trimming sole and frog when shoeing?

mandwhy

mandwhy

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Just reading about hooves again and thinking people always say to not let farrier trim sole and frog if you are going barefoot and I understand why, so just wondering why do they trim them when shoeing? Thrush or something?

I am not going barefoot although probably taking backs off as he has only had them on for past two shoeings so don't really see the point! I know he is quite footsore when a front shoe comes off (on our many pointy stabby gravel tracks) which was very often until farrier rolled toes which seems to have worked :-) Still going to change farrier for other reasons, so should I ask for them to leave sole and frog on backs but what about fronts?

He is a TB and not bad feet at all but just a bit shallow on front soles I think.
 
In 40 yrs of horse ownership, I have never seen a farrier trim a sole. I have seen them trim dead flaps of frog - a bit like us trimming dead cuticle from round a fingernail but that is all. We have for many years had a mixture of shod, part-shod and unshod horses and had 4 different farriers - even the one we sacked because of the shape of the feet he was leaving didn't trim soles.
I can't think of many farriers who would be happy for the client to be telling them how to do their job either - any more than I would expect someone unqualified to tell me how to do mine.
 
Oh goodness me I hate the idea of telling them how to do their job!

With current one I just asked him 'is there anything you can do to help with the overreaching?' And he seemed to take it as some sort of insult to his work at first until I convinced him that wasn't what I meant. Maybe I moaned too much about the shoes coming off (a tenner to replace each one adds up!) He had to come back 2 days later for yet another pinged shoe and the horse's owner who is much more forthright than me asked him to take the toes back/roll them and that seems to be what he's done. Horse hasn't been wearing OR boots as he chewed them and shoes have been absolutely fine so I'm glad the owner did ask him really.

Just thinking as I have the horse on lvwtb and am moving him a very short way away what to say to new farrier.
 
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