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Rick Jackson said:

> My concern is that Kat said that "she doesn't trust any rider
> or vet to pull a footsore horse". I would and do trust the vets
> to know what they are doing and be able to stand up to the
> arguementative riders. That is what they are paid to do.
Not in my experience.  I have been to more than one endurance ride where
the vets are muttering among themselves about how foot sore some
barefoot horse is, will perhaps try to mention to the riders that this
is what they are seeing only to have it fall on deaf ears as the rider
insists that it isn't so, and so shrug their shoulders, let the horse go
on, and go back to muttering among themselves.

> Most riders will know if their horse is off even if it is on all four.
Not in my experience.  I have been to more than one endurance ride where
there is a rider of a horse that is sore on all four and is completely
unaware of it, and will even remain completely unaware of it when it is
pointed out to them in as polite a way as possible by ride veterinarians
and will instead come back with the rationalization that whoever is
pointing it out to them is just prejudiced against barefoot horses.

> The PS region where she has her rides are some of the best
> terrain for a well conditioned barefoot horse.
Not in my experience.  In my experience (which is extensive, see below),
the footing and the terrain in the PS is some of the most harsh and
unforgiving (read: hard and abrasive) to the unprotected hoof.  There
are some horses that can do fine (even fine at endurance distances)
barefoot in sugary sand, moist turf, or foresty loam that come to the
pacific southwest with its decomposed granite and not so decomposed
granite, sandstone, and clay that has been baked as hard as a rock which
wears the foot off of a pasture ornament in less than a week and
caouldn't go a mile undersaddle without gimping around.

And here is my extensive experience:

_I_ (even before it was vogue and had achieved its religious fervor) did
multiple limited distance rides and 50 mile endurance rides with my
barefoot horse (as in, bare, bare foot, not booted, etc).  My first two
years of AERC rides were done on a horse that didn't wear shoes.  I DID
put shoes on my horse for his first 50, but he had thrown three of the
four shoes by the end of the ride, but still completed just fine, so I
didn't bother shoing him for his next efforts.

At the 1992 Camp Pendleton Challenge I even has to request special
permission in advance from the ride manager (who said it was fine with
him as along as it was okay with the head vet) and the head vet (who
said he wanted to do the pre-ride check himself) to start the ride with
no shoes on my horse.  The head vet said that it was okay with him but
"I guarantee you won't finish the ride." He was wrong; I finished the
ride in the top ten and got the high vet score in the BC evaluation.
Though we both commented that "he has a lot less foot than he did at the
start."

The next month, I started (and didn't finish) the 20 MT 100 with this
same barefoot horse.  We didn't finish because _I_ pulled my horse about
60 miles into the ride because he was so footsore I felt guilty about
asking him to go on, so I got off and led him the 5+ miles back to camp.
He was a bit foot sore at the 55 mile vet check (in fact, I knew he was
a bit foot sore before the 55 mile vet check and I had gotten off to
lead him through the really stony bits because of it), but the vet (same
as the head vet for Camp Pendleton mind you) didn't pull him for being
foot sore despite the fact that I TOLD him, "He's a bit foot sore."
Probably because he didn't look all that sore being trotted out in hand.
At that time he was only sufficiently foot sore to wince occasionally
when he stepped wrong on a rock while being ridden.  This is a vet for
whom I have a great deal of respect and is also a well respected
endurance vet world-wide.  He didn't pull my horse for being foot sore,
and I didn't either, until I rode the horse another 5+ miles, and it
took me a long time of arguing with myself to convince myself that I had
to stop, get off, and go back even though the horse wasn't always foot
sore but only in the bad footing.

I suspect that the reason he was able to do 50 miles at Camp Pendleton
with no shoes without a single misstep but was unable to do 55 miles at
20 Mule Team without getting "ouchie" (for which we were NOT pulled) was
two-fold: 1) The footing at Camp Pendleton was clay and riding on the
beach sand, while the footing at 20 Mule Team was sandstone, gravel, and
just plain stony, and 2) he still had "a lot less foot" at the start of
20 Mule Team than he did at the start of Camp Pendleton...from having
worn off so much foot doing 50 miles at Camp Pendleton.

_I_ am one of the FIRST people who will try to work a horse barefoot for
as long as possible, AND I have done endurance successfully with a
completely barefoot horse.  But I have also seen multitudes of barefoot
horses gimping around on the predominantly DG trails of Southern
California with owners who are blithely unaware (not uncaring but
uaware) that their horse has sore feet.

At a guess, I would be willing to say that only 1 in 10 of the barefoot
horses I see being ridden out on the trails around here (not even
endurance horses) doesn't have sore feet.  It is excruciating for me to
watch, and it is virtually impossible to convince the owners of these
horses that this is the case (which I only will try to do if I am
asked).

However, it isn't only trail conditions that dictates whether a horse
can successfully go barefoot, it is also living conditions.  When my
endurance horse was living in a 12'x24' stall with shavings for bedding,
he could do 50 mile endurance rides every month or so (and the
conditioning in between).  After I moved him into a 40' x 140' paddock
with prodominantly DG footing where he could run around and self
exercise, I could no longer even condition him without some form of hoof
protection.  None of the horses that were out to pasture on 100 acres of
DG could be ridden barefoot, and half of them couldn't even stay pasture
sound without being ridden on this type of footing....even those that
had been born and raised on it and never worn a shoe in their lives.
There are some types of footing that simply cannot be adapted to.

And there is a lot of this type of footing in Southern California.

I have done a lot of rides in So Cal (not all of them), and the only
ones that I have done that I would say have sufficiently forgiving
footing that they aren't overly abrasive to the bare foot were Camp
Pendleton, Bear Valley Springs (the trails there are virtually rock free
with really nice footing), and the half of Warner Springs that is
in/around the meadows (but get up onto the PCT and the story is
different).  I have never done the Bonita Turkey Trot, but I have ridden
in/around Bonita, so I am willing to believe that it also may have
fairly forgiving footing.

PS rides that don't have forgiving footing include all the desert rides
(including the Ridgecrest area, the Eastern Mojave, the Anza Borego area
and pretty much all the southern Nevada rides), all of the San Gabriel
Mountain rides, all of the PCT (and the rides which negotiate it), and
Malibu.

Tejon is kinda in the middle, and I haven't done Lake Los Angeles, so I
don't know.

Some of the rides that _I_ successfully negotiated with a barefoot horse
were those that don't have particularly forgiving footing, so I know it
can be done.

But it doesn't change the fact that I also know that there are a goodly
number of riders (not all) and vets (not all) who cannot tell when a
horse is footsore....and yes, I want to save these horses from the
ignorance of their riders those vets, especially since I really don't
believe that ANY horse could negotiate 100 miles of such unforgiving
footing without some form of hoof protection.

And the reason I don't believe it is that I have tried it, with a horse
that had absolutely GREAT feet.  So, perhaps, there is a certain amount
of conceit about my horse as well.  I figure, if Saber couldn't have
done it barefoot, then the horse that could do it barefoot doesn't
exist.

kat
Orange County, Calif.
:)




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