No shoes. Ever. Not even for working horses on tough, rocky terrain. Stalls should be paved with cobblestones the size of a horse’s hoof. One-pound pebbles should be tossed about on the ground in the horse’s grooming area to toughen its hooves
What kind of new-wave, extreme, 21st Century barefoot religion is this? Actually, it’s from the 2400-year-old treatise On Horsemanship by Xenophon, a soldier, historian and pupil of Socrates.
“A stable with a damp and smooth floor will spoil the best hoof which nature can give,” said Xenophon.
The Greeks didn’t shoe their war horses, yet rode them over some of the harshest terrain imaginable. Horses just don’t need shoes. Right?
Well-respected Natural Horse Care advocates like Jamie Jackson, executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Natural Horse Care Practices seem to make that case.
“It is only through human ignorance of the horse’s natural state that led us to the incorrect, and harmful, conclusion that shoes are necessary — or useful. They aren’t, and, moreover, contribute significantly to the lameness we see everywhere around the world,”Jacksonsaid in a message on the home page of the AANHCP website.
If you want to see an old-school farrier bend a horseshoe with his teeth, toss that quote at him.
In 2009 my wife and I tookN.C.State’s two-day Equine Hoof Care and Shoeing Short Course. One of our instructors was a gnarly old farrier with a keen sense of humor and a quick trigger. Someone asked about the Barefoot Trim (a.k.a. Wild Horse Trim or Natural Trim, etc.) and this old steel-pounder turned red and started spitting.
He sputtered things like “Mustang Roll” and “foot butchers” while telling stories of city folk who’d been to weekend Barefoot Trim workshops and had the audacity to tell him, a professional with 20-plus years of farrier experience, that he was hurting horses by putting shoes on them.
That night I researched the Mustang Roll, a trim that bevels the bottom edge of the hoof wall to facilitate breakover. To my horror, some poorly trained trimmers were basically removing several INCHES of hoof wall at the toe and doing considerable damage to the horse.
Gee. I didn’t want Barefoot Trim foot butchers coming near my horses. But the next day, when I watched this “professional” hit a scared horse in the face with farrier’s rasp, I had to rethink the veracity of anything he told me. To be fair, I know many farriers, and they’re all wonderful pros. This guy was the exception and his view on barefoot trimming had lost all credibility with me.
But when I researched Natural Horse Care Practices, I noticed that the Barefoot Trim acolytes were often just as extreme, albeit in a more organic, 60’s hippy kind of way. These zealots blame shoes for almost every equestrian problem or illness. To read the musings of some barefoot prophets, freeing the horse from its steel bonds of human ignorance would cure any disease, correct all poor conformation and heal all lameness. In fact, if all horse owners drank the barefoot Kool-Aid, we could retire the national debt, cure cancer and bring about world peace. OK, I made that last part up.
My horses have been barefoot for years and they are doing just fine. I have friends with lots of horses, most of which are shod, and they are all doing great too. Honestly, until I began researching this article, I had never really tried to find the truth. I’m still looking, but here are some things I’ve discovered.
First and foremost, Natural Horse Care Practices are about much more than going barefoot and working to mimic the wear patterns of wild horse feet. It’s about providing a more natural environment with 24/7 turnout, a better diet and using riding methods that work with a horse’s natural gait and don’t cause harm. You can find out more about Natural Horse Care Practices at websites like AANHCP.net or ISNHCP.net.
But, using “natural” as the mantra of horse care dogma is bullheaded. Saying there’s never a good time to shoe a horse is like saying broken limbs never need casts or kids should walk to school without shoes. There’s also nothing “natural” about vet care, medicine, bits, saddles or even riders.
It’s a myth that farriers don’t believe in barefoot horses. The Farrier andHoofcareResourceCenter(horseshoes.com) is filled with positive comments on the topic. Among the most articulate is Rick Shepherd of Western Hill Forge, who says many horses do fine barefoot.
“Yes, horses get on fine without human intervention, and have for thousands of years. The ones with poor genetics, conformation, environment, or heavy work load (like running from lions) become part of the food chain, and don’t get to create any more like them. A domestic horse’s life and a wild horse’s life are totally different, so they have different needs,” said Shepherd.
Stall boarding, poor conformation, breeding for characteristics other than hoof quality, working a horse in unnatural surfaces (concrete, asphalt, etc.) can all require a farrier or veterinarian’s intervention. Shod healthy trumps barefoot lame.
It’s a myth that farriers are against barefoot horses because barefoot trims bring in less money. Shepherd writes that he makes a “much higher hourly wage trimming than shoeing.” Without the expense of shoes, nails, forge, gas, large truck and extra tools, trimming is often more profitable.
I’m a horse owner, goat farmer, former paramedic and journalist. I have a finely tuned BS detector and I always knew both extremes in the barefoot controversy were, at the very least, over-stated.
Nobody recommends that you take a two-day course and then fire your farrier, but it’s also a myth that smart laypeople can’t soundly trim a healthy horse’s hoof. My wife has trimmed our horses’ hooves since 2009. It’s back-breaking, detail-oriented work that is far, far harder to do well than it first appears. That’s why I leave it to her.
Our horses also have 24/7 turnout and daily exposure to varied terrain, including gravel, so when we finally splurged to have farrier and friend Rick Gentry trim our horses, he did very little, saying my wife had been doing a great job.
As with almost all social controversy – political, economic and religious – the truth is somewhere in the middle.
And that’s where I found Gentry. Gentry is a Natural Horse Care Certified Practitioner, and all he does is trim hooves. But he’s no butcher. In fact, he said that 15-20-percent of his business is fixing the over-trims of other farriers. He doesn’t look down on shod horses or farriers who pound steel, he simply sees the advantage of going barefoot when it makes sense.
“There’s a big misunderstanding,” he said. “If the only thing you’re going to do is pull your horse’s shoes, you’re not going to be successful.”
Gentry is an advocate of helping the whole horse be as natural as possible, focusing more on diet, turnout and good riding habits than style of trim. He recognizes the need for boots or even shoes when horses are ridden over terrain harder and rockier than what they’re used to. In fact, he’s blunt about owners who take unshod horses to rocky areas they’re not accustomed to.
“It’s animal cruelty,” he said. “You can’t take a horse to a rougher terrain and expect them to do fine. You’ve got to be judicious.”
Even Xenophon knew that a sound horse had to be gradually conditioned to work/ride in hard, rocky terrain.
Gentry’s vet is Dr. Kirsten Tillotson of Tillotson Equine (tillotsonequine.com) inRoxboro,NC, just a few miles south of theVirginiaborder. She’s also my vet, and is very well respected in SouthsideVirginia. Her view of the barefoot/shoeing controversy is that both have their place.
“For many clients, barefoot trimming is perfect and they often have the healthiest feet. For upper level performance horses that are competing on many different types of footing, hard, soft, uneven, etc, barefoot is often not sufficient support.
“Take an upper level dressage horse. These horses typically perform on very good footing and as long as the horse is managed appropriately (this is very important) and it does not have any underlying hoof defects or diseases, then this type of horse can and does well barefoot.
“Take a jumping horse that jumps sometimes on uneven terrain or in rings that vary from soft to hard. I don’t believe it is in this horse’s best interest to ask that much without rigid support on their feet.
“Take a horse that works on asphalt for a living, my guess is that if barefoot, too much of the foot would be worn off with the exercise that it does,” said Tillotson.
Gentry and Tillotson are beacons of reason and commonsense in a debate that’s often dominated by dogma. In the end, you have to make rational decisions about the very specific needs or your horse, using all the resources available to you.
It’s about your horse, not your ideology.
Alan Keck
As always, comments and suggestions are welcome at akeck@hotmail.com.
###
Posted by A. Keck 
Virginia Horse News 