I pulled my horse’s shoes in late 2000. I
conditioned my horse for a couple years barefoot before attempting a barefoot
50 at Mt Adams. We did complete the ride and my horse received A/A+ for
movement, but it took us every bit of 12 hours (we were almost pulled for
overtime, but squeaked in). It was the most miserable ride of my life.
The first loop we did very fast which probably wore his hooves down too
much. The middle part of the ride was very rocky and I walked my horse in
hand for the whole loop. The last loop was nice, but had some rock and my
horse was too short in the foot already to handle it well. All of the
trot outs were on grass, so he passed the vet checks with flying colors.
While I was conditioning those 2 years, I frequently
trailered away to condition. I have 100’s of miles of trails from
my house, but they’re all rock/gravel. I finally got tired of
having to trailer away 3 hours to ride on barefoot friendly ground, so I
started conditioning exclusively on my home terrain. I started my horse
over like he was just under saddle (months of walking with very little trotting
and then building up to mainly trotting). By the time we got up to mainly
trotting (about 9-10 months after I started him over), he became foot
sore. I have always kept up with x-rays, so I took another set. It
showed he had lost about 15mm of sole depth! It took 3-4 months before I
could ride him on the rocks again. This same pattern had happened in the past,
but I didn’t recognize it for what it was…….wearing his
hooves down to nubs. So, I’ve gone back to shoeing.
I think if you’re lucky enough to live in an area
where you can get all your conditioning miles in on fairly non-abrassive
terrain AND the rides don’t have a lot of rock/gravel, then you may be
able to compete. I know my horse can do a “barefoot friendly”
50 miler with ease barefoot. But, my conditioning terrain is the limiting
factor.
In addition, for me it’s not worth the constant worry
of fussing over bare hooves and worrying about the horse coming up foot sore at
a ride. It’s much more fun for me and my horse to be able to go at
the speed we want and not have to worry that there won’t be enough hoof
to allow us to accomplish our goals. If you look at my ride record, I
barely got started with my horse before I pulled his shoes. And, I’ve
not accomplished anything since then due to trying very hard to do it barefoot
(of course, there was a couple of years in there that my horse and I were both
injured as well, but still, I sat out several years of not being able to ride
because of bare hooves).
