Dare to go bare



showing me her toes

In the first few months of loaning Sofie I was constantly replacing her shoes. As soon as we had nailed them on she would rip the buggers off. Her feet were in a bad way. They were crumbling and looked very long in my opinion (I should point out that I am no farrier). It got to the point that she was removing shoes as fast as I was putting them on. She seemed to loose the front left shoe most often and she was damaging the foot as a result. She ended up with a stumpy foot. Enough was enough, if this continued she was going to do herself some real damage.



The original barefooter Frodo

The first horse I ever owned was a little 13.1 pony called Frodo. He was as old as time (late thirties but no one really knew as he didn't have enough teeth to age properly) but remarkably healthy. We got him from a friend, we exchanged our old dishwasher for her old pony (we may then have placed bets as to which would last longer). Both went on far past our expectations, though the dishwasher pegged Frodo by 6 months. For all of his many years Frodo never had shoes. His feet were tough as nails. I never really thought about it, I was 12.

Mr T with his bare feet

When Mr T arrived we put shoes on him. After all you always shoe horses right? We couldn't get shoes on his back feet as he was too wild. He also managed to kick the farrier square on the goolies which may have also strongly influenced the no back shoes decision. Again I never thought about whether shoes were the right thing to do. Everyone shoes, so we shod. It was only when Mr T was diagnosed with ring bone and my vet told me to remove his shoes I started to question why I shod in the first place. Barefoot removes a lot of concussion from the legs as the foot naturally absorbs the shocks. Barefoot also improves circulation in the feet (as they are stimulated by the ground) which can help healing. We were advised to take off shoes for these benifits.

Now before you panic I have not joined the natural horsemanship-barefoot-hippy-tribe. I do not think shoes, bits, saddles, rugs and everything unnatural is cruel and evil. But I think I now question conventional wisdom a bit more. Are shoes really necessary when you are a happy hacker and have a horse with good feet? If they are not necessary, and barefoot has advantages, why am I shoeing my horse?

Sofies pretty foot

For Sofie at least barefoot seemed to be the only way forward - she seemed to be removing her shoes herself anyway. Like most things, Sofie had taken the decision out of my hands. The first few days she was very foot sore and her feet seemed to be chipping away at an alarming rate. I was panicking that I had made the wrong call. However very quickly her feet tidied up and were actually a much better shape than they had been with shoes. She was no longer very footy, stones were a problem but absolutely fine on mud and grass. Her feet are now perfect, in my very biased opinion.

I still didn't want to hack her barefoot as there is a nasty stony road we need to go down to get to most of the hacking. Luckily there is a strange world of hoof boots out there. A friend has some old Renegade hoof boots for sale and as fate would have it they fitted Sof perfectly. They are brilliant. She rides like they are not there and they allow us to go across rough tracks pain free. We can do everything in them, gallop, jump no worries. I feel like it is the best of both worlds for us. No more loosing shoes and damaged feet and no painful bruising from stones.

Sofie in her Ruby slippers