Barefootin'

[guest@endurance.net]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net


Considering the amount of interest that the barefoot topic
appears recently to be generating world-wide, I thought
that I might contribute my 2 cents on it, since it is
something that I have been toying with, dabbling in, and
experimenting with for more than ten years (ever since I
started riding endurance), have actually tried it out on
the endurance trail in varying terrain (admittedly all in
the west), over varying distances, on various horses. I
have had barefoot horses for longer than barefootism and
the natural horse trim/s??? have been a fad.

As a summary here are some of the conclusions that my over
ten years of experimentation and observation has led me to
draw (understanding that these "conclusions" may change as
more information becomes available :))

1.	Horses cannot compete in endurance at distances of
greater than 50 miles about once a month without some kind
of hoof protection to guard against excessive wear (there
may be some ponies, donkeys or mules that can...I have no
experience with them). I have successfully competed in both
LD rides and in one-day 50 milers with no shoes on my
horse, but when I tried to do a 100 my horse just plain old
got too short in the foot (no chips, no cracking, no sole
bruising, just short).  And this was at a time when I kept
my horse in a stall (12'x12' with shavings for bedding)
between rides.

2.	There is no SINGLE "natural hoof trim."  There are as
many right trims as there are horses to use them on
(actually, there are four times as many trims as there are
horses to use them on, because not only does each
individual horse have its own "natural" trim, but it has a
different one for each foot).  The idea that there is one
trim (shape, angle, length of toe, length of heel, depth of
frog, etc.) for every foot on every horse is beyond
ludicrous.

It provides me with a great deal of humor to have a
"natural hoof specialist" come to my place, look at my
stallion's feet and tell me how wrongly they have been
trimmed because it would be more natural if he had shorter
toes, longer toes, squarer toes, longer heels, shorter
heels, a different hoof angle, different hair-line angle,
smaller bars, less quarter, etc. (I have heard all of
these, conflicting though they are, from the assortment
that have commented).  They, of course, feel incredibly
stupid when I tell them that he has never had his feet
trimmed in his life…and I mean NEVER.

Which brings me to:

3.	The idea that any endurance horse that is being kept
in an even marginally good sized paddock and is being
ridden enough to be conditioned as an endurance horse would
ever grow enough foot to actually need to have any of it
trimmed off is bizarre to me.  I NEVER have to trim any of
my barefoot horses, especially those that live "naturally"
grazing out on 100 acres of unirrigated California hillside
(i.e. not my stallion who has a 1/2 acre paddock of his
own).  These horses cover more than enough ground just
walking around grazing to wear off more foot than they ever
could grow (and it takes a mere two to four days for one
that is "long in the foot" to become "short in the foot"
when turned out with the herd).  But if my stallion (or any
other horse that is kept in a stall and doesn't get enough
work to wear off its feet) starts to get "a little long in
the foot" all I have to do is take him for a walk on the
road. A walk on the road once a week will keep just about
any horse sufficiently worn to never need to have its feet
trimmed.  Barefoot horses don't need to have their feet
trimmed.  They "self-trim."

4.	If a horse does not "self trim" into exactly the right
foot for itself (no matter what the books and experts who
have watched other people's horses say), then it cannot go
barefoot.  If a horse needs some kind of "corrective" trim
that is different from what the horse would wear itself in
to, then it also needs some kind of shoe to keep that trim
from wearing off.  I have one horse like this.  He has an
angular deviation in his back legs (his pasterns angle in
slightly) that causes his hind feet to twist to the outside
before he picks them up.  Because of this twist, it causes
excessive wear on the outside heels of his hind feet, which
in turn causes his feet to twist more, which causes even
more wear....  To keep this excessive wear from causing an
even greater gait abnormality, he wears shoes to keep him
from wearing off a part of his foot that he needs for
support.

I am willing to concede the possibility that other people
are having to trim their barefoot horses because those
horses live and travel on a different kind of ground than
mine do (rather than that their horses just aren't getting
enough exercise to wear off their feet without a trim).
Which brings me to:

5.	Just as there is no one trim that is right for every
horse, there is no one type of hoof protection that is
right for every type of ground.  In investigating all the
assortment of alternatives to steel shoes (the Converse
All-Stars of equine hoofwear), both in using them myself
and in speaking with other people about their experiences,
I have found that what works for one person on their horse
in sandy beaches or loamy woods, or bogs , or even the
heaths of Newmarket doesn't work at all for my horses on
their granite mountain, or in the rocky desert of Death
Valley.

I have given up on the idea of being able to compete in
endurance with a barefoot horse (as in, actually having the
horse barefoot during the ride).  It could be done if all I
wanted to do was ride LD rides or an occasional 50, but if
I am going to compete regularly in endurance (multi-day
rides are my favorite), then my horses are going to have to
have some kind of hoof protection...and not just until
their feet "get used" to going barefoot.  My horses are
more used to going barefoot than they are to having
something on their feet.

I intend to continue to investigate alternatives to steel
shoes as they become available, but until then, for my
horses what I (generally) will be doing is the following
(and if anybody would like to know about the MANY
alternatives that I have tried to lead me to this course of
action they can e-mail me privately, suffice it to say that
I have tried out or seen other people use: Equithotics,
EasyBoots, OldMac Boots, Marathon Shoes, Helvetia shoes,
Slypners, Soft bar pads, Level-It, Equithane, Equipack to
name the ones that currently come to mind, as some of these
alternatives may work for other horses in other
circumstances).

For now, here's what I intend to do:

Keep my horses barefoot while at home, let them wear
themselves into their natural foot, use Old Mac Horse Boots
for any long training/conditioning rides, except for Windy
who has feet that are so small that they don't make them in
her size.

Put on steel shoes for rides, with soft bar pads in the
summer time as long as I am not going to any ride that will
have any mud, or just plain old steel shoes otherwise and
will foam on EasyBoots over the steel shoes if the ride
won't have large quantities of deep mud.

Windy, unless somebody comes up with something better that
I have not yet even seen, will just wear steel.

After I have used the Old Macs enough in
training/conditioning to feel confident that I won't have
to give my horse's hoof protection any thought, I will use
the at rides for which they are appropriate for the footing
(they are not appropriate in the mud).

Some things that I have not yet tried/investigated
sufficiently that I am still considering:

Glueshoes (when they get some in stock)
Luwex pads
"Those yellow shoes" (that are used on TB race horses...if
the guy from JPL actually is still making them, it's been a
few years since I have heard anything about them).

Or I may just give up (since it is expensive) and just nail
on steel :)

kat
Orange County, Calif.