Taking the Shoes Off
"Prior and proper preparation prevents p-poor performance!" Pat Parelli
Every horse can go barefoot, but not every owner can have a barefoot horse" Sarah Braithwaite UKNHCP
So you are thinking about removing the shoes from your horse and letting him go barefoot as nature intended him to be, allowing his hoof's natural capabilities of shock absorption, traction and biomechanics to perform at their optimum.
How do you start?
What do you have to consider?
What preparation do you need to undertake before you're ready to go shoe-less?
How can we set ourselves up for success?
A correct barefoot trim combined with the correct living conditions and optimum diet will prevent and heal such problems as laminitis, navicular, thrush, ossifications such as sidebone and ringbone, hoof cracks, wall ravel, brittle hooves and other such problems that commonly occur when horses are shod traditionally.
But it is not simply a matter of removing the shoes to get this kind of success - going barefoot is a whole approach that combines trim, diet, movement and environment. Some thought needs to go into getting ready to go barefoot and setting the horse up for success rather than failure.
There is a very big difference between barefoot and simply un-shod.
Just taking of the shoes and applying a conventional pasture trim is often not enough to restore horses to optimal hoof health and to be ridden barefoot without shoes to their full potential. Natural and correct hoof form is essential for hoof health. Problems such as navicular, cracks or seedy toe for example are results of incorrect hoof form. Horses with incorrect hoof form also tend to have other problems such as poor condition, conformation issues , muscle tightness and back and joint pain.
Barefoot involves looking at the whole horse - his conformation, diet, environment, exercise, attitude and temperament.
De-shoeing the horse
I try to take the shoes off in as clean and gentle a manner as possible, attempting to do the mimimum of damage to the hoof wall and being considerate of the horse's comfort. There are several approaches to de-shoeing and I'll use the one that will give the best result for the horse. It should be accepted that sometimes the hoof wall is already stressed and damaged below the clenches and this will be quite visible when the shoes come off. Generally it will grow out in 6 weeks.
What I do ask you to do is to keep the front shoes for a year. It is always interesting to be able to visualise the change in shape and decontraction of the feet and retaining the shoes and "matching them up" is always a fun and surprising exercise.
Left: How did that shoe ever fit that foot! Notice that the whole hoof shape has changed - the toe has become more square in shape and there is a huge decontraction in the heels and round the quarters.
Horses will grow the size and shape of foot that they need to support them in the environment that they are in, the work that they do, the surfaces they walk on, and to cope with any conformational faults or injuries that they have.
Iron shoes deny them the opportunity to do this by forcing the foot to conform to a standard shape, and casting it into a shape between shoeings.