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This is in response to Dbeverly4, whoever that is, who
wrote:
)....Other than Darolyn, who readily admits
that =
on rocky
rides she provides hoof protection for her horses, we have yet
t=
o hear
of a barefoot horse that does ENDURANCE with no hoof protection.
=
NO your horse doing a 25 miler barefoot in Florida sand doesn't
count.
I ride my endurance horses barefoot. I have not yet
done hundreds with them, but it's in the plan for late this season. I do
however do 50's with considerable success. I recently sold a horse that
competed in 50's barefoot over various terrain--from paved roads, to gravel
roads, to dirt, rock or sand trails. He had a 100% top ten completion
rate, winning one race in under 4 hours. Does that qualify as
endurance? I admit that on one 50 miler I did over a largely rocky trail
in central Oklahoma, in which we finished in third place, he was a little tender
footed, and had little foot to spare at the end, but he did trot out sound as a
bell, and metabolically in much better shape than the steel-shod horse that
finished second. The reason he was tender footed is that I did all of my
previous conditioning along sandy roadsides, and his feet were not conditioned
to rocks. I won't make that mistake again, nor will I ever have a steel
shoe nailed to any horse's foot in my care. If a horse needs hoof
protection, as on the mountain trails in New Mexico, I have him shod the week
before with nylon shoes (Equiflex), and pull them immediately after the
ride. Since I have begun riding my horses barefoot I have never had a
horse stock up after a race, and I don't use poultice or wrap thier legs (heaven
forbid! wrapping legs only restricts the circulation which the leg desperately
needs after such heavy exertion). Since beginning barefoot, my horses have
never had stone bruises, since they can feel the stones beneath their feet soon
enough to keep from placing thier entire weight on them. Do not be so
quick to judge a method you know nothing about. And by the way, if I'm not
mistaken, in farrier school, they teach the students how to prepare a hoof for a
shoe, not to prepare a hoof to bear the horse's weight. So they learn this
one method of trimming, and practice it on hundreds of horses. Does that
make it right, just because that's what been done for the past 1000 years?
Remember, during the same time period in which people began to think horses
needed shoes, doctors thought it was a good idea to let the blood out of sick
patients. And Alexander the Great conquered the eastern world on barefoot
horses. I have seen very few farriers (although, to their credit, there
are some) trim feet correctly to bear the horse's weight and not stress the
tendons and ligaments by leaving the
heel too high and the toe too
short. And those sole callouses that they say protect the horses feet
actually cause bruises--I have personally seen the evidence of this in every
horse I've trimmed for the first time. I prefer to follow the wisdom of
the ancient Greeks and Romans who valued logic and reason (and barefoot horses)
instead of those from the Dark Ages who came up with such innovations as the
rack, the iron maiden, and iron horse shoes. What did your horse ever do
to you that he
deserves to have his feet bound in iron?
Debbie
Ager
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