getting to the root of the problem

The heart of the barefoot research is the realization that from day one, it has all been wrong for the horse, in terms of foot development and proper stimulation. What natural hoof care practitioners are dealing with on a daily basis is trying to get a hoof that has had years of peripheral loading back on track to build inner structures the way nature intended. Hopefully when natural horse keeping becomes mainstream, people will give their horses much more in the way of movement and stimulation from day one. Think of the newborn domestic horse. Born into a thick layer of straw or shavings and most likely kept confined with its mother for at least the first day, if not up to three days, it then perhaps gets turned out into a grassy field. Most barn managers would be horrified to get instructions to turn the newborn horse out onto a rocky hill, but what if this is what it needs to develop good feet at that early age? Wild horses, on the other hand, are managing on rocky hills, and in addition are travelling with the herd up to 20 miles a day. Our young horses are not stimulated, not trimmed enough and by age four, have feet that reflect this. It is no wonder we think we need shoes to travel over hard ground. So it is not just a question of avoiding shoes, but of giving the horse much more stimulation and movement as a part of the overall horse care, and from a very young age. This is what Dr. Bowker has been discovering in dissection of cadaver hooves for over 15 years now. It is a profound discovery and one that hopefully will change the way we manage our domestic horse's feet forever. In the future, much more attention will be paid to early development, the nailed on shoe will be avoided, boots, if needed at all, will be even better than they are today, and we will not see navicular, or central sulcus wounds, or perhaps even not laminitis. We will get better at transitioning hooves, and we will pay attention to terrain or footing, perhaps coming up with the perfect system to get the horse moving enough to not have to trim at all. Or perhaps on a daily basis, along with inspection and picking of hooves, we will give a few swipes of a rasp to maintain the ideal shape and lopping off a half an inch every six weeks to try to keep up with growth will be a thing of the past. I would be happy to put down my nippers if this was the case. Jaime Jackson has suggested we keep our horses on a path, and not a rectangular pasture, and so encourage them to move along all the time. Stables would be redesigned to give the horse this important movement. I would like to see the day when fancy barns mean fancy for the people, in terms of indoor arenas and lounges, but natural for the horse. I have yet to see a facility with an indoor that allows the horses to live naturally in small herds. Driving by large equine facilities, and seeing rows of windows representing basically a jail for our horses, and next to no horses out on beautifully manicured grounds, is just apalling. And yet, people pay in my area up to 1200 per month for this kind of torture for the horse. We need to completely rethink the organization of large equine facilites to reflect the true nature of the horse.

can this cart horse transition to having natural hooves and be managed with natural hoof care? Stay tuned. . .

At once glance, without even picking up the horse's foot, we can often begin to guess at the hoof care history. Horses who have appropriately stimulated the back of the foot have heel bulbs like this one. Shoes or no, our domestic horses most of the time are not getting good stimulation to the foot, which weakens or prevents development of inner structures, making it hard to tolerate hard ground or rocks. This horse thinks nothing of galloping over rocks.

Here we see heel bulbs contracted, pinched together. This poor horse got shoes on at age two, long before he finished growing. It is likely he had shoes continuously for 16 years. While not all horses get this degree of contraction, it is a common and often overlooked situation that causes heel pain and central sulcus infection. You can see the line between the heel bulbs coming up into the hairline and indeed, this fellow has a deep sensitive crevice where solid healthy frog should be. He will be months in boots and pads and getting antimicrobial treatment to the crevice.