The Soul of a Horse (9 page)

13

Off with the Shoes

I
t’s been a year and a half since Cash eased up behind me in that round pen and nuzzled my shoulder. It changed my life, and I hope his. It made me dig ever deeper to discover the right answers for this horse, and to not just take someone else’s word that this way or that way is the right way.

From the very beginning I was worried about his feet. Ironically, not because he had metal shoes nailed to them. But because he only had
two
metal shoes nailed to them. On his front feet. His rear feet were barefoot. It’s a quarter of a mile walk on hard asphalt from our place to the local horse club arena. I was worried about his back feet having no shoes.

“If his front feet need shoes, why don’t his back feet?” I asked everyone.

“Because 60 percent of a horse’s weight is on his front feet” was a standard answer. In the beginning I was too intimidated to ask why a mere 20 percent meant the difference between shoes or no shoes. I still haven’t heard a good answer to that one.

Here’s what I was led to believe a mere year and a half ago: Bare hooves banging against hard surfaces, be they concrete, asphalt, dirt, or rocks, will cause the hoof walls to crack, and shatter, and crumble. Therefore horses need metal shoes.

At this point I didn’t know that such cracking, shattering, and crumbling doesn’t happen to the hooves of horses in the wild. Their hoof walls and soles are like steel. And there’s a reason for it. But nobody ever told me that. And nobody told me that a metal shoe is so unhealthy for the horse’s hoof that it can become the cause of cracking, shattering, and crumbling. I began this leap into the world of horses just like everyone else, because everyone else was who I was listening to.

It was the relationship with Cash that made me keep digging, keep reading, and keep learning. Because I cared deeply for this horse who had chosen me, who had handed over to me so much of his livelihood, I was left with no choice but to do as right by him as I possibly could. And that meant I needed to gain knowledge.

Still, it’s disturbing that once upon a not-so-distant time, I firmly believed that horses
must
be shod. That’s the way it was. Horses wore shoes. It never occurred to me to find out why horses in the wild, or in the past, got by without nails and shoes. And that’s worrisome. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent and curious individual. Why would I accept something so odd without even asking a question?

Scary.

But common, I’ve found, among so many horse owners.

I was a novice blithely following whoever would speak up.

In his seminars on leadership, Andy Andrews tells folks that the first step in becoming a leader is to be a person of action. When everyone else is shrugging their shoulders,
do
something.
Say
something.

Hey, where do y’all want to go eat tonight?

Gee, I don’t know. Where would you like to eat?

Makes no difference to me. How about you, John?

Oh, I’m good with anything. Bill, you decide.

Oh, I don’t care. Really.

“Just make a decision! Be a person of action! Name a place, any place,” screams Andy, “and suddenly you’re a leader!”

Let’s go to McDonald’s!

Hey, good idea.

Fine with me. How about you, Bill?

Yeah. McDonald’s. That’s good.

Take action. Step out. Speak up. And they will follow.

Do it two or three times and they’ll be looking to you whenever a decision needs to be made.

Never mind whether or not you make good decisions. Or healthy ones. Or even whether you make any sense. Just taking action puts you at the front of the line. And, unfortunately, that’s how so much
mis
information gets spread. Somebody somewhere has the chutzpah to say something. That person might or might not have knowledge on the subject. He might or might not have ulterior motives. But he spoke out when no one else would. When no one else wanted to take the time to think about it, or research it. And now, voilà, he’s the expert.

That’s the way it was with our horses and shoes. Everybody said do it and I didn’t question the advice. They had to know more than I did, right? After all, they had been at it for years. Some of them for decades. Who was I to question?

Then I stumbled upon an article in a horse magazine. The first couple of paragraphs went something like this:

Did you know that a horse’s hoof is supposed to flex with every step taken? And that simple act of flexing is just about the most important thing a horse can do for good health and long life? The flexing provides shock absorption for the joints, tendons and ligaments in the leg and shoulder, acts as a circulatory pump for blood in the hoof mechanism, and helps the heart get that blood flowing back up the leg.

Without flexing, the hoof mechanism will not have good circulation and will not be healthy. And the heart will have to work harder to get the blood back up the legs. Without flexing, there will be no shock absorption.

And with a metal shoe nailed to the hoof, no flexing can occur.

Kerwhap!

Slapped right in the face with a piece of indisputable logic.

Of all things!

Logic!

Truth!

How insensitive to my inertia.

The article went on to explore the results of a study of more than a thousand wild mustang hooves. All barefoot hooves, of course. All very much alike, healthy and hard as steel, without regard for the type of home terrain or climate.

I was immediately off to websites, gathering books, soaking up more information and knowledge.

Pete Ramey, a world-renowned natural hoof specialist in Georgia using the “wild horse trim,” says he has never worked on a horse that he has not taken barefoot
successfully.

Eddie Drabek, a specialist in Houston also using the wild horse model, helped take the entire Houston Mounted Patrol barefoot, and they are all doing terrifically, with lower vet bills than ever before, even though they work every day on concrete and asphalt. When they were wearing metal shoes, the horses were often ice-skating on the asphalt, and horses would go down with their riders. But not one has fallen since the barefoot program began.

Drabek has also taken winning performance horses barefoot in reining, jumping, racing, cutting, and dressage, making for happier, healthier winners. He says, “Every single horse brought to me that the owners swore had feet that grew abnormally, had bad genetics, could never be barefoot, had brittle hooves, had cracks that would never go away, and so on and so forth—I’ve heard it all—has been taken barefoot successfully with the proper balanced trim and has beautiful feet to show for it. And I’m talking hundreds of horses.”

Ramey, Drabek, and natural-hoof specialists Jaime Jackson, James Welz, and Marci Lambert have all taken on one or more horses that a vet or a farrier has said must be put down because of lameness in the feet, and in every one of those cases, the horse, after going barefoot with the wild horse trim, completely recovered and became perfectly healthy. Some healed quickly, some took as long as a year, but recover they did. Case history after case history.

So why do people believe their horses cannot exist without shoes?

Because, as Dr. Strasser, Ramey, Drabek, Welz, and Lambert all confirm, when a shoe falls off a horse that has been shod for years and years, the hoof and hoof wall are usually no longer strong and healthy. The hoof has been made unhealthy by lack of circulation because it has not been able to flex and thus circulate the blood properly throughout the hoof mechanism. And the continuing process of hammering nails into the hoof wall makes it weaker, and provides places (the nail holes) for chips and cracks to occur. Also, some hooves, if they’re in really bad shape, will be tender for a while after going barefoot. And the unknowing owner concludes that the tenderness means the horse
needs
shoes.

Not so.

The hoof will completely heal and remodel itself, growing a strong new horn and a hard calloused sole. This is a logical and normal process (see the Resources section at the back of the book, especially Pete Ramey’s and Jaime Jackson’s books and videos). It takes approximately eight months for a horse to grow a new hoof, from his hairline to the ground. If properly trimmed to mimic the way wild horses’ hooves trim themselves during daily wear, a worst-case scenario for a horse to acquire a completely new, rock-solid, healthy foot, then, is approximately eight months. Many horses are much quicker. As you read earlier, Cash was good to go from the first day his shoes came off. And a happy horse indeed. Four of our six never had a tender moment after going barefoot. One took four months to remodel, and one took almost seven months. And well worth the time.

But wait! When my horse’s shoe falls off, he starts limping almost immediately. And when the shoe is nailed back on, suddenly he’s fine. Doesn’t hurt anymore. Proof that the shoe is better for him than barefoot.

Have you ever crossed your legs for so long that your foot goes to sleep? We all have, and we all know what’s happening. The leg-cross has cut off the circulation to the foot, and with no circulation, the nerve endings lose their sensitivity and fail to work. The second you uncross, or stand up, the circulation returns, as do the nerve endings.

Ooh! Ouch!

The same thing happens to a horse when a metal shoe is nailed on. The inability of the hoof to flex removes its ability to pump blood, virtually eliminating circulation in the hoof mechanism. Without proper circulation, the nerve endings quit transmitting, and the horse no longer feels the “ouch.” When the shoe falls off, the circulation returns and suddenly he can feel again.

Whoa, what’s that about?

As mentioned earlier, Scribbles took a good six to seven months to regain a healthy hoof with no ouch. And today he’s a happy camper, on asphalt or concrete, on the trail, in the arena. His hooves are beautifully concaved, keeping the coffin bone up where it belongs. They are beveled at the edges, just like a wild horse’s hoof. And they’re as hard as stone.

The sacrifice? The downside?

A few months’ time to let him grow the hoof nature always intended for him to have. Good boy, Scribbles.

How much trimming is needed, and how often, depends upon the horse’s lifestyle. Remember, the objective is to replicate the hoof that the horse would have if he were living in the wild, moving twelve to fifteen miles a day with the herd. If he’s living in a box stall and not moving around much, there will be a lot more trimming, probably more often, than if he were living in a natural pasture like ours and moving around all day wearing down his own hooves. But the objective can be reached in either case.

Pete Ramey, the hoof specialist mentioned earlier who teaches hoof care all over the world, believes we have only just begun to discover the true potential of the wild horse model. After a trip to wild horse country for research, he said, “The country was solid rock; mostly baseball-sized porous
volcanic
rock that you could literally use as a rasp to work a hoof if you wanted to. Horse tracks were fairly rare, because there was so little dirt between the rocks. There were a few muddy areas from the recent snowmelt, but they were littered with rocks as well. The horses made no attempt to find these softer spots to walk on.”

Pete and his wife, Ivy, observed, videotaped, and photographed at least sixty horses. All of them, from the foals to the aged, moved effortlessly and efficiently across the unbelievably harsh terrain. According to Pete, the horses were doing extended trots across an obstacle course that would shame the best show-ring work of any dressage horse, with their tails high in the air and their heads cocked over their shoulders watching the intruding couple.

“I have never known a horse I would attempt to ride in this terrain,” Pete says. “Ivy and I had to literally watch our every step when we were walking. The movement of the horses was not affected by the slippery dusting of snow on the rocks. In fact, they got around much better than the mule deer and the pronghorns. The entire time we were there we did not see a limp, or even a ‘give’ to any rock, or a single lame horse, and not one chip or split in any of their hooves. It was an unbelievable sight.”

The world has been shocked and amazed by the ability of Pete and others to forge rock-crushing bare hooves, boost equine performance, and treat “incurable” hoof disease. “I don’t want to diminish these facts,” Pete says, “but I now realize that we haven’t even scratched the tip of the iceberg.”

There’s an old expression:
No hoof, no horse.
And the reams of research I’ve pored over truly made that point. So much of what can go wrong with a horse begins or is controlled by the health of the hoof. When that hoof is healthy, flexing, and taking stress off the heart, it can add years to a horse’s life.

And he’ll be happier.

Not only because he feels better, but because he can actually
feel
the surface he’s walking on, which makes him more comfortable and more secure in his footing. It’s the way nature intended. Would you run on the beach with boots on? Or do you want to feel the sand between your toes? Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.