RE: Re: Barefootin'

[Marlene Moss <Marlene.Moss@wcom.Com>]

<< The amazing thing to me was
the difference in temperature. The trimmed foot was nice and warm, and the
untrimmed foot was cold in comparison. Amazing the immediate difference in
circulation. Big eye opener!>>


I, too, am investigating going barefoot.  When I first read some of the
available information, it was during the winter.  I noticed that my 4 yr old
who'd never been shod, never had as much of a problem with ice balls as the
other horses.  The other horses were normally shod, but had shoes taken off
in the winter, had terrible problems.  At first I wrote it off to age,
breeding, foot shape, statistical variation, whatever.  But after a couple
months of being barefoot, I noticed a difference in the other horses.  This
year I took shoes off in September, and after our first couple snows, I
don't see any major differences in the "lack" of retaining ice balls between
any of the horses.  We also acquired two mustangs who have never been shod
and they have no problem with ice balls.

They all seem to get some ice packed in just past the level of the hoof wall
and then it just pops out.  Previously they'd be walking around on the tips
of 3-4" iceballs.  I always wanted to stay home from work to clean them out
every couple hours, just seems like an injury waiting to happen.

I plan on doing as much training as I can on rocky trails and hopefully I'll
be able to stick with just front EZ boots for the rocky rides.  We'll see!

Marlene