2 occasions, due to having their feet 'done' by a farrier or barefoot person, I would be less than happy.

I can't help thinking that barefoot practitioners seem to have the ability to either blind some clients with science, or somehow brain wash them :confused:

How can anybody be happy with a lame horse :confused:

* Disclaimer - The IHDG post may be factually incorrect and the owner may well have been spitting nails *
 
I've read the links. Sorry but I disagree - just because you can't ride on the wraps doesn't make them any less of a rigid structure which stops the hoof flexing etc. Barefoot people constantly say that shoes are bad because they stop the hoof flexing etc - these do exactly the same thing, and they go under the hoof wall just as shoes do. You cannot condemn shoes whilst thinking it is ok to put the foot in a cast an use screws to keep it on IMO.
 
In this case the defendant should not have screwed the cast on.

Question: why don't trimmers et al train as farriers, then they can manage hooves in all respects. It would give them an understanding of what farriers do, how and why. Maybe break down the 'us and them' culture.
 
MrsMozart said:
In this case the defendant should not have screwed the cast on.

Question: why don't trimmers et al train as farriers, then they can manage hooves in all respects. It would give them an understanding of what farriers do, how and why. Maybe break down the 'us and them' culture.
Click to expand...

There are very limited places as farrier's apprentiships and it's full time and poorly paid. Trimming is sold as something you can train in part time while holding down another job: http://www.eptrain.co.uk/
 
Not long ago a farrier was in the news and all over the forum for ripping shoes off a horse.
Not the same I know, but, individuals in either camp do some stupid things.

I think screws and nails are pretty similar, though putting screws into an inflamed foot sounds less traumatic to me than hammering nails.

Don't try and use this incident to taint barefoot. The successes are far higher than conventional vet or farriers have, often after they have done their best or worse rather.

In a trial situation I am convinced barefoot would come out on top. Most lay people find shoeing bizarre at the very least. I believe the argument put to non traditional supporters of shoes, ie lay magistrates or a Judge, would easily be won.
 
Pale Rider said:
In a trial situation I am convinced barefoot would come out on top. Most lay people find shoeing bizarre at the very least. I believe the argument put to non traditional supporters of shoes, ie lay magistrates or a Judge, would easily be won.
Click to expand...

Nothing like inventing a scenario, putting your spin on it and concluding that barefoot is better. :rolleyes:

But to slightly indulge your flight of fantasy, perhaps you assume that outcome because lay people know nothing about horses? :p

On a serious and practical note regarding what this trimmer did, he LAMED the horse (with as much interference to the foot as a shoe creates) to the extent veterinary intervention was necessary. How can any of you try and justify that?
 
I've used this trimmer before, only had him around once or twice before returning back to shoes. We were concerned about taking our lami mares shoes off because she was so foot sore, but he convinced us to do it, he then proceeded to hack her hooves down to about half the original size :eek: he did not suggest any form of hoof boot, he then left us with a very lame horse. Decided to presevere and next time he came out he hacked it all off again! Nothing gradual or progressive, just straight into what it 'should' look like. We then had our old farrier back to put her shoes back on, who couldn't because he'd actually trimmed pretty much all her hoof wall off :( we then spoke to another trimmer (a very good one) who said she has had to fix many of his old clients horses.
This doesn't really have much to do with the OP but it really doesn't surprise me that he's done this!
 
Obviously what he did cannot be 'justified'.

But remember, lots of horses owned by forum members would have been PTS now, were it not for us barefooters (who know nothing about horses).
 
No one is saying barefooters know nothing about horses. But to say this shouldn't taint barefoot is ridiculous and picking as choosing the evidence to suit your argument. If the implication is that restricting the hoof with an inflexible object is bad (shoes), why is it ok to do exactly the same thing with wraps and screws?!

If every farrier that either doesn't do a great job or can't rehab a compromised horse using shoes taints farriery as a whole (and barefoot people often cite these farriers as examples of why barefoot is better), then a trimmer doing something inappropriate also taints the barefoot movement as a whole.
 
Caledonia I was surprised to see that the procedure left the horse lame, this was not something I was aware of as there was no welfare hearing.
Are you able to provide more information? My understanding was that the FRC brought the case on the basis that by law only a farrier can shoe a horse but that they felt the wraps constituted a shoe as it was fixed to the hoof but of course I could have misunderstood.

The link provided isn't working so I'm unable to look up the details.
 
Last edited:
I have seen a set of these in use before - the 2 screws are about 3mm long and used as an anchor for the wrap to be put around, compare this to the length of nails used to shoe. There is no way the two tiny screws would damage a hoof in the way a nail does. You cannot compare the rigidity of a shoe to these at all - when on you can pick them or squidge them, it doesnt dry like a cast on a broken leg - its not that stiff.

However from what Ive read it sounds like the trimmer was at fault - and this is why I really do not like DAEPS who are taught to make all feet look the same regardless of what the horse wants to grow or its size etc. The idea of these wraps is usually to correct flare, so the trimmer takes away all the flare in one go and puts the wraps on, the wraps protect the hoof from concussion and supposedly encourage straighter growth - they did do this on the horse I saw them on but not as miraculously as promised.

Pain relief is ok at some point, however it is nature's way of telling the body to slow down, if you dull that response you risk the horse hooning about and doing further damage it wont feel til you stop the drugs.

If the wraps were being held on with normal length nails being banged in I would understand the prosecutors argument - however they are not theyre tiny 3mm screws. If more farriers were like Moorman on here, open minded and really well educated, we wouldnt have had all these trimming schools springing up to give horses/owners another option.
 
LD&S said:
Caledonia I was surprised to see that the procedure left the horse lame, this was not something I was aware of as there was no welfare hearing.
Are you able to provide more information? My understanding was that the FRC brought the case on the basis that by law only a farrier can shoe a horse but that they felt the wraps constituted a shoe as it was fixed to the hoof but of course I could have misunderstood.
Click to expand...

The link in the first post will provide you with what you want to know.
 
TigerTail said:
You cannot compare the rigidity of a shoe to these at all - when on you can pick them or squidge them, it doesnt dry like a cast on a broken leg - its not that stiff.
Click to expand...

Why don't they just wrap the hoof in vet wrap then :confused:?
Could the substance that these wraps are impregnated with be applied to the hoof and then vet wrap on top?
 
There is an argument I've heard some barefoot enthusiasts make, that for certain hooves which have been compromised (don't ask what, I missed that) in specific ways benefit from shoes, until all the other factors are in place when the shoes then finally come off. This was a farrier talking who is now barefoot and part of the barefoot training program.
So, some people do see a need to put a cast on a hoof. Personally, I'd have thought broken bones in the foot would come into this category.

I really do think it is stretching credulity to put horse shoes and a cast as the same.

iamsanta's tale is very concerning though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top