John,
I posted the most recent xrays of Bullet's feet and wondered if you
had a chance to look at them. I repsonded to your post on the EC site
as well.
Thanks,
Ann-Marie

Just putting together some of these comments on horses' feet, and I wanted to say something important about the idea of transitioning horses out of shoes and into bare feet. Yes I AM a farrier. I shoe horses, plenty of them, but 90% of the horses in my practice are barefoot. I really believe that in most cases it's better and easier in the long run for horses to be barefoot - but I also recognize that it's not always practical for that to happen. In any case, I have collected a fair amount of experience watching these feet evolve over the last few years (and I've made my share of mistakes).

Here's what worries me. There are people coming out of barefoot training programs by the dozens every week. I saw a website the other day of a young man who a year ago was trimming on his own in New England with less than a year's practice out of training. He's now in another state on the other side of the country, and advertising to be a barefoot practitioner/instructor. Certified, I do believe.

I attended a trade show last summer where one of the clinicians had a year of experience trimming on her own. She was certified too. I know from doing it myself that it takes time to develop a practice. How many horses did she have in her practice after only one year? How long had she been trimming them? Hmmmm.

This does NOT constitute experience. I don't care how good the training programs are. ***Even barefoot trimming practitioners need to apprentice!*** It takes many months, and preferably years, of watching feet change, develop, and evolve under your own hand to really truly learn this art. I'm not saying that the trimming programs are not valuable - they are, absolutely. But PLEASE, before you hire a practitioner, find out how long they've been practicing. Find out how many foundered feet they have brought around - FULLY - through at least one, and preferably two growth cycles.

Transitioning a rotated foot is not a job for a novice. If they don't have a good solid file of cases under their belt, get someone who does - or hire someone who does to follow the case as a consult. The difference between "doing okay" and an emergency call to the vet can be no more than a couple of days of too much exercise on poorly trimmed feet. I would rather see a horse in properly applied heart bar shoes any day than barefoot, with their coffin bones crashing through the bottoms of their feet. Better safe than sorry.

Down off my soapbox.

-Abby


--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com

You are 100% right, but there are a lot of them out there, at least here in AZ. We have a lot of  people do it once and figure it not a bad way to make money. Dolly 

I never said it is easy work for a good farrier. I think a good farrier is worth every penny they get. I know of some that do a terrible job, but because they can set there own hours  they think it's a easy job. I seen a lot of them. Good ones are sometimes hard to find. Dolly and Prissy  

.

Jackie

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Jackie wrote:

The guy I found to work on her feet last year was a hoof practitioner with AANHCP for less than a year,

*****************

had shod horses for several years.

*****************

This is the important part ... it's the following of individual feet over a long period of time that matters. There is no "trim method" that is appropriate for every situation, no matter what XYZ & Associates will tell you. What a good practitioner does is trim a foot to certain external (or xray) markers, and then watch how it responds. The response is what tells you what's going on inside the foot. That's also why you can't just make blanket trim recommendations based on pictures.

-A



--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com

Abby,
I totally agree about making sure that they have the experience to
trim our horses feet. This is of course what would be best. But, the
problem is ..... a lot of us live in rural areas and most of the time
there just is not anybody to pick from that has expertise or enough
training in helping foundered horses. They all say they have the
experience , but when it really comes down to helping , rather then
making a bad situation worse - the damage is already done. You can't
put hoof back on once it is off!
So, unless we are in an area that has a high population of horse
owners with quality trimmers/farriers we are out of luck. We either
have to do them ourselves or find someone with less experience. We
really do not have many options unless we spend a fortune to get a
qualified trimmer to travel in the area.
Kelly

---

Jackie

---

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Hi Monica,

 

For whatever my 2 cents and way too many years of experience is worth -- no, I don't believe that "education on barefoot trimming and the wild horse model" is at all necessary to get excellent results.  Frankly, ever since I was a kid and first involved in horses (30+ years ago, YIKES!), virtually all truely GOOD farriers knew how to do excellent trims that with a few relatively minor exceptions were pretty much identical to the current "barefoot" model -- and they all advocated only using shoes when it was really necessary because of the particular horse's foot and/or if the horse was being used for certain types of use that really needed shoes for protection.  Even then, most good farriers would strongly encourage owners to consider leaving the horse barefoot for at least a few trim cycles during the winter when the horse was either laid off or in very light work at best.  As a result, I've always been pretty amazed at the claims by many in the recent "barefoot" movement.  Not to mention that while the "wild horse" model IS interesting and useful, one HAS to consider that those horses are in a very distinct climate, terrain, and diet that many many of our horses aren't -- which means that its not necessarily applicable in all parts of the country or on all types of feet.  Good model, but its just a model and isn't directly applicable to all.  (I suspect THAT statement is likely to generate a few flames if said in the wrong place!!  ).   

 

I mean, think of this for a minute -- a good trim is the basis of ANY good shoeing job.  Without a good trim, you don't have a good shoeing job either.  About the only difference between a good trim that stays a trim only, and a good shoeing job, in terms of actually shaping the foot, is how the foot is or isn't finished off -- in other words, for shoeing, you don't roll the edges, etc. where for a trim, you do in order to help minimize any chipping of the external wall for a bit, and/or ease breakover or that sort of thing.  But the basics are all there, and HAVE BEEN, for many many decades if not centuries.  WAY before the current "barefoot, wild horse" movement was ever started.  You can even find duplicates of some very old shoeing articles on the net if you do a bit of searching.

 

So, there are a lot of different ways to get to being an excellent farrier, but as Abby has noted, you quite likely don't have that if the person hasn't worked on feet, MANY different feet, over a good period of time -- and typically working FOR someone who is already an excellent farrier and who is also decent at passing their knowledge on to those working for them.  That means the person learning can see how feet grow, change, handle diffferent climates and moisture levels, become diseased or damaged, etc. AND how their trimming interacts with all of those various situations, either improving the foot or worsening it.  That process takes TIME.  Occassionally you can run into that very rare type who just has a really good eye and picks up on things vastly quicker than most people do -- but they're few and far between, and then you just pray that they don't make their inevitable goofs on your horse..... or that at least those goofs turn out to be small ones!   I've also found that you can get two farriers who are really pretty much as good as each other, and one can do every bit as well finishing off 3 horses for every 1 the other does!!  Speed, or slowness, neither one necessarily means the farrier is particularly bad or good. 

 

Robin

(list owner)

> >
> > The guy I found to work on her feet last year was a hoof
> > practitioner with AANHCP for less than a year,
>

--- In ECHoof@..., Abby Bloxsom wrote:
>
> *****************
> > had shod horses for
> > several years. 
> *****************
>
> This is the important part ... >

An even more important part.... Although he had been shoeing horses
for years, it still took education on barefoot trimming and the wild
horse model to get the results. Is that what I am reading?

Monica

 

mmmeer@... wrote:

Just curious, isn't it the same with Horse shoeing schools?

Yes it is - but there is a long, time-honored tradition of apprenticeship in the shoeing business. Somehow it seems many people think that shoeing is really hard and takes a lot of training, but "the barefoot trim" is simply a matter of connecting the dots and voila!

I believe there
are some courses as short as 6 weeks or 3 months? Is this correct? Can't they, after 3 months, come out of school and start their practice, and begin nailing on shoes?

And they (we) can take money for shoeing and trimming in the US with not a day's worth of training. Actually, I am not a certified farrier, nor did I graduate from a shoeing school. I had private training, and then spent a LONG time working on the horses in a riding program that I was running. The horses there taught me an awful lot - and I'm grateful to them for that (and sorry for what I put them through too).

-A



--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com

Kelly wrote:

I totally agree about making sure that they have the experience to
trim our horses feet. This is of course what would be best. But, the
problem is ..... a lot of us live in rural areas and most of the time
there just is not anybody to pick from that has expertise or enough
training in helping foundered horses.

BUT what you DO have is access to the internet. There's no reason you can't get experienced people from all over the world to help you and your farriers to do it right - to avoid the catastrophes before they happen. That's what started me on about the "qualifications" thing - I was giving a lot of input to people who WERE looking for support.

I just want buyers to beware that certification is not the same as experience ...

They all say they have the
experience , but when it really comes down to helping , rather then
making a bad situation worse - the damage is already done. You can't
put hoof back on once it is off!

So true, so true ...

So, unless we are in an area that has a high population of horse
owners with quality trimmers/farriers we are out of luck.

High populations don't guarantee nothin'. The state of CT has more horses per square mile than any other, and not all the farriers/barefooters around here are doing the horses any favors either.

-Abby

--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com

Lynn Swearingen wrote:

Your points are valid but most shoers go right to work also.
It's like anything, experience is best.

That WAS my point.

But......a heart bar shoe, even properly applied is not what is best

I'm taking this discussion to EC hoof. BUT I WILL say for the record here that you can't make blanket statements like that. Every situation is different. When I said "heart bars are better than barefoot" that's not what I meant, unfortunately. I was trying to keep my comments concise, but in that case I was too concise. I meant "a good trim on the right shoe is better than a bad trim or an unsupported foot". Not every horse/owner situation can make that barefoot transition gracefully at a time when the feet are in bad shape to begin with. If too much dorsal wall and/or sole have been removed already, then leaving the foot bare may well expose it to a catastrophic collapse.

I can't always control the feet a client brings me - but I CAN control how I deal with them. I won't say I'm never going to put heart bars on, but I will say I haven't done it yet ...

A correct trim, with the angles allowing the coffin bone to be ground parallel is what is needed,

Yes, but "correct" is debatable. If we're going to debate that we need to do it on the other site, it's OT here.

A pathological hoof needs circulation and mechanism. A shoe inhibits that.

Not as much as letting a too-short foot stand on its sole! Try it sometime. On second thought, don't.

-A


--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com

The guy I found to work on her feet last year was a hoof
practitioner with AANHCP for less than a year,

--- In ECHoof@..., Abby Bloxsom <dearab@...> wrote:

*****************

had shod horses for
several years.

*****************

This is the important part ... >

An even more important part.... Although he had been shoeing horses
for years, it still took education on barefoot trimming and the wild
horse model to get the results. Is that what I am reading?

Monica

My question is about keeping Bullet's feet dry. If you refer to the
pictures I have posted, you can see the condition of the left foot
especially. How "dangerous" is it if he feet get wet? I am fighting
a losing battle trying to keep them dry. I have tried 4 kinds of
boots, thick plastic, and many other ideas, that sometimes work or
sometimes don't. Can someone tell me what is the danger of getting
them wet? He is stalled at night in dry conditions, so it is not like
he is standing in water and mud all day, but we just had 4 inches of
rain, and the pasture is wet and will be for awhile. My farrier just
said not to get them wet....Thanks,
Ann-Marie and Bullet

thefeet2003 wrote:

> *****************
> > had shod horses for
> > several years.
> *****************
>
> This is the important part ... >
An even more important part.... Although he had been shoeing horses
for years, it still took education on barefoot trimming and the wild
horse model to get the results. Is that what I am reading?

No, that's not what I meant at all. Honestly the wild horse model isn't really very useful to me in this climate. I have a few feet in my practice that look like that, but it's a VERY climate-specific trim. I meant that this person had years of hoof-work under his belt. The thing you learn when you do this over time is this: today I trim a horse. I leave and the feet look like I want them to. I come back 6 weeks later and they look different. If I put the shoe in a different place, use a clipped shoe, use trailers, use a half-round shoe, then each time I come back the foot will have changed in a different way.

Feet grow and respond differently to weather conditions, diet, exercise, and trimming/shoeing. The responses you get to the work you do are going to vary. Even people who are "one method shoers" or trimmers - even people who are not creating a functional foot - have a memory bank of horses and feet that they have worked on. When they see a foot they can go "I've seen that before", and have a recollection of what they did with it and what the results of that action were.

THAT'S what I mean by experience. You can be told "if you see this, then you should do that because ..." but it's NOT the same as having actually DONE it. I heard people say "you can't take that toe back so far because the wall will be too thin ..." but until I did it, and the poor horse's foot split in half right up the abscess tract, and it took me a whole year to grow it out, I didn't have a really good appreciation for WHY. And when I saw that scenario again, I didn't take the wall back so far.

-Abby


--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com

THAT'S what I mean by experience. You can be told "if you see this,
then you should do that because ..." but it's NOT the same as having
actually DONE it. I heard people say "you can't take that toe back so
far because the wall will be too thin ..." but until I did it, and the
poor horse's foot split in half right up the abscess tract, and it took
me a whole year to grow it out, I didn't have a really good appreciation
for WHY. And when I saw that scenario again, I didn't take the wall
back so far.

-Abby

I sure can relate to this Abby.

I was a horse owner who knew what a foot and frog was and that you should clean it and
look for thrush. Eveything else will be taken care of by my farrier. Then I got a foundered
horse and four farriers told me to shoot him, basically. They had no more they could do.
And these were the experienced founder pros.

So I found someone on the internet to work with a farrier new to me who was in the early
stages of establishing himself with foundered horses. Together we learned about my
horse. I watched and he worked. Digital photos, rads, tons of telephone conversations
and emails, amongst the three of us. For three years I watched them trim many, many
foundered and unhealthy feet as well as my own horse. It was not until last spring that I
picked up the rasp myself and started, under the guidance of my farrier, to work my own
horses. It was/is very, very different. And very, very hard.

But this whole area is evolving. At least I hope it is where I am. We all know stories of
trims and shoeings of all types and styles going awry in the wrong hands. I don't believe
any one approach is immune to this on - going problem.

I hope this list, ECHoof, can help people like me who knew little about feet but knew there
had to be other answers. Finding highly experienced people who would consult remotely
with a local farrier/trimmer is what worked for me because there was no one here with any
answers. But doing so takes guts sometimes as we, the horse owner, have to trust our
instincts while we are trying to learn what our horses need and continue to look for the
right people to work with us.

Nancy C and Beau and Gabe in NH

Hi Ann-Marie,

Oddly enough, it may be the right foot that is more likely to get a problem, but from mud rather than wetness.

The horses around here have been standing in water or mud for a month or so, but a few sunny days this week have dried things up a bit. The 8 lame horses I have seen this month have all been "pus in the foot"!

The constant wet can soften the feet, the sole or the white line, but it is the mud that is our real problem. It is the grit in the mud that pushes up any defect or blocks off any drainage from punctures in the sole.

In Bullet's left foot, the exposed laminae have a layer of keratin that protects them. If they were to be constantly wet and soft then they could get damaged. It is in the right foot that mud is more likely to push up between the rigid hoof wall and the sole through the weakened laminae. This may cause separation and pain (an "abscess") , rather than just sliding up over the exposed laminae of the left foot.

Mud bad, wetness not so bad.

Cheers

John

Thought I'd share this with you all...
About this time last year I found myself desperately looking for a new
trimmer. My four horses are barefoot; three of them since Jan of 2001
and one all his life.
My trimmer (of five years) and I had a parting of the ways because I
wanted Doc's (my former navicular horse)sole and bars left alone. I
believed Doc's sole and bars had been severely overtrimmed. Doc acted
as if he was walking on eggshells and the ultimate proof for me was
that when I put him in hoofwings and trax pads his demeanor totally
changed. In his hoof wings he wanted to trot and prance. Even though I
explained my reasoning to my trimmer, he refused to do as I asked,
stating that I did know what I was talking about. What I did know was
that my horse was very sore and I knew it was his hooves.....so,
needless to say I started interviewing barefoot trimmers.
During the process of finding a new trimmer Tamera's (my cushings/IR
mare) toes were getting very long and her heels were becoming
increasingly underslung. I was very concerned, Tamera was starting to
stub her toes and trip. Yet every barefoot trimmer that saw her wanted
to lower her heels...had I agreed to let them do as they wanted Tamera
would have been walking on her bulbs.
I finally gave up on the barefoot trimmer idea and swallowed my pride
and called one of our former farriers. I had always said that if I
ever had to shoe any of my horses again this man would be the only I
would trust.
Jim has been a farrier/journeyman for over 20 years.
He took one look at Tamera and said "brace yourself it's not going to
be pretty but I promise you she will be just fine" and then he took
his nippers and literally chopped off her toes. Look at the photo
album on this site "shotgunranch Tamera"
http://pets.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/ECHoof/photos/browse/36c9
It looked horrible but not a drop of blood was shed. I sent photos to
several interested parties and one person even called him a butcher.
All I know is that Tamera's relief was instantaneous. By backing up
her toes he put her center of gravity where it needed to be ...that
night she was cantering around with the others. Tamera had absolutely
no ill effects and is still doing well.
Was this drastic???....I don't know. All I know is that he was the
only who knew what to do and had the guts to do it.
He explained that unfortunately most trimmers/farriers don't
understand the mechanism behind underslung heels. It is the toe that
is pulling the heels forward. You need to release that pull and put
their feet back under them.
His approach with Doc was to keep his toes backed up "heels where they
needed to be" and his hooves balanced. He agreed that Doc had been
overtrimmed and allowed him to grow his sole and bars back. Jim always
removes dead sole but knows just where to stop. He's not afraid to
trim the bars if they need it. He has studied many approaches (Gene
Ovnicek, Pete Ramey, and has even read one of Dr. Strasser's
books,etc.) but he says no single approach can be used for all horses.
He treats every horse individually but yet many may still consider him
a butcher for what he did.
What do you all think????
Claire from Az

whitehorsebullet wrote:

How "dangerous" is it if he feet get wet? I am fighting
a losing battle trying to keep them dry.

He is stalled at night in dry conditions, so it is not like
he is standing in water and mud all day, but we just had 4 inches of
rain, and the pasture is wet and will be for awhile.

Is there a place he can hang out in the pasture that is more "dry-ish"? Certainly being able to dry out at night is a real benefit. Can you spray his feet with a bleach or iodine solution when you bring him in for the night? That might help to keep down the population of bad critters living in his hooves.

We had about 9 months of pretty much continuous mud last year - it was horrid, really bad. We had lots of abscessing and lots of bruising because the feet turned to mush in the mud, but the horses who had the chance to go into a bedded stall & dry out for 8-12 hours a day were MUCH less affected than those who lived in the mud 24/7.

-Abby


--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com

Claire C. Cox-Wilson wrote:

He treats every horse individually but yet many may still consider him
a butcher for what he did.
What do you all think????

I think he's dead nuts. (that means 100% accurate)

-A

--
**************************
Abby Bloxsom
www.advantedgeconsulting.com