Why don't you just put shoes on her?

If only I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me why I don't just put shoes on Freya, I would be a wealthy woman!

Before I go down this particular rabbit hole, let me clarify how I feel about shoes.  I don't like them.  I have had shoes on my horses in the past, and I never found that they improved my horse's feet.  In fact, they are probably the reason that I lost the horse I had before Nimo.  I have watched horse after horse in various boarding barns gradually lose the optimal structure of their feet the longer they wear shoes.  I see toes that are too long and heels that are underrun and hooves that are simply too high and contracted heels and atrophied frogs and chronic thrush and all sorts of deformities.  I listen to the stories about how the horse just can't seem to keep shoes on, and I've spent a not insignificant amount of time helping people look for lost shoes in the pasture and praying that my horse doesn't step on a horseshoe nail from said lost shoe.

All that said, I also see a lot of those same problems with barefoot horses.  So obviously part of the problem isn't the shoes, it is the way the shoes are applied or the length of time between trims and resets.  The farrier controls part of that equation, but the owner also influences the timing.

I also recognize that there are medical reasons for why a horse would wear shoes.  Navicular, laminitis, surgery, and other physical issues can create serious problems for horses that shoes may be able to help with, given a competent farrier and vet.

So it isn't that I think all shoes should be banned or that anyone who puts shoes on their horse is an idiot.  I just think that the way they are typically used doesn't actually do what people says it does in a lot of cases.  And I think that too many people become farriers without proper training and continuing education.  I can't tell you the amount of BS I have heard come out of farriers' mouths.  But I also know that there are plenty of competent, educated farriers who work hard to improve their skills and take their craft very seriously.  So this isn't meant to be a farrier-bashing post.

In Freya's case, I know why people ask me why I don't just put shoes on her.  She struggles to move soundly without hoof protection.  The biggest game changer in our care of her was when I put hoof boots on her at the recommendation of a farrier I consulted with last August.  I felt incredibly embarrassed once I'd put the boots on her, because it was immediately obvious how much better she moved.

You may remember that when I bought her, she had front shoes on.  I almost didn't buy her for that reason because I really didn't want to try to deal with shoes on a horse again.  Also, the shoes had been on for so long that her hoof angle was significantly distorted and the sole had grown so much that it filled in the space between the shoe.  When I had her shoes pulled, the farrier probably trimmed about a half inch of sole and revealed a blackened area underneath.  It was not pleasant.  He expected me to say that I wanted shoes put back on, but I knew I couldn't put shoes back on those feet in the condition they were in or I'd just be perpetuating the problems she already had.  And I did not then and do not now have regular access to a farrier that I consider to be competent at shoeing a horse.

Freya was sound for a while after the shoes were pulled and I felt comfortable not putting them back on because her previous owner had said they hadn't been on that long (maybe a year) and they weren't put on to address soreness.  But she developed a case of central sulcus thrush in all four feet a few months later.  I didn't realize how serious it was until it was at first because it appeared as thin heel cracks when the environment was dry.  Unfortunately, it was quite advanced and Freya was quite sore before I figured it out, and it took about 5 months to resolve the infection.  Treating for 14 days with the cow mastitis antibiotic Today and following up with daily treatments of No Thrush was what finally worked after I tried an assortment of recommended treatments, including White Lightening and Pete Ramey's goo.

After the infection cleared, she never moved quite right.  For several months I chalked it up to her not having great balance under saddle and having some dysfunctional movement.  But I was not happy with the angles on her feet, particularly the fronts, and it was clear she was struggling under saddle.  I had made a lot of progress trimming them myself, but in all honesty, I wasn't a competent farrier either, so I reached out to a farrier I trusted to get a remote consultation.  That was an eye-opening process.  I learned a lot about how to take pictures of hooves and how easy it is to create the appearance of distortion or minimize distortion inadvertently.  (If you want to start learning about how to take pictures of horse's hooves, check out this article: https://www.theequinedocumentalist.com/post/why-do-photos-lie-and-how-not-to-get-misled and this one: https://www.theequinedocumentalist.com/post/how-to-document-images-and-radiographs-for-successful-hoof-care-and-promote-soundness-in-horses.)

Here is an example of one hoof that I took pictures of for the consultation.  By the time I was done doing pictures of all four feet, I felt like I was lost in the Bermuda Triangle with no sense of direction.  I think I even managed to somehow get the right and left front legs mixed up and mislabeled despite my best efforts.  It was a very humbling experience.

I learned that my trimming was not bad, but there were a few improvements I could make, like trimming her bars more frequently, leaving a little more vertical wall, particularly at the heels to address her NPA, and more assertively dressing the distortion of the hoof.  The farrier also recommended hoof boots for her front feet.  

And I thought the farrier was a nutter.  I was like, this mare lives in a grass paddock and spends her days in a well-bedded stall.  When she is ridden, she walks a short distance over a smooth bluestone parking area and then works in sand.  How could she possibly need hoof boots?  I mean, hoof boots are to provide protection from hard or rocky ground, right?

But I did happen to have a set of Easyboot Epics that I had bought for her a year before.  Because when she first started to move with discomfort, I thought she might need hoof boots.  But when I discovered she had thrush, I figured the infection was causing the discomfort and I never used the boots.  (You guys!  I could seriously smack my old self in the head!!!)

Anyway, since I had paid for the consultation, I dutifully dragged the hoof boots out of storage and put them on.  And proceeded to be blown away by how much more comfortable Freya was.  Instead of mincing steps, she was taking big strides.  Instead of short-striding behind, she was almost tracking up.  I definitely had to eat a lot of crow that day, and I've spent no small amount of time beating myself up for letting my endurance-colored glasses influence how I cared for Freya.

And shortly after adding the hoof boots, I added pads to the boots based on a recommendation from another farrier that I didn't realize I knew.  Well, actually I knew her from my endurance days.  We'd become virtual friends over time, and I knew she trimmed her own horse's feet, but I didn't know that she was an actual farrier who specializes in teaching people how to trim their horse's feet.  She travels quite a bit and even works with vets to help them overcome their archaic treatments for navicular and laminitis cases that often make things worse instead of better.  She has even rehabbed her own horse that she rescued when the horse had a severe case of laminitis, resulting in a coffin bone that had penetrated the sole.  The mare now has great feet and happily goes for miles out on rugged mountain rides.  She wears hoof boots for rides, but is otherwise barefoot.

Thankfully, she decided to take pity on me and provided quite a bit of guidance as I entered the world of booting a horse that really needs hoof protection from more than just rocks.  I'm still learning, and my next step is to learn how to stealth the boots so Gemma can show in disciplines where hoof boots are not allowed (I mean, why?  Shoes are allowed, so why wouldn't hoof boots?)

As for why I don't put shoes on Freya, there are a few reasons.  One, I don't have access to a farrier that I trust to put the shoes on properly.  It's hard to believe that I can't find such a farrier in northern Virginia, because it is major horse country, but few farriers are taking new clients these days, and I question whether any farrier would be willing to give me as much control as I want over Freya's feet.  Two, her angles are still not right, so she needs frequent trimming (like every 2 weeks) to keep her hooves as balanced as possible while I whittle away at the returning the correct angle to her foot without taking too much off.  I need to bring her toe back a bit more, but she also has thin soles, so I'm trying to take what I can without making her uncomfortable.  Three, her heels are still contracted and her frogs are still atrophied (on her front feet, not so much her hind feet, which were spared the incorrect shoeing practices), so she remains prone to thrush.  This year, we caught it sooner and treated more aggressively faster, but she still got sore.  Because of the frog atrophy, she would need pads if she were shod, but if she wears pads with shoes, I can't treat for thrush (unless she gets a screw on plate, which is really not practical).

I am considering the possibility of using one of the Easycare hoof boots or shoes as a glue-on once we can get out of thrush season and the ground is drier to see if there is a positive impact for her wearing hoof protection 24/7.   The trick is to find a way to glue it on so it isn't necessarily set for a 6-week cycle and I can get it off after, say 2-3 weeks, without causing a lot of damage to the hoof wall to keep up with her trimming needs.  I really wish the Megasus Horserunners hoof boots had made it past the kick-starter phase, because those would be perfect for what I need.  Those hoof boots worked by gluing on tabs to the horse's hoof (sort of like the new EasyShoe Versa Grip Octo) but you could click the bottom part on and take it off at will.  

I have tried leaving Freya's hoof boots on overnight during turnout to see if she benefits, but the wet Virginia clay acts like lubricant and the boots end up twisting a little and Freya is not happy in them.  So I could potentially leave the boots on if it was dry, but I think a better solution would be some kind of temporary glue-ons where I could either use pads or do a pour-in pad.

So anyway, the saga continues as I work to find the best solution for Freya using the resources I have available to me.  And her feet aren't the only piece of her story.  I have spent the past several months doing a deep dive into classical French dressage, the Balance Through Movement Method, Science of Motion, bodywork techniques like the Masterson Method and Tami Elkayam's work, plus therapies like red-light therapy and magnets.  I wish I could tell you how the story ends, but Freya is definitely still a work in progress:)

A Lonely Road

It feels like a hundred years since I last posted.  I haven't written because my head was so full of new information, of connections that I was making, that I just couldn't piece it all together.  Now, of course, I have no idea where to begin to describe it all.  So I think I'm just going to pick up where I am, and maybe the rest of it will work its way in somehow.

I follow Amy Skinner Horsemanship on Facebook.  I like her page because she often brings together ideas from multiple sources, rather than marketing her own brand of horsemanship.  Not that there is anything wrong with having a brand or a methodology, but I find that participating requires an almost cultlike following.  And I have trouble with commitment...So I like Amy's page because she brings in a diversity of ideas.  I don't always agree with them, but I typically find them thought-provoking.

She recently posted a poll asking how important community is to your success.  She asks, "If you found the 'one path to rule them all' but your community was not supportive, how likely would you be to continue and succeed in this path?  How likely would you be to switch to another style of horsemanship if your community was active in it?"

I responded to her poll by saying, "Having a support system, even if it is just a few people, is essential, I think.  Doing right by your horse is a pretty lonely road these days."

I'm not sure that actually answers her questions, really.  A support system is a little different than a community, and I didn't address whether I would switch to another style of horsemanship if my community was active in it.  At the time, I hadn't really given it as much thought as I should have.  But like all my really good comebacks, my response has come days later - ha, ha!

For me, the reality is that I won't switch to another style of horsemanship even if my community was active in it.  For one thing, I don't really have a community that is committed to one style of horsemanship.  I have friends who do a lot of different things with horses, from hunters to dressage to endurance to trail riding to "just" riding to having horses but not riding at all.  But they are all over the place when it comes to methodology.  Some use a marketed technique, but most of them use different techniques to fit the situation.  A lot of those techniques are outdated based on what science is showing us about horses, but I know as well as anyone else that changing the way you do something can be challenging, even when the evidence supports the change.

And for another thing, I've learned through hard experience that doing what the people around me are doing is a surefire way to screw up my horse.  The thing about interacting with horses is that every combination of handler and horse is unique.  Just like every marriage is unique and every parent-child relationship is unique and every best friend to best friend relationship is unique.  There are techniques that often work for many horse-human relationships, but none that I know of that work for everyone.

The problem, of course, is that as humas, we are social, and we are sort of programmed to want to do things with others and be like others and learn from others.  So if a person is going to go outside that framework, things start to get a bit uncomfortable.  It is flat out easier to follow the group and do the same things that others do.  You can commiserate together when things don't go well and celebrate the successes when things do go well.

If you aren't in a community, it becomes almost impossible to talk about anything that you do with horses.  Everything is so controversial these days, from blanketing to shoeing to saddle fit to bits to training methods.  And people can be quite intolerant of differences.

I'll give a recent example.  I happen to use a Baucher bit or a variation of it for all my bridles.  I use Mark Rashid's Rockin' S snaffle for a western style bridle, a Kimberwicke on the snaffle setting for a hunter bridle, a Myler snaffle with hooks when I want to experiment with a tongue-relief mouthpiece, and even an actual Baucher for a dressage bridle.  Part of the reason I use all these different bits is because different disciplines have different rules about which bits are legal.  And in the case of Donut, I use a Kimberwicke because I haven't been able to find a Baucher bit in the size I need with the mouthpiece that I want to use for her mouth, and I want to wait until she is done growing before I decide if I need to have a custom Baucher made for her.  

I like the Baucher style bit because of the stability it offers.  But I overheard an equine professional loudly disparaging people who use Baucher bits because, according to her, these people are uneducated about the Baucher and think that they should use it because it is a leverage bit or because it is trendy (I had no idea using the Baucher was trendy).  She doesn't believe these people could possibly be using it because they have tried a variety of bits and determined that the Baucher is actually the best bit for their horse.

So that is kind of a crappy thing to say.  Out of all the people I know who use Baucher bits, 100% of them use it because they understand it offers stability and they have compared it to at least one other bit and determined that their horse went better in it than other bits.  Their use of the bit had nothing to do with wanting more leverage in a bit (and there are plenty of people who will argue that a Baucher is not a leverage bit...) and everything to do with wanting to improve their horse's experience with the bit.  That isn't uneducated.  That is responsible horsemanship.

But when something as simple as the choice of a bit causes so much intolerance, where do we go in terms of supporting each other?  And for less confident or less advanced riders, this kind of disparagement creates a huge problem.  

I think that I should be clear that I don't judge anyone for wanting to have a community to be a part of.  While it can come with its own frustrations, caring for and riding horses is a pretty complex process.  It only makes sense to be part of a larger community to share ideas and to learn.

The problem for me is that communities tend to be intolerant of differences and often expect the kind of loyalty that only a Golden Retriever is capable of.  So I've chosen the lonely road.  It means that most of the time, people look at me like I have two heads when I'm expounding on something exciting that I learned in a bodywork class or trying to regurgitate what I discovered in a podcast I listened to.  And when it comes to my riding, well, even my own child thinks I'm a nutter most of the time.  After all, who wants to spend a half hour trying to get their horse to walk as slowly as possible when the conventional method is to ask for as much impulsion as possible?  Slowly walking is not even in the same ballpark as jumping when it comes to the Fun-o-meter.

But for reasons that I hope will become clear if I can ever get my thoughts together enough to write more blog posts, it is the nuances of communicating with the horse that have become incredibly exciting to me.  Feeling a subtle shift in the horse's body is more meaningful to me than jumping a 3-foot jump.  Executing a whiff of a half-pass is more energizing that a gallop across a field because I know that the movement is helping the horse be better balanced.

To be clear, though, I am not condemning those who choose to jump or gallop their horses.  Jumping and galloping have their place and all of us are taking different journeys.  I happen to be in a particular place now.  It is a place I have been working toward for years, but I haven't always been on this path, and I may not always be on this path.

And while I don't have a community, I do have a support system.  I have people that I can talk to about hoof care and different people I can talk to about riding and still other people I can talk to about feeding and blanketing and turnout.  It's what works for me, and it enables me to follow that lonely road to search out the best for my horses.