Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

> Sorry Heidi,
>      While I agree with a lot of what you say, I was primarily
> addressing my comments about rasping to those riders whose horses
> are not fortunate enough to be barefoot and not fortunate to have
> enough land on which to naturally wear their feet.
Well, we DO shoe our riding horses, as even those who have lived barefoot
in this terrain all their lives cannot grow fast enough to keep up with
the wear.  And the covering over the hoof that grows down the outside of
the hoof wall still remains intact on our shod horses, for the most part,
a considerable way down the hoof.  While I agree that rasping near the
bottom of the foot may be necessary, there is no point in robbing the hoof
of the protection afforded it by the natural coating.

> Most
> domesticated horses are shod, live in stalls or smallish pastures
> with few to no rocks in their fields and therefore their feet need
> attention.  And, IMO, most horse owners are totally ignorant of the
> mechanics of the hoof and have to rely on their farrier and vets
> for information.
Agreed, on all counts.

> Many, many horses have long toes [many of them
> endurance horses] so according to you there are many, many ignorant
> farriers out there.
Yes, I believe there are.  It is very difficult to find farriers in many
locales who understand anything beyond making the hoof look "pretty."

> You said
> Mother Nature has good ideas and I totally agree and that is why my
> horses are barefoot.  However, as I stated previously most horses
> don't have the opportunity to let Mother Nature assist so we have
> to.
Certainly.  But "assisting" is a long shot from depriving the hoof of a
natural protection.  One can "assist" without doing that.

> And, IMO, if a horse has a long toe, if you just take the toe
> back without rasping down the wall, the toe will continue to grow
> long [and thick].  By rasping the hoof wall one takes off the
> excess and that will begin to allow the hoof to take a better form.
Um, only up to a point.  And again, this involves rasping the flare off
the bottom--NOT removing the protective coating from the entire hoof wall,
as the original poster was describing.  Additionally, one accomplishes
this by LEAVING heel (once one has undershot heel trimmed off) and
trimming back the toe, a little more each time, until the foot comes back
under itself.  Again, this involves only rasping hoof wall off of perhaps
the lower quarter of the toe--NOT the entire surface of the hoof!

Additionally, SHOEING can frequently correct the growth pattern if done
right--have done this more than once!  One shoes with the heel of the shoe
back where the heel of the hoof OUGHT to be, to give the foot proper
support--and after a few shoeings, one finds that the foot is actually
growing where it should be.  This also involves not putting in the heel
nail (unless the feet are quite large) so that there is adequate expansion
and contraction of the foot when it is in motion.  (We do this
anyway--even if the feet ARE already well-balanced.)

>  It is far more complicated than that, but my whole point was that
> it is not a bad thing to rasp the wall.  Since Mother Nature can
> not intervene in most cases, we have to as stewards of our horses.
I agree--and part of that stewardship is not interrupting nature any more
than it already is--but rather trying to return the foot to the
functionality that it WOULD have in a better setting.  Retaining as much
of the protective coating is a part of that.

Heidi



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