# Advice please for shoeing a chronic founder case



## madaboutollie (6 February 2011)

Hope someone can give me some advice on this - I'm driving myself mad trying to find the right thing to do.  So if anyone has experience of shoeing a chronic founder case, I'd be most grateful for your help 

Ny lovely Arab X Welsh (15hh - 12 years old) was diagnosed as a chronic founder case on 29 December.  The equine vet immediately took xrays, which showed rotation and a some sinking in the right hoof and a little rotation in the left.  The prognosis was that the best we could hope for in future would be for him to be paddock sound without painkillers, which is fine by me, as I'm fortunate enough to have another horse who is a better size for me (the Arab x is the cheeky family pet, who has just been used for light schooling and hacking).

My (fantastic) farrier and vet did the shoeing together as per the xrays using steel heart bar shoes.  However, my horse soon became uncomfortable on his front right and the vet did a dorsal wall resection on that hoof, which appeared to release some pressure. It seems that the left foot was then overloaded and that became worse.  We took more xrays two days ago, which showed slight deterioration in the right and not much difference in the left.  A resection was then performed on the left.  So basically this is the second pair of steel heart bars he has had on and he seems to be uncomfortable (shifting from foot to foot, but quite happy to stand), although we are only two days on with this pair.  My vet says we need to persevere for a few days and see if things improve before we look at other options.  He is on 3 sachets of bute per day.

My lovely gelding has thin, flat soles with low heels and I suspect he is not coping well with the pressure from the frog plate.

Has anyone had any success with the Imprint shoes on a horse with similar foot problems?  I've heard a couple of farriers say that the plastic shoes tend to work better on smaller ponies (I presume because they weigh less?).  And do the plastic shoes give the same support as metal heart bars as far as the pedal bone is concerned?

Also mentioned as an option was the stable support system (styrofoam) which I don't have any experience of.  

Any advice you can offer (particularly success stories!) would be greatly appreciated!


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## Nari (6 February 2011)

PMing you!


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## touchstone (6 February 2011)

I found shoes weren't the answer for my lamintic (sinker) and made things worse, I'd recommend a look at www.hoofrehab.com

I have now had my mare barefoot for the past ten (?) or so years, she has had a couple of laminitic episodes in that time but always recovered well, I wouldn't resort to shoes for her now.

eta - I also feel that it is better to make a horse comfy in boots and pads that are easier to adjust and remove than other methods.


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## soloequestrian (6 February 2011)

Read Jaime Jackson's 'Founder, its Prevention and Cure'.  Fascinating book, will give you lots of hope!


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## quirky (6 February 2011)

I have PM'd you.


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## brucea (6 February 2011)

My lovely gelding has thin, flat soles with low heels and I suspect he is not coping well with the pressure from the frog plate.
		
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Probably not! I'm of the school of thought that shoes, providing peripheral support, just can't help a laminitis case. 

The best shoe for a laminitic is the one that they grow themselves - properly maintained and well fed. That will give you the greatest potential for recovery.

I have 2 laminitics, a professional and an amateur if I can put it that way, and both are out of shoes and much better for it.

Barefoot, conformant supportive surfaces, great diet. Boots with pads are great.

Can I suggest that you maybe get in contact with one of the UKNHCP folks in your area and get a second opinion/review? Most of the UKNHCP trimmers are great with laminitics and can give you suitable foorcare advice and dietary advice.

I'll PM you my site, you can have a look at what my chronic lami gets up to.


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## amandap (6 February 2011)

brucea said:



			Can I suggest that you maybe get in contact with one of the UKNHCP folks in your area and get a second opinion/review?
		
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Mel and Ross Barker are in your area if you decide to get a second opinion for a different approach. http://www.right2remainshoeless.com/html/contact_us.html
I also recommend the Founder book by Jaime Jackson and other reading by him and Pete Ramey to get an idea of the thinking.


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## madaboutollie (6 February 2011)

Thanks for all your replies.

Unfortunately, for this particular horse barefoot is not an option due to his poor foot conformation - flat, very thin soles, low heels, frog close to floor.  For him, shoes are usually a complete relief.  I have read the 'Founder - Prevention and Cure' and have picked up some really great tips for caring for a founder case but again, the barefoot option cannot be done.  I'm all for barefoot as I have an Irish Draught (5 years old) who has beautiful shoeless feet and have had no problems whatsoever with him but then again he has beautiful strong feet.

Has anyone had a success with Imprints with a heavier horse?  My lad is 530Kg but is on a big diet to get to under 500Kg - limited hay, Happy Hoof, Formula 4 Feet.

All replies gratefully received as this is keeping me awake every night and I cant eat properly   How much do we love our horses??


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## taceann (6 February 2011)

What about Imprint shoes ?  Expensive but should be covered by insurance if you have it.  You may only need them for a few weeks.  Look up Andrew Poynton, he was the farrier who invented them.  They are plastic but are sort of heat moulded onto the foot.  Good luck x


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## brucea (6 February 2011)

Unfortunately, for this particular horse barefoot is not an option due to his poor foot conformation - flat, very thin soles, low heels, frog close to floor
		
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Does the walker chose the path or the path the walker? Are his feet like that because he has shoes, and they are causing further damage, or does he need shoes because his feet are like that? I guess it depends which camp you are in.

This is *precisely *why you should be considering barefoot. Give Ross and Mel a call and chat with them. In the end of the day if you don't try it, then you'll never find out.

It's great his frog is close to the floor - that's what the frog is supposed to do - be the landing cusion and support the foot. If the frog's not on the floor the foot ain't working properly. The back of the frog should be the first thing your hoss lands on.

At one point my pony's feet were paper thin - I could flex the sole with my fingers. Now he has a good 20mm of sole and is out driving and doing stuff. Today he was out in the woods for 5 miles on rough tracks with a young lass who comes to ride him. 

Taking the barefoot, non farrier, non conventional approach takes a certain courage to fly in the face of what you're being told to do. it does take time, and it does take patience.

You can't "fix" a laminitic hoof, you can only grow a better new hoof. You need to give that new hoof the best chance you can.


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## Kallibear (6 February 2011)

I'm of the 'take the shoes off' camp too. I've never seen shoes, remedial or not, do laminitic cases any good, only prolong the healing. And the strict adherance to 'must have shoes on' has caused quite a few horses I know to end up being PTS 

The poor feet you describe are, as brucea said, caused by shoeing in the first place. You don't get that kind of damage in feet that haven't been shod.

I had a very laminitic shetland cross who had 15degrees of rotation. Vet wanted to put shoes on him very first thing they did, and said it would be unlikely they would every come completely right, and it would probably take at least a year for a partial heal. I made a fuss and went down the boots and pad route and within 3 months he was back in work. 6 months later his feet had grown out so perfectly you'd never even guess he'd foundered


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## LucyPriory (7 February 2011)

As the main carer you have to make a decision you (and your horse) can live with.  Never easy during times of stress, and having a horse with laminitis is generally pretty stressful for all concerned.

But the only way to 'fix' laminitis is to resolve the causal factor.  Shoes no matter how beautifully crafted and carefully put on will never do this.

I agree with the posters who advised reading Founder Prevention and Cure.

Also look at this little (ok not so little) guy - months in a box, shod, lame.  Two weeks deshod, a bit of FPC and look at him go!  Not the first by a very long chalk and he won't be the last.

http://barefoothorseblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/which-one-has-laminitis.html


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

Another big vote for getting the shoes off - his poor quality feet, thin soles, underun heels etc are all signs of feet not having coped with sugar content in diet for a while. It's commonly thought that laminitis happens suddenly but in actual fact it's a cumulative thing from years of a less than suitable diet. Like cholestoral in humans - someone eats burgers and fry ups for years, their arteries get more and more clogged as the years go by, even though they themselves feel healthy. Then one day they have a heart attack. The heart attack not being caused by the burger they had the night before, but from the years of unhealthy living. Laminitis is exactly the same. His lameness now is because of the inflammation in the feet. Remove the inflammation (finding the trigger is not always easy but remove from grass, soak hay, cut out all molassed hard feed, which includes many stamped approved by the laminitis trust), rebalance his system (use a product like Happy Tummy to remove toxins from his digestive system) and allow him to move. Once the inflammation goes soundness returns very quickly and the hooves can start to heal themselves.


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## peanut (7 February 2011)

madaboutollie said:





My lovely gelding has thin, flat soles with low heels and I suspect he is not coping well with the pressure from the frog plate.
		
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brucea said:



			This is *precisely *why you should be considering barefoot. You can't "fix" a laminitic hoof, you can only grow a better new hoof. You need to give that new hoof the best chance you can.
		
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Madabuotollie, my horse also has the flattest feet with paper thin soles, low frog and collapsed heels and we do endless battle with corns/lameness.  Thankfully no lami. 

Having read so much on here about barefoot, I mentioned the possibility to my vet and he was horrified.  He said that my horse would be crippled without shoes and it would be cruel to take them off.  I still haven't ruled it out but it hurt enormously to have it suggested that I could be cruel to my beloved horse.

I'm thinking of getting a second opinion on the barefoot. I hope you get your boy sorted.


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## Amymay (7 February 2011)

You can't "fix" a laminitic hoof, you can only grow a better new hoof.
		
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Laminitis is inflammation of the sensitive laminae, and the internal structures therein of the foot.

Growing a 'better new hoof' is totally oversimplifying the condition......


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## LucyPriory (7 February 2011)

martha said:



			Madabuotollie, my horse also has the flattest feet with paper thin soles, low frog and collapsed heels and we do endless battle with corns/lameness.  Thankfully no lami. 

Having read so much on here about barefoot, I mentioned the possibility to my vet and he was horrified.  He said that my horse would be crippled without shoes and it would be cruel to take them off.  I still haven't ruled it out but it hurt enormously to have it suggested that I could be cruel to my beloved horse.

I'm thinking of getting a second opinion on the barefoot. I hope you get your boy sorted.
		
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I have been told by vets that thin soles are genetic.  Horses aren't listening though and with a decent diet, barefoot and working the horses prove otherwise.

Use decent, well fitting boots for exercise during the transition phase, get good advice from an experienced barefooter.


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## touchstone (7 February 2011)

amymay said:



			Laminitis is inflammation of the sensitive laminae, and the internal structures therein of the foot.

Growing a 'better new hoof' is totally oversimplifying the condition......
		
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But that is how to heal a laminitic - remove the causative factor that creates the laminitis and then the hoof has a chance to grow normal lamellar attachments; the difficulty can be in finding the cause, but allowing the horse to 'detox' and watching for metabolic disorders means that you are halfway there once you can control the inflammation, if you don't control that you are never going to get a healthy hoof and no amount of shoeing can correct it.   Laminitis is a complicated condition because it affects the whole horse. 
 I feel that supporting the pedal bone correctly is vital and allowing the hoof to function as it should and I found that no shoes was the right way for my horse.  I also went against what veterinary professionals were saying, but when my vet next saw my (sound) horse he was very impressed with the result.
Of course it is up to the owner who has to make the final decision over which method to choose, but from personal experience, and seeing many horses not recover after the usual heartbar etc treatment, it is something I wish I had been aware of years before I discovered the benefits.  It does complicate matters when there is so much conflicting advice available, and I can only recommend doing lots of your own research and what you feel is right; but to me the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I wish the owner and horse well, whatever method they choose.


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## amandap (7 February 2011)

martha said:



			. 

Having read so much on here about barefoot, I mentioned the possibility to my vet and he was horrified.  He said that my horse would be crippled without shoes and it would be cruel to take them off.  I still haven't ruled it out but it hurt enormously to have it suggested that I could be cruel to my beloved horse.

I'm thinking of getting a second opinion on the barefoot. I hope you get your boy sorted.
		
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Do look into it and recommend Pete Rameys DVD series, 'Under the Horse' to your vet for a quick, graphic insight into barefoot thinking.
Have a good read of LucyPriories blog too, it's a great no nonsense resource.

Just to babble my non professional thinking. Once a hoof is compromised it needs time to heal and many horses hooves are greatly underdeveloped from restriction of movement, shoeing etc. So on top of mending any damage the hoof needs time and supported 'work' to grow stronger by developing internal structures. There are pads, boots to offer comfort, protection and support if needed but this process does not happen overnight. I believe it takes a hoof about the same time to fully develop as the horses skeleton 6-7 years ish. If a horse has been stabled a lot and shod continuously from an early age then hoof development has often been severely stunted. Correct and full functioning of the hoof (expansion, contraction, twisting etc.) is needed to build up the structures, casing it in a cast effectively hides symptoms but what does it do to actively strengthen a hoof structures such as digital cushion and lateral cartilages? What's that saying?... "Use it or loose it" 

Sorry for babbling but I get cross with Vets who use cruelty as a whip to beat owners trying to do their best.


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

martha said:



			Having read so much on here about barefoot, I mentioned the possibility to my vet and he was horrified.  He said that my horse would be crippled without shoes and it would be cruel to take them off.  I still haven't ruled it out but it hurt enormously to have it suggested that I could be cruel to my beloved horse.
		
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That makes me so angry. How dare the vet make you feel like that. But you are not alone, believe me. I hear things like that so often. A client of mine has an IR mare who came down with lami during the cold snap. This mare had been lame for two years in heart bar shoes but had been sound all summer barefoot. Vet came out and said the mare would never, stress never, come sound unless she had heart bar shoes put on. My client resisted, not easy as the vet made her feel awful, but she said no. The mare stayed barefoot, was 100% sound within 5 days and was being ridden again within 10 days. All the vet said was 'I'm surprised'. And how did we get the mare sound again so quickly? The lami had been triggered by a combination of a different batch of hay (containign clover - a big no no) and because of the extreme cold my client had stopped soaking the hay too. Once we'd switched to a different batch of hay and started soaking again mare went sound.

Another example - another horse with lami over the cold snap. X-rays showed a very slight rotation - no big deal at all, but vet was offering to put the horse to sleep on the spot. At this stage the horse wasn't even lame anymore! This particular vet said that rotation meant the horse would never be able to be ridden again. What?!!!! Why on earth shouldn't he be ridden again?

Not all vets are so close minded but they tend to need to see barefoot working with their own eyes, which is fair enough I guess, as other than that all they have is what they've been taught at vet school. I just wish they'd read around the subject a bit more and when they do see barefoot working not just say things like 'I'm surprised' or 'you've been very lucky'. I had one vet tell me that no horse in the UK could work hard barefoot as they all get white line disease. This was as I was holding one of my barefoot endurance horses!


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## Amymay (7 February 2011)

That makes me so angry. How dare the vet make you feel like that.
		
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But it's what you barefoot advocates do all the time.........


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## bensababy (7 February 2011)

I too can second Bare Foot. I have a Laminitis sufferer, acute Laminitis in fronts. 7% rotation in each foot. Farrier is out every 6 weeks "reshaping", my boy also has soles so thin you can compress it with your thumb, i coat in Keratex and have the GMac boots which he wears when going from stable to field and exercise. I have tried several options with him - heart bars, clogs.. and none seem to keep him sound enough.

Edited to say he is not trimmed by a "Barefoot specialist" - my farrier is a genius.


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## touchstone (7 February 2011)

I advocate barefoot because it works - all I am doing is posting my experiences which benefitted my horse, at the end of the day people are saying what has worked for them and what failings they have seen with conventional methods - no one is being told they have to follow a certain method that is up to the indivudual at the end of the day, as I said in my previous post " I can only recommend doing lots of your own research and what you feel is right; but to me the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I wish the owner and horse well, whatever method they choose."
My vet is actually quite supportive of barefoot now, I think that it would be good to see less closed mindedness over treatments rather than calling somebody outright cruel for wanting to try something when the conventional route hasn't worked.


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## amandap (7 February 2011)

I'm sorry you feel that way amymay. 

I've been thinking, it's really a medical/veterinary model v an holistic model. Vets are taught in a very medical model way so it's hard for some to think in other ways from my understanding. This is changing but I do get so sad when I see pics of butchered hooves (done by vets,farriers or invasive trimmers) when a change of diet and management would allow the horse to grow a perfectly sound hoof that meets it's needs.


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## bensababy (7 February 2011)

amandap said:



			I'm sorry you feel that way amymay. 

I've been thinking, it's really a medical/veterinary model v an holistic model. Vets are taught in a very medical model way so it's hard for some to think in other ways from my understanding. This is changing but I do get so sad when I see pics of butchered hooves (done by vets,farriers or invasive trimmers) when a change of diet and management would allow the horse to grow a perfectly sound hoof that meets it's needs.
		
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Can i ask, in your experience what would you recommend the perfect diet for a Cushings/Laminitis/thin soled 13.1 pony?


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

amymay said:



			But it's what you barefoot advocates do all the time.........
		
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Do we? Examples please!


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## amandap (7 February 2011)

I don't consider myself quallified to give dietry advice beyond the basics I'm afraid. I have only personal experience of one laminitic pony and she isn't IR/cushings (yet). 
I actually don't believe there is a 'perfect' diet as I've read many stories of people struggling with diets for IR/cushings horses, there is a huge individual aspect especially if specific sensitivities such as preservatives are involved.

Diet of mainly soaked rinsed hay, grass if tolerated outside danger times, spring, autumn, stress periods frost, drought etc. mineral supplementation according to forage analysis is the ideal, protein and amino acid supplementation might be required if the diet is only soaked hay. I always point peeps to metabolic horse site and Yahoo group for support from those with horses difficult to stabilize.
Exercise is also imo extremely important. Of course in an acute attack of laminitis this is not advisable but the horse can potter at his/her own pace if a supportive surface or pads are provided.

Mta. http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMetabolicHorse/
Jackie Taylor does a diet handout for laminitics.


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## bensababy (7 February 2011)

amandap said:



			Exercise is also imo extremely important. Of course in an acute attack of laminitis this is not advisable but the horse can potter at his/her own pace if a supportive surface or pads are provided.

Mta. http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMetabolicHorse/
Jackie Taylor does a diet handout for laminitics.
		
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Thank you that is useful. I am also glad you mentioned the exercise, my farrier rammed this home to me that he needs to be kept active as much as possible, i have started long reining in the school as a form of exercise for him, its tough to know how far to push them without causing any distress/pain.


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## Clava (7 February 2011)

amymay said:



			Laminitis is inflammation of the sensitive laminae, and the internal structures therein of the foot.

Growing a 'better new hoof' is totally oversimplifying the condition......
		
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...but it is the only answer. A new healthy hoof grown from a correct diet and movement.

I would never have shoes on a laminitic.


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

bensababy said:



			Thank you that is useful. I am also glad you mentioned the exercise, my farrier rammed this home to me that he needs to be kept active as much as possible, i have started long reining in the school as a form of exercise for him, its tough to know how far to push them without causing any distress/pain.
		
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Exercise is crucial - for stimulation and aiding circulation in the feet and for helping to burn off calories. The horse will let you know how much they can cope with - you really just have to play it by ear and the situation can change day on day. I agree there isn't a perfect, fits all, diet, as all are different. Some can tolerate no grass whatsoever, others are not so extreme. In my ideal world I would have completely grass free fields - but until I move to Arizona I have to make do, like we all do, and manage with what we've got.


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## quirky (7 February 2011)

It's asking somebody to take a massive leap of faith in taking shoes off a laminitic.

I had a laminitic who when his shoes were taken off was in so much pain he wouldn't eat, he stood up rarely and was generally a very, very unhappy pony. We tried frog supports (the rubber ones) but still he wouldn't stand/eat. It was absolutely heart breaking to see and I lost many a nights sleep fretting over that pony .
I was lucky, we got him on his feet long enough to have Imprints and filler in. This support was enough for him to turn the corner and he was on the road to a slow recovery.

He came back fully into work and I lost him to an altogether different condition.

So, Barefooters, how can you honestly tell somebody to their pony's shoes off when she has already said he won't/can't cope ?


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## Clava (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			It's asking somebody to take a massive leap of faith in taking shoes off a laminitic.

I had a laminitic who when his shoes were taken off was in so much pain he wouldn't eat, he stood up rarely and was generally a very, very unhappy pony. We tried frog supports (the rubber ones) but still he wouldn't stand/eat. It was absolutely heart breaking to see and I lost many a nights sleep fretting over that pony .
I was lucky, we got him on his feet long enough to have Imprints and filler in. This support was enough for him to turn the corner and he was on the road to a slow recovery.

He came back fully into work and I lost him to an altogether different condition.

So, Barefooters, how can you honestly tell somebody to their pony's shoes off when she has already said he won't/can't cope ?
		
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No I couldn't , but I would never shoe a pony who was prone to lami as that way you can see any of those minute changes before you get to that stage and hopefully treat earlier.


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## Lotty (7 February 2011)

My mare was diagnosed laminitic last March and it was touch and go at one point, I can only tell you how my vet and farrier went about things.

My mare is 16.1 warmblood cross and she was on box rest for 5months. In those months she had 4 pairs of Imprints then 2 sets of heartbars, however both the vet and farrier said she had good feet. I also rang the Laminitis Trust and joined the Metabolic Horse Group on Yahoo for advise. I fed her Happy Hoof and weighed and soaked hay, feeding her 1.5% of her bodyweight.


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			It's asking somebody to take a massive leap of faith in taking shoes off a laminitic.

I had a laminitic who when his shoes were taken off was in so much pain he wouldn't eat, he stood up rarely and was generally a very, very unhappy pony. We tried frog supports (the rubber ones) but still he wouldn't stand/eat. It was absolutely heart breaking to see and I lost many a nights sleep fretting over that pony .
I was lucky, we got him on his feet long enough to have Imprints and filler in. This support was enough for him to turn the corner and he was on the road to a slow recovery.

He came back fully into work and I lost him to an altogether different condition.

So, Barefooters, how can you honestly tell somebody to their pony's shoes off when she has already said he won't/can't cope ?
		
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Because we hear it all the time and have seen time after time that if you get the diet/management right then barefoot works 100% of the time. That's not to say getting the diet/management right is easy because for some it's incredibly hard but I have yet to hear a convincing argument/explanation as to how shoes - be they metal and nailed on or plastic and glued on - can cure inflammation of the foot.


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## touchstone (7 February 2011)

So, Barefooters, how can you honestly tell somebody to their pony's shoes off when she has already said he won't/can't cope ?[/QUOTE]

Because you make sure that the horse is comfortable and supported correctly with boots and pads - there is no reason  for leaving a horse in pain just because his shoes have been removed. The beauty of pads is that you can get them to where the horse is comfortable and adjust easily if necessary, once you have something permanently attached to the hoof you've lost that ability.

I believe the research of Dr Bowker has shown that it is pressure and release that builds a healthy sole, that is something that boots and pads provide.


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## amandap (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			It's asking somebody to take a massive leap of faith in taking shoes off a laminitic.


So, Barefooters, how can you honestly tell somebody to their pony's shoes off when she has already said he won't/can't cope ?
		
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It is and tbh if you aren't sure how to manage the horse and don't have the appropriate advice and support it's very daunting and *imo* may not be the best decision until a plan of action and supportive professionals are in place. Seeing a horse in pain is hard for us and we want to fix it now so shoes often help this in the short term.


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## quirky (7 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			I have yet to hear a convincing argument/explanation as to how shoes - be they metal and nailed on or plastic and glued on - can cure inflammation of the foot.
		
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Not saying they cure inflamed laminae, surely that takes time and the shoes allow the horse to be comfortable enough to begin that process.

You see, if you said, right, have Imprints on for 4 weeks (or whatever) in that time, your horse 'may' be more comfortable and be able to go without shoes.
Surely, if you have seen a horse in the throes of laminitis, you can see my point?
They have good periods and bad periods, why not wait for a good point to remove shoes rather than advocate taking them off at any time?


Clava - you state that you'd never shoe a horse that is prone to laminitis. I guess that means you don't agree with any horse being shod then?


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## quirky (7 February 2011)

amandap said:



			It is and tbh if you aren't sure how to manage the horse and don't have the appropriate advice and support it's very daunting and *imo* may not be the best decision until a plan of action and supportive professionals are in place. Seeing a horse in pain is hard for us and we want to fix it now so shoes often help this in the short term.
		
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We cross posted but I am glad you have said this .
I do wish that barefoot people could admit that sometimes shoes do have a place.

* applauds for amandap *


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## Clava (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Not saying they cure inflamed laminae, surely that takes time and the shoes allow the horse to be comfortable enough to begin that process.

You see, if you said, right, have Imprints on for 4 weeks (or whatever) in that time, your horse 'may' be more comfortable and be able to go without shoes.
Surely, if you have seen a horse in the throes of laminitis, you can see my point?
They have good periods and bad periods, why not wait for a good point to remove shoes rather than advocate taking them off at any time?


Clava - you state that you'd never shoe a horse that is prone to laminitis. I guess that means you don't agree with any horse being shod then?
		
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Not at all, for the last two summers my tb has had fronts on, this year I hope not to but it is always an option. I only don't agree with back to back shoeing without a break and shoeing laminitics. I would only shoe a strong hoof not a weak one.


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Not saying they cure inflamed laminae, surely that takes time and the shoes allow the horse to be comfortable enough to begin that process.
		
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it's true that glued on Imprints are a whole lot better option than nailing metal to an already painful and compromised foot - how can anyone say that's ever a good thing? But I still prefer the option of boots and pads for support than fixing something, even semi permanently to the foot. With boots and pads you can remove them at any time and monitor how much the horse is improving. With Imprints how do you know if the dietary/management changes you've made are working?


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## amandap (7 February 2011)

I don't mean to say that I thought nailing was a 'good' thing. I was trying to say how I thought many owners choose shoes because they haven't the support or knowledge needed to take the plunge into barefoot unsupported. I also query whether taking that plunge with no support and knowledge of how to manage, then shoes _may_ be a better option in the _short term_.

Many owners it seems end up taking that plunge when there is nothing else left except pts and that determination gets them through the learning and worry. It's such a sad state of affairs imo.


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## cptrayes (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			We cross posted but I am glad you have said this .
I do wish that barefoot people could admit that sometimes shoes do have a place.

* applauds for amandap *
		
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I'm a committed barefooter. I'm so committed that some people think I should BE committed  

Shoes have a place when the owner is unable or unwilling to provide what their particular horse needs to be happy barefoot. For a small minority of horses this can be VERY difficult to provide and for many, particularly in spring and summer, it can be a bit of a nuisance.

Yes, shoes have  a place.

But NOT in the management of a laminitic.


1) They mask the very early signs, so the horse can appear to go into acute laminitis with no warning when an acute attack might have been prevented by earlier action.

2) They reduce pain in an acute attack by preventing movement of the hoof wall pulling at the laminae and by taking pressure off the sole. Pain exists for a reason. It is there to stop the horse from moving while the laminae are so inflamed that they will pull apart if stress is placed on them. Mask that pain and the horse will move, with its weight taken on the walls/shoe (ie on the laminae) and not the sole  and make pedal bone rotation MORE likely, not less. 

3) NAILING to an inflamed and painful foot while making the horse stand on one painful inflamed foot? Barbaric.


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## quirky (7 February 2011)

I give up , I'm never going to get a decent explanation and that is why the barefoot brigade are so bloody annoying. 
You either cannot or will not answer what I thought was a simple question.


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## brucea (7 February 2011)

I thought she had given you quite a well thought out answer, and not at all annoying


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			I give up , I'm never going to get a decent explanation and that is why the barefoot brigade are so bloody annoying. 
You either cannot or will not answer what I thought was a simple question.
		
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You didn't answer my question/post quirky....


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## LucyPriory (7 February 2011)

help help - I can't even figure out which question wasn't answered......

must be having a really bad day (its the old age)


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## touchstone (7 February 2011)

I can't see how the 'barefoot brigade' are being 'bloody annoying'???

Each person has responded with their reasonings as to why they recommend removing shoes.  I'd also wonder why some are so opposed to using boots and pads, which can support as well as if not better than expensive imprints and filler, bearing in mind that over four weeks the hoof wall will grow and move the support further away from where it should be?


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## quirky (7 February 2011)

brucea said:



			I thought she had given you quite a well thought out answer, and not at all annoying
		
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She went and edited it just as I posted my reply . - she added the 1 2 3 bit.

What question haven't I answered MrDarcy ?.. I'll go and take a look.


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			She went and edited it just as I posted my reply . - she added the 1 2 3 bit.

What question haven't I answered MrDarcy ?.. I'll go and take a look.
		
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It was about Imprint shoes not allowing you to see if the horse was improving... unlike using boots with pads that you can remove any time.


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## brucea (7 February 2011)

Quote:
You can't "fix" a laminitic hoof, you can only grow a better new hoof.  

Laminitis is inflammation of the sensitive laminae, and the internal structures therein of the foot.

Growing a 'better new hoof' is totally oversimplifying the condition......
		
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Well if you can tell me any other better way of getting a new, sound hoof on that pony then I'll eat my own rasp! 

You can't repair a damaged connection - you can only relieve pressure and limit damage or perhaps make it worse - it has to be replaced, and it is growing a new hoof that replaces it! 

If you can explain how peripherally supporting a hoof where the laminar connection is very compromised, and forcing the sole into a bridging rather than a supporting role can bring benefit to a laminitic, then I'll eat my own hoof nippers too!  

If you can convince me that it is acceptable to nail into a hoof that is already inflamed and painful, and indeed possible to do it without doing further damage, then I'll eat my own hoof stand!


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

brucea said:



			Well if you can tell me any other better way of getting a new, sound hoof on that pony then I'll eat my own rasp! 

You can't repair a damaged connection - you can only relieve pressure and limit damage or perhaps make it worse - it has to be replaced, and it is growing a new hoof that replaces it! 

If you can explain how peripherally supporting a hoof where the laminar connection is very compromised, and forcing the sole into a bridging rather than a supporting role can bring benefit to a laminitic, then I'll eat my own hoof nippers too!  

If you can convince me that it is acceptable to nail into a hoof that is already inflamed and painful, and indeed possible to do it without doing further damage, then I'll eat my own hoof stand! 

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Lol - that's a lot of metal you'd be eating Brucea!


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## quirky (7 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			With Imprints how do you know if the dietary/management changes you've made are working?
		
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This question?

I can only go on the experience with my laminitic, which was steroid induced .

When he was in Imprints, he was confined to his stable - if he had been ok in his frog supports, he would still have been confined to his stable. Any improvement would have been difficult to judge due to the limited movement/space.
So, I don't really see, if they are still at the confinement stage what difference it makes .


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			This question?

I can only go on the experience with my laminitic, which was steroid induced .

When he was in Imprints, he was confined to his stable - if he had been ok in his frog supports, he would still have been confined to his stable. Any improvement would have been difficult to judge due to the limited movement/space.
So, I don't really see, if they are still at the confinement stage what difference it makes .
		
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But your original post said that without shoes your pony couldn't even stand and with Imprints he could. You agree that the Imprints didn't cure him, just made him able to stand. So how did you know when his feet actually started to get better as the Imprints were only masking the problem not curing it?

The confinement thing is also an issue for me - the horse should be allowed to move as much as they are comfortable with. The fact some vets still insist on box rest for thirty days after the horse has become sound makes my mind boggle!


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## LucyPriory (7 February 2011)

quirky said:



			This question?

I can only go on the experience with my laminitic, which was steroid induced .

When he was in Imprints, he was confined to his stable - if he had been ok in his frog supports, he would still have been confined to his stable. Any improvement would have been difficult to judge due to the limited movement/space.
So, I don't really see, if they are still at the confinement stage what difference it makes .
		
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Ok I am butting in for which I apologise in advance.

Laminitics are more comfortable if they can adjust the support under their hooves to suit themselves; which is why conformable surfaces are recommended.  This precludes the use of imprints.

As the laminae are damaged anything which increases the likelihood of peripheral loading is unwise, which is why shoes are not the best idea. Especially as they also restrict the circulation which is required for healing.

Anything permanently fixed to the bottom of the foot will disturb the natural balance of the limb and this gets worse over time.  This includes boots (while they are on), but at least these can come off when not needed for protection, enabling the hoof to wear more naturally. 

All horses including laminitics need to move, for both physical and mental health.  They also need buddies and restricting them to a stable prevents both.

I am sure someone somewhere can say this much more articulately than me.


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## amandap (7 February 2011)

I manage my pony in an acute attack by deep shavings bed in a barn. No shoes or pads initially. She can move around as she wishes and stays on the shavings herself. She begins to move more and then off the shavings onto the earth floor for increasing periods. Her mates are in the yard outside her gate btw.
When she is moving happily round the barn I cut and tape pads onto her feet for walks out. This gradually increases and she is turned out with non pushy mates during the day in pads, pads off at night in the barn. She has been able to go padless quite quickly this time out in the yard but I do limit who she mixes with because I have one quite pushy/bossy mare and I want her to be able to move at her pace not forced to trot or canter.

I've found this regime works very well for her. She is never totally in isolation as she can always see and touch her mates through the gate and is able to move at her pace with no pressure. I find she doesn't do the bucking and cavorting because she hasn't been isolated. I'm convinced this social contact is very important to healing, so is high on my priority list.


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## LucyPriory (7 February 2011)

amandap said:



			I'm convinced this social contact is very important to healing, so is high on my priority list.
		
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You are so right


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## quirky (7 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			But your original post said that without shoes your pony couldn't even stand and with Imprints he could. You agree that the Imprints didn't cure him, just made him able to stand. So how did you know when his feet actually started to get better as the Imprints were only masking the problem not curing it?
		
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We tried frog supports prior to Imprints, it just didn't make him comfortable.

How did I know he was getting better? He wanted to come out of his stable. When he was at his worst, he was more than happy to stay in his deep shavings bed. I can't remember how long he was in there but I would say at about 8-10 weeks he decided he wanted a walk out, so that is what we did .

How do I know he as cured?
I rode him for 18 months before he was pts and he was as sound as sound could be .

Can't say if I'd persevered with frog supports we'd have got to the same point eventually or not as I chose not to subject him to more pain than he was already in.


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## madaboutollie (7 February 2011)

Me again, barefooters!  Remember, the one who posed the question about shoeing a chronic laminitic in the first instance?? 

It looks as if I've opened a can of worms here but it does make very interesting reading!  It's actually taking my mind off my poor horse for a few minutes ......

As I said previously, I do have a barefoot horse - a five year old ID who has never been shod - but the difference between him and the chronic laminitic is that he has beautiful hoof conformation and excellent horn quality.  His feet are checked on every farrier's visit (approx 6 weeks) and he is trimmed accordingly.

When the heart bars were removed from my Arab X, he immediately started pawing the ground.  My farrier (who knows him very well) said not to let him go down at that stage as we would be unlikely to get him up again 

He spent a few hours last Friday without the heart bars (we took further xrays to see if the pedal bone had moved further) and he was really struggling barefoot. You could see his relief when the shoes went back on - he was able to move again, even though it was just to his water bucket!
Since then, I think he is getting uncomfortable again and presume this is from the pressure of the frog plate.

So, barefooters, if he was to go barefoot from here, please tell me how the pedal bone would be supported?  He is on box rest at the moment on a huge shavings bed.  He can groom his 'brother' through the connecting stable window, and he isn't stressed or particularly unhappy (although given a choice, I'm sure he'd prefer the paddock!).  The farrier will be trimming every 4-5 weeks after the vet has xrayed.

The question is, where do I go from here?  Answers in one sentence please, lol


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## LucyPriory (7 February 2011)

OP - when you say you want a one sentence answer - do you really want one?

One sentence precludes the preamble necessary for full explanation. But...

The laminitic foot is most effectively supported by the use of a conformable surface, this includes the pedal bone, which can not and should not be the target of isolated 'support'.

That in one sentence is the neatest I can get it for now.

For a serious, more correctly explained answer - read the texts previously suggested.


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## brucea (7 February 2011)

^^^ She's much better at summarising than me.





			Lol - that's a lot of metal you'd be eating Brucea!
		
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I've got a chocolate set just in case I'm ever proven wrong.


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## Nari (7 February 2011)

One sentence?

Be guided by your farrier, your horse & your gut feeling.



I'm not in either camp, I'm a believer in doing what's best for the individual & balancing short & long term needs. I don't believe that any single way suits every horse.

Good luck & lots of prayers for you & Ollie x


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## Clava (7 February 2011)

Nari said:



			One sentence?

Be guided by your farrier, your horse & your gut feeling.



I'm not in either camp, I'm a believer in doing what's best for the individual & balancing short & long term needs. I don't believe that any single way suits every horse.

Good luck & lots of prayers for you & Ollie x
		
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Sometimes the problem with being guided by a farrier is that they are trained to shoe and often (but not always) look for shod answers and are not always well informed about alternatives. But this is only my experience.


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## bensababy (7 February 2011)

Clava said:



			Sometimes the problem with being guided by a farrier is that they are trained to shoe and often (but not always) look for shod answers and are not always well informed about alternatives. But this is only my experience.
		
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Again this all depends on the farrier, i tried every possible shoe/contraption on my boy, ended up being better suited to naked.. this is just from experience. What works for one may not always work for others.


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## Nari (7 February 2011)

Clava said:



			Sometimes the problem with being guided by a farrier is that they are trained to shoe and often (but not always) look for shod answers and are not always well informed about alternatives. But this is only my experience.
		
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We're obviously very lucky at my yard then because most of the farriers who come up are very aware of unshod options & will cheerfully recommend them to owners if they feel shoes aren't the best option. I've never heard a trimmer suggest shoes though .....


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## madaboutollie (7 February 2011)

Yes indeed Nari!

My own farrier suggested I give barefoot a try before going down the shoe route with my ID and that was good advice and has worked well for him.  

However, as you said previously, all cases need to be treated individually because what works for one doesn't work for another.  Keep an open mind, that's my motto.


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## brucea (7 February 2011)

Nari...

It may surprise you that some of the UKNHCP leadership team are farriers.


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## Clava (7 February 2011)

Nari said:



			We're obviously very lucky at my yard then because most of the farriers who come up are very aware of unshod options & will cheerfully recommend them to owners if they feel shoes aren't the best option. I've never heard a trimmer suggest shoes though .....
		
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Well my trimmer has totally supported me when I had fronts on my mare and my farrier is very happy to trim barefoot. I was only saying that "often, but not always" they look for shod solutions or else many more problem hooves would be recovering by being barefoot and there would be less threads like this.


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## mrdarcy (7 February 2011)

madaboutollie said:



			As I said previously, I do have a barefoot horse - a five year old ID who has never been shod - but the difference between him and the chronic laminitic is that he has beautiful hoof conformation and excellent horn quality.
		
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But what we are saying is that all horses can have beautiful hoof conformation and excellent horn quality given the right diet and management regime. For some it's easy, for others it takes more work - a bit like with humans. Some can eat whatever they want and never put on weight, whereas others only have to sniff a burger and put on a stone. No horse is born with bad feet. All horses can have beautiful feet. But ypu've really answered your own question. Your ID has great feet because he has healthy feet. Your laminitic has poor quality feet because he's laminitic!




			So, barefooters, if he was to go barefoot from here, please tell me how the pedal bone would be supported?
		
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Do you really think that a small bit of metal can stop a bone belonging to half a ton of horse piercing the bottom of a thin sole? What usually supports the pedal bone in a healthy hoof?  

In fact that's not what's happening at all. It's not the pedal bone that is trying to escape out of the bottom of the hoof, rather it's a sick hoof growing away from the pedal bone, in readiness to slough away so a healthy new hoof can grow in it's place. 

I would urge you to read this article:

http://www.aanhcp.net/Bulletin 113 Mythos of P3 Rotation.pdf

It explains in detail what is actually happening within the hoof - very different to what most people believe!


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## touchstone (7 February 2011)

I can't answer in one sentence, but I'll cheat and say read this link (scroll down and it gives details about giving support to a laminitic hoof.)  http://www.hoofrehab.com/bootarticle.htm

As for where to go from here, if I were you I'd be contacting  a recommended barefoot trimmer in your area, and taking it from there.


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## amandap (7 February 2011)

mrdarcy thanks for that link, I haven't read that bulletin before! Fantastic.


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## brucea (7 February 2011)

In fact that's not what's happening at all. It's not the pedal bone that is trying to escape out of the bottom of the hoof, rather it's a sick hoof growing away from the pedal bone, in readiness to slough away so a healthy new hoof can grow in it's place.
		
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Which is exactly what happened after one of ours laminitic episode - the sole looked flat and filled then one day the whole lot simply peeled off - revealing a lovely new concave sole underneath. 

The important thing for the sole of a laminitic is correct nutrition and stimulation - we found pea gravel a great surface - the 5mm, not the 10.


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## Amymay (8 February 2011)

It's not the pedal bone that is trying to escape out of the bottom of the hoof, rather it's a sick hoof growing away from the pedal bone, in readiness to slough away so a healthy new hoof can grow in it's place.
		
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Are you saying that there is no such thing as a rotated and sinking pedal bone then?????


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## bensababy (8 February 2011)

amymay said:



			Are you saying that there is no such thing as a rotated and sinking pedal bone then?????
		
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I have x-rays to prove a sinking pedal bone


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## riding_high (8 February 2011)

grrr i just typed out a long reply and then the internet lost the connection as i posted! 

basically what i was saying is that my horse has been barefoot for the last year and has managed fine, ok it wasn't for laminitis but the last time i tried him barefoot he was literally unable to move, he would be hobbling in the field. this time he's coped really well and has recovered from his problems. i genuinely believe that the shoes (they were dreadful when taken off) were causing him so much discomfort and pain that it was a relief to have them taken off. 

an old mare at the yard i used to be on had laminitis and had the sinking and rotation. she should not have pulled through but with the love and care of her owner she did. she removed the shoes and spent hours just encouraging her to move around her stable and then building it up to a gentle walk across the yard and so on. now 18 months later the mare is being used to nanny the youngsters and she's coping absolutely fine. again i don't know if the shoes being removed has been the main reason for the good recovery or not but i tried it and so did she and both horses have recovered against the vets opinions.

just to add that my lad had very thin soles, like i said he couldn't even walk in the field but i knew the shoes weren't right after the last time he was shod so i got them removed. his soles are now nice and strong and also his heels are improving. he had collapsed heels thanks to poor farriery. not all farriers are like that but the one i used messed my horses feet up.


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## brucea (8 February 2011)

Soles need feeding and stimulation.

They won't develop depth or thickness without stimulation. Shoes deny them that stimulation, and worse farriers often scoop the sole and pare the frog which removes valuable protective material.

Sometimes you just have to get them through that initial 6 weeks when they are tentative on the ground. It passes. 




			Quote:
It's not the pedal bone that is trying to escape out of the bottom of the hoof, rather it's a sick hoof growing away from the pedal bone, in readiness to slough away so a healthy new hoof can grow in it's place.
		
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My understanding is that as the laminar connection is disrupted the weight of the animal causes the pedal bone to sink and rotate. Toe growth slows, but heel growth continues - in an attempt to reduce the tension on the DFT and therefore lever forces   - giving the pushed forward characteristic hoof shape. If it happens gradually then the laminae will stretch and give the characteristic wedge - if it happens quickly then there is no stabilisation and the hoof collapses.

The sole is similarly affected in that here is both pressure on the solar corium from a descending P3 at the front, but tearing force at the back as P3 tilts, but also compromises to the solar laminae with the same circulation reduction that damages the rest of the laminae are afected.


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## MerrySherryRider (8 February 2011)

madaboutollie said:



			Me again, barefooters!  Remember, the one who posed the question about shoeing a chronic laminitic in the first instance?? 

Click to expand...

LOL ! LMAO. Anyone who might answer your orginal question has been scared off by previous posts mentioning laminitus or navicular......


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## cptrayes (8 February 2011)

madaboutollie said:



			The question is, where do I go from here?  Answers in one sentence please, lol 

Click to expand...


You should think carefully, using the information given on this thread and other threads, about whether you can manage to take the personal responsibility and provide the very detailed level of care that a barefoot approach to curing your horse's sick body will need (it's not just his feet of course, it started in his gut) and if you can, then follow all the leads you have been given, read the books, and find someone who has experience of barefoot rehab of acute laminitis to help you get through this and if you can't, you should leave the responsibility with your farrier and vet to tell you what to do, which is psychologically by far the easier option.


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## bensababy (8 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			You should think carefully, using the information given on this thread and other threads, about whether you can manage to take the personal responsibility and provide the very detailed level of care that a barefoot approach to curing your horse's sick body will need (it's not just his feet of course, it started in his gut) and if you can, then follow all the leads you have been given, read the books, and find someone who has experience of barefoot rehab of acute laminitis to help you get through this and if you can't, you should leave the responsibility with your farrier and vet to tell you what to do, which is psychologically by far the easier option.
		
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This has to be the most sensible post on here. OP just basically leave it with the professionals.. thats what they are there for. Without my farrier and vets advice i dont know where i would be with my Lammi.


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## cptrayes (8 February 2011)

bensababy I do feel the need to point out that a considerable number of people who stick with the vet and farrier will end up with their horses put down, even more will never be properly rideable, and some will go through horrific treatments like sectioning the hoof completely unnecessarily. It's not that simple a decision, though one is certainly easier that the other because all you need to do is say to yourself "I did what the experts told me".

My post was not intended to be the unqualified approval of treatments offered by most vets and farriers that you took it to be, sorry  !


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## Amymay (8 February 2011)

I do feel the need to point out that a considerable number of people who stick with the vet and farrier will end up with their horses put down
		
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*******s - now you are just scaremongering.


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## mrdarcy (8 February 2011)

brucea said:



			My understanding is that as the laminar connection is disrupted the weight of the animal causes the pedal bone to sink and rotate. Toe growth slows, but heel growth continues - in an attempt to reduce the tension on the DFT and therefore lever forces   - giving the pushed forward characteristic hoof shape. If it happens gradually then the laminae will stretch and give the characteristic wedge - if it happens quickly then there is no stabilisation and the hoof collapses.

.
		
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This is exactly what Jaime Jackson believes isn't happening! Read the article Brucea - it makes a lot of sense. How on earth can the very flexible but delicate laminae connections ever hold the weight of half a ton of horse? It doesn't make sense - they simply aren't strong enough. Hence his theory of hemodynamics.

Also toe growth doesn't slow and heel growth increase - rather it's where the moisture in the foot is directed, like the rings of a tree - they are wider in wetter years and closer together in dry years. So in a laminitic foot all the moisture is directed into the back of the foot/heel and away from the toe - this gives the (false) impression that the toe is growing more slowly (rings closer together at the toe, wider apart at the heel). The ultimate aim is that the toe becomes so dry it simply breaks off, removing the sick/dead hoof and allowing the healthy hoof to grow down.


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## amandap (8 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			My post was not intended to be the unqualified approval of treatments offered by most vets and farriers that you took it to be, sorry  !
		
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I think one of my posts was seen a bit that way. 
Excellent advice given by cptrayes imo. In the end, as has been pointed out earlier in the thread, it's all about responsibility to your horse. In the end it's the owners ultimate responsibility imo whatever we decide about anything really, it's just a lot easier to shift it onto vets and others. 
Most of us try to make the best decisions we can at the time and looking back and regretting is not very helpful to moving on and learning.


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## amandap (8 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			This is exactly what Jaime Jackson believes isn't happening! Read the article Brucea - it makes a lot of sense. How on earth can the very flexible but delicate laminae connections ever hold the weight of half a ton of horse? It doesn't make sense - they simply aren't strong enough. Hence his theory of hemodynamics.
		
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Can we discuss this bulletin on another thread for learning? I found it really interesting and would like to clarify I have understood the concepts but don't feel it's appropriate on this thread... 
Or do peeps feel Forums aren't a place to learn?


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## bensababy (8 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			bensababy I do feel the need to point out that a considerable number of people who stick with the vet and farrier will end up with their horses put down, even more will never be properly rideable, and some will go through horrific treatments like sectioning the hoof completely unnecessarily. It's not that simple a decision, though one is certainly easier that the other because all you need to do is say to yourself "I did what the experts told me".

My post was not intended to be the unqualified approval of treatments offered by most vets and farriers that you took it to be, sorry  !
		
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As the same could be said a percentage that are treated by a barefoot trimmer? Each individual horse will respond differently to treatment, what works for one may not always work for others, all i know is i put 100% trust in the "experts" which to me are my farrier and vet - which so far have not ever let me down.

On another note - i have copies of my boys x-rays here with me, i cannot post them up here from work - but i would be interested to see what people/trimmers/experts make of them. Can email? or if someone else wants to post for me?


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## mrdarcy (8 February 2011)

amymay said:



			Are you saying that there is no such thing as a rotated and sinking pedal bone then?????
		
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Have you read the article? It explains everything in great detail - would be daft me typing it out.


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## mrdarcy (8 February 2011)

amandap said:



			Can we discuss this bulletin on another thread for learning? I found it really interesting and would like to clarify I have understood the concepts but don't feel it's appropriate on this thread... 
Or do peeps feel Forums aren't a place to learn?
		
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Feel free to PM me with any questions


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## amandap (8 February 2011)

A 30 page pm on it's way to you mrdarcy!  Only joking, it's not quite that long.


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## cptrayes (8 February 2011)

bensababy said:



			As the same could be said a percentage that are treated by a barefoot trimmer? Each individual horse will respond differently to treatment, what works for one may not always work for others, all i know is i put 100% trust in the "experts" which to me are my farrier and vet - which so far have not ever let me down.
		
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A much lower percentage is my impression bensababy. And if you consider that most foot-diseased horses are taken barefoot after vet and farriery treatment have already failed, then the percentage that come right is even more surprising. 

I am glad for you that you have never been let down by an expert, I truly am. I hope that you have already reached your nineties and can say that, but many, many of us who are the most criticised for our profound belief in barefoot have got into this situation because we certainly have been let down by professionals. We have seen horses that they have said will never be ridden again work as if there was never anything wrong with them. Once you have experienced that, you never quite have the same faith in an expert again. I have no problems with experts occasionally being wrong, they are humans. What I have a HUGE problem with is the increasing body of evidence that is building up that shoes are not the right way to treat a number of diseases, which many of them are simply not interested in learning about even though they know it exists. Where, for example, is The Laminitis Trust research project comparing the outcomes of barefoot treatment for laminitis versus shoes? The supposed fount of all wisdom about laminitis, and it isn't happening. Perhaps they are too busy taking licencing fees from feed companies for recommending feeds which contain up to 10% molasses?


Ooh , sorry, rant over!


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## bensababy (8 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			A much lower percentage is my impression bensababy. And if you consider that most foot-diseased horses are taken barefoot after vet and farriery treatment have already failed, then the percentage that come right is even more surprising. 

I am glad for you that you have never been let down by an expert, I truly am. I hope that you have already reached your nineties and can say that, but many, many of us who are the most criticised for our profound belief in barefoot have got into this situation because we certainly have been let down by professionals. We have seen horses that they have said will never be ridden again work as if there was never anything wrong with them. Once you have experienced that, you never quite have the same faith in an expert again. I have no problems with experts occasionally being wrong, they are humans. What I have a HUGE problem with is the increasing body of evidence that is building up that shoes are not the right way to treat a number of diseases, which many of them are simply not interested in learning about even though they know it exists. Where, for example, is The Laminitis Trust research project comparing the outcomes of barefoot treatment for laminitis versus shoes? The supposed fount of all wisdom about laminitis, and it isn't happening. Perhaps they are too busy taking licencing fees from feed companies for recommending feeds which contain up to 10% molasses?


Ooh , sorry, rant over!
		
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I would be interested in seeing statistics and case studies that could prove this.. not meaning to be snotty - just a general wondering.

I have no issues with bare foot, as my post will say my boy is currently bare foot after a acute attack and this seems to work better for him. At my request (as i felt my pony was uncomfortable) i asked for farrier to try alternatives - which after a while proved to be of no benefit to him at all. In this case the "expert" was right.


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## brucea (8 February 2011)

v. interesting article. Can understand the arguments. A useful way of looking at it - and makes one rethink the mechanics. The "foot in a bag" approach


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## cptrayes (8 February 2011)

bensababy said:



			I would be interested in seeing statistics and case studies that could prove this.. not meaning to be snotty - just a general wondering.
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Wouldn't we all! But the only people with the money to pay for it, the FRC, The Laminitis Trust, whatever organisations the vets belong to, aren't doing the research, and until they do we are stuck with anecdotes. And until that research is done, only the brave vet and/or farrier will go for it, for fear of being sued if it doesn't work. They can't be sued if they use "accepted best practice".  There is no money in barefoot rehabs, so there is no incentive for anyone to research it. Catch 22.


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## MerrySherryRider (8 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			bensababy I do feel the need to point out that a considerable number of people who stick with the vet and farrier will end up with their horses put down, even more will never be properly rideable, and some will go through horrific treatments like sectioning the hoof completely unnecessarily. It's not that simple a decision, though one is certainly easier that the other because all you need to do is say to yourself "I did what the experts told me".

My post was not intended to be the unqualified approval of treatments offered by most vets and farriers that you took it to be, sorry  !
		
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This has to be the most outrageous piece of claptrap I've ever heard. Shame on you.


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## ameeyal (8 February 2011)

I am finding all this very interesting reading {even if i dont understand half of it } my horse is still lame 7 weeks down the line with laminitis, i have to admite he did walk better with heart bars on, i do like the natueral approach to keeping horses, my youngster isnt going to have shoes on, but im also consisering having my laminitics shoes off but im SO SCARED of it not working and i have to have him pts because of my decision.


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## emmachiro (8 February 2011)

This is all very interesting reading....good debate!  

Thought I'd try and give a 'brief' synopsis of what we've been through - imprints, barefoot, the lot...

I probably should PM this to you, but i'm a bit useless at this! 


My 25 yr old arabx welsh mare was diagnosed with rotation when she was about 12, went to see Robin Compton (www.problemhooves.co.uk), who fitted imprints and cut toes right back.  From memory she was sore for a couple of months, but then returned to light work and generally being her cheeky self for years, with episodes of abscessing, intermittent bouts of lameness, that has either been laminitis exacerbated by cushings or mechanical laminitis through one foot having to support the other.

She came off imprints and went back onto normal shoes for a while, (can't remember which, sorry), and seemed to go downhill again, so went back onto imprints, which were fitted by a different farrier.  

The last 2 years have been interesting to say the least.  She has quite severe rotation in both feet, but touch wood is only a founder, not a sinker. She has been barefoot for the last 2 years following a bad bout of lameness.  She has had varying amounts of serum production coming from old abcsess sites which is the result of an unstable pedal bone causing pressure and tearing of the laminae.  She also hops from one foot to the other, and isn't 100% sound, but she is still the same old cheeky minx that bosses us around.  

We have recently gone back to Robin who is about the only person who seems to look away from the text book and look at the individual case.  At the moment she is barefoot, is in 'RX boots' with sole cushion support (similar to styrofoam), and she has wedges to help relieve the pull of the ddft which has contracted on the left.  I'm sure a lot of people are gasping at the thought of wedges, but her whole body relaxed when they were fitted (they aren't permanent, instead are screwed to her RX boots so she only has them during the day).

We have had so many sleepless nights over this, I know what you are going through.  But you know your horse, if they're still eating/standing/looking bright then THEY haven't given up.  One vet said who isn't scared of laminitis "where's there's life, there is hope".  He said that on the morning we were going to have her put down, that was 9 months ago.  

I have a lot of respect for the farrier who has done the interim work, but he himself put his hands up and didn't know what else to do.  The local vet took a knife to the sole of her foot and did a partial dorsal wall resection last year, which relieved some pressure but lord knows what it did to the state of the pedal bone.  It seems all to easy to throw in the towel with this disease, but my girl has been coping 70% of the time without too much of a problem for 12 years.

So, to try and answer your question, imprints have worked, barefoot hasn't made anything particulary worse, wouldn't say it has been a life saver either, frog supports definately help, RX boots are bloody brilliant.

The best piece of advice I can give you is TIME!!!  Your horse has been through sooo much, and probably will need to go through more yet.  Perspective for us came when we realised that a family member needed 1 months rest off for having a small operation.  1 month!  Your vet is suggesting "see how they are in a few days???????????"  How about lets see how they are in 6-8 weeks at least with the full knowledge that this might be really ugly for the first few days/weeks???????  

The nutritionists at Topspec have been brilliant with diet advice too.  Speak to Robin.

Be brave, take your time, let your horse rest and heal.  Good luck.


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## cptrayes (8 February 2011)

horserider said:



			This has to be the most outrageous piece of claptrap I've ever heard. Shame on you.
		
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No shame accepted, sorry. Well, to be truthful, not sorry either. Shame on the vets and farriers who are refusing to look at the increasing body of evidence that their treatments are either not working, or appear to work but are actually in many cases completely unnecessary. 

Congratulations to the brilliant farriers and vets, and there are more and more of them, who are questionning the old received wisdom.

Horserider which bit of what I wrote do you find to be inaccurate, may I ask?


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## brucea (8 February 2011)

^^ what CP said.

I've known 5 laminitics up close and personal in recent years, a number of others less so. 

The two of them who were put to sleep were the ones under vet and farrier management - and had all the shoeing interventions that you could wish for. Sad, but absolutely true. 

Sorry, no shame here either.


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## alsiola (8 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			Shame on the vets and farriers who are refusing to look at the increasing body of evidence that their treatments are either not working, or appear to work but are actually in many cases completely unnecessary.
		
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Where is this body of evidence?



cptrayes said:



			Congratulations to the brilliant farriers and vets, and there are more and more of them, who are questionning the old received wisdom.
		
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I can only speak for myself, but I question any received "wisdom".  I treat horses using the principles of Evidence Based Medicine, not on how isolated cases respond to treatment.


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## Luciejjkk (8 February 2011)

My horse had been lame for a very very long time and when I suggested taking his egg bar shoes off, my vet and farrier half looked at me in disbelief, like I was having a laugh.  I tried every 'conventiional' and 'traditional' treatment and nothing worked.
It makes me sad to think that if I hadnt gone down the barefoot option, I dont think my horse would be here today.
He is now in full work for the first time in almost 2 years... barefoot


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## cptrayes (8 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Where is this body of evidence?
		
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Alsiola these cases aren't isolated, they are everywhere!  Look how many people have posted on here. How many more must there be worldwide? The number on here can only be a tiny fraction of those that exist. Have you read Jaime Jackson's book on Founder? Did it not make sense to you? 

If you really want to know about the evidence, then look at the references that have been given on this thread. Search "barefoot" in the search facility on this forum and you will find a dozen and more other references to research, some peer reviewed some not, that you can follow up if you are interested. The main names for academic research into the effects of shoes are Rooney and Bowker. Jackson has published the most about laminitis, I think. Just listen to all the people on this forum who have horses that vets and farriers have told us will never work again whose horses are sound and in work. Look at Luciejjkk's post above. If she had not been brave enough to ignore her vet and farrier, her horse would be dead by now. She is FAR FROM ALONE and we are banging our heads against a brick wall trying to get people in a position to change things to understand what can be done. 

Rockleyfarm.co.uk have now returned seventeen, and growing, horses to work that had been failed by the conventional treatments for non-laminitic foot lamenesses of adequan, tildren, HLA and "remedial" shoeing. There are now so many of us who have cured laminitic, navicular, ddft/collateral ligament lame horses  that I am baffled at the level of resistance that still exists to believing that most horses know how to heal themselves if they don't have their feet bound with steel. 

And before anyone else starts with the "anecdotal isn't good enough" argument, just because most of it is anecdotal doesn't mean it isn't TRUE. Aspiring was used as a painkiller long, long, long before doctors stopped being the local barber. Because Fred told Agnes that chewing willow bark worked, and she tried it and it did. 

And please, no more about why barefooters aren't funding research (not on this thread, but several others). It is extremely difficult to get money to research a treatment which will not sell a product (drugs) or service (remedial shoeing). Rockleyfarm's Project Dexter was originally supposed to publish at ten horses. Nic has now done 17 yet the Professor at Leahurst that is sponsoring the project does not want to publish. How many more does she have to do before vets get the information they need from a source they can trust?


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## alsiola (8 February 2011)

I really do want to know.  I am not fundamentally for shoeing and against barefoot.  At the moment it is simply that the body of evidence for shoeing is much stronger than the body of evidence for barefoot.  I am aware that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", but I cannot ethically recommend a treatment that is unproven over one that is proven.  Obviously I am keen to see any studies on barefoot trimming as if the current body of evidence points toward an incorrect conclusion, the sooner the veterinary and horse owning community knows about it, the better.

I appreciate that getting funding for studies is not easy - there are thousands of potential studies that could be performed every year that will never be performed in all likelihood.  However, funding difficulties exist for everyone, not just barefoot practitioners.  I really dislike the calling of conspiracy theories e.g. there is no money in shoeing, so no-one will fund it.  Yes, a big company with a new drug or treatment will fund a trial (often a woefully inadequate and inaccurate trial but that is beside the point), but there remain many charitable organisations who fund studies with no commercial motivation.  As an example, I believe you mentioned the Laminitis Trust earlier in the thread.  The LT gains money through licensing its safe feed tick to feed manufacturers, its premium rate "advice" line and charitable donations.  Why does it have a financial motivation to encourage shoeing?  Or how about the HBLB Trust, whose only stated aim is to improve horse welfare in the UK?
Calls to imagine conspiracy theories do nothing more than liken the foot trimmer to the homeopath.  Funding is available to those with the time and knowledge to perform the studies adequately.

I do also have some problems with the philosophy of some foot trimmers.  For example, earlier in this thread it was stated that Imprint shoes were detrimental as they made the horse too comfortable, so it moved around more.  The implication being that debilitating pain is an appropriate tool to use.  I do not know if these are your views, but regardless, they are espoused by barefoot devotees and reflect dimly on the community.




			And before anyone else starts with the "anecdotal isn't good enough" argument, just because most of it is anecdotal doesn't mean it isn't TRUE. Aspiring was used as a painkiller long, long, long before doctors stopped being the local barber. Because Fred told Agnes that chewing willow bark worked, and she tried it and it did.
		
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The joy of living in an enlightened age of scientific reasoning is that we no longer have to rely on the anecdotal.  Experience has shown time and time again that anecdotal evidence can be completely wrong, and that only properly conducted trials can be trusted.  For example, for many years A&E doctors gave spinal cord trauma patients steroids, because it was supported by logic, and had anecdotally good success.  Eventually a double-blind placebo controlled randomised trial was performed, and the death rate of patients receiving steroids was significantly higher.  Years of medical "wisdom" and anecdotal "evidence" was overturned, and standard practices were changed.  How many patients died due to the power of anecdotal evidence however?  
Human instinct cannot be trusted - we are hard-wired pattern spotters.  The human who mistook a pattern of leaves for a tiger and mistakenly ran survived better than the one who mistook the tiger for leaves.  If we are to improve medical knowledge, we now realise it is not sufficient to trust our own pattern-recognising behaviour.

For every anecdotal success that barefoot supporters can list, I could counter with a success story for shoeing.  How about the 17 year old mare with a history of lameness?  She had chronic laminitis with mild rotation and moderate sinking, and had not been ridden for 3 years.  I saw her at this point when she was requiring a minimum of 2 sachets of bute daily to stay sound.  3 months after applying heart bar shoes I had the pleasure of watching her buck around the field bute free, and 6 months later of meeting her owner riding her out on a hack.  Of course we made some dietary and management changes as well - no lami case will be a success without this whether we use shoes or not.

I haven't read Jaime Jackson's book on Founder - I did read his article on P3 rotation posted in this thread.  I struggled to place too much faith in it after he described the skeleton as non-weightbearing.  The article as a whole was full of speculation and theorising without any proof.  This makes me loathe to waste my hard-earned on a full books worth of the same.

When I ask for evidence of the superiority of barefoot over shoeing approaches to treating laminitis, then to be convinced I would need to see a study showing statistically significant differences between the two, such as length of time spent on box rest, length of time receiving painkillers, objective lameness grading, survival time.  If this exists then please point me in the right direction.
Another study might compare non-diseased horses kept barefoot vs non diseased horses kept shod, and compare the incidence of lameness between the two.  Again, this does not exist to my knowledge.

I am not interested in supporting one treatment or another based on fundamental beliefs, but based on published sound evidence.  My rebuttal of barefoot trimming is based solely on the evidence, and I would happily be convinced as to its superiority.


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## alsiola (8 February 2011)

Rockleyfarm's Project Dexter was originally supposed to publish at ten horses. Nic has now done 17 yet the Professor at Leahurst that is sponsoring the project does not want to publish. How many more does she have to do before vets get the information they need from a source they can trust?
		
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Why the resistance to publishing?  While a case report of 10 or 17 horses would not be sufficient evidence to change my mind (or many others I suspect, see my post above for what would be sufficient to change my mind), this is not the goal of a case report.  A published case report will serve to stimulate more research, which can only be a good thing.  Which Professor at Leahurst was sponsoring the project?


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## mrdarcy (8 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			riding her out on a hack.  Of course we made some dietary and management changes as well - no lami case will be a success without this whether we use shoes or not.

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Why do you think it was the shoes that made the difference and not the dietary changes? Can you point me the direction of a study where dietary changes plus remedial shoeing were compared to remedial shoeing alone?


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			Why do you think it was the shoes that made the difference and not the dietary changes? Can you point me the direction of a study where dietary changes plus remedial shoeing were compared to remedial shoeing alone?
		
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I can't, which is exactly my point.  A case report is not evidence enough to change clinical acumen, and you are right to question it.  I used this as an example as to why all the anecdotal evidence for barefoot trimming is not enough evidence either.

However, I can show you published work on the efficacy of shoeing a laminitic:

Equine Vet J Suppl. 1998 Sep;(26):111-8.
Digital perfusion, evaluated scintigraphically, and hoof wall growth in horses with chronic laminitis treated with egg bar-heart bar shoeing and coronary grooving.
Ritmeester AM, Blevins WE, Ferguson DW, Adams SB.

Equine Vet J. 1989 Sep;21(5):370-2.
Treatment of solar prolapse using the heart bar shoe and dorsal hoof wall resection technique.
Eustace RA, Caldwell MN.

Equine Vet J. 1989 Sep;21(5):367-9.
The construction of the heart bar shoe and the technique of dorsal wall resection.
Eustace RA, Caldwell MN.

Vet Clin North Am Equine Pract. 1989 Apr;5(1):73-108.
The treatment of laminitis in horses.
Goetz TE.

This is just what I can find in 5 minutes before work.  The first is probably the most significant, showing that applying bar shoes significantly improved perfusion of the laminae.


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## MerrySherryRider (9 February 2011)

Thanks for the links Alsiola, I have asked for the evidence that is not anecdotal regarding the barefoot approach, but got slapped down for it. I want the best for my mare and have trawled research papers for the best way forward for my navicular mare.
 All I know is, that so far, remedial farriery is doing the job and yesterday, out exploring and cantering in the sunshine, I was very happy, and so was she. I do agree with looking at the whole horse and its management is vital, hence my frustration at the lack of evidence to back up the claims of the barefoot approach.


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## Amymay (9 February 2011)

All I know is, that so far, remedial farriery is doing the job and yesterday, out exploring and cantering in the sunshine, I was very happy, and so was she. I do agree with looking at the whole horse and its management is vital, hence my frustration at the lack of evidence to back up the claims of the barefoot approach.
		
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Nail on head Horserider.  At the end of the day a holistic approach is always the best approach.  If that means shoes off, fantastic.  And if it means shoes on, no one should be made to feel guilty or an inadequate owner......


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## touchstone (9 February 2011)

From my standpoint I've seen a fair few remedially shod horses when working as an instructor, however I tend to find that shoes are simply a temporary fix and often the underlying condition doesn't improve or resolve, and in some cases is worsened.  After a time remedial shoes seem to be less effective and I've seen more navicular cases pts long term than I'm comfortable with. Just my personal experience of course.

In cases of laminitis I can't grasp why you'd want to nail metal that can't be adjusted and loads periphally onto a sensitive foot,  when a natural trim and boots and pads if necessary give the required support   Just seems a no brainer to me.

Whether science decrees it or not, the results I've seen with my own eyes mean that for me barefoot will always be the method of choice for me, I think my horse would say the same too.


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## soloequestrian (9 February 2011)

To the OP!
If I were you, I'd invest in a couple of types of boot - the Easyboot Rx and probably a set of Old Mac's and pads too.  Then take the shoes off and see if you can get the pony comfy in boots.  I've never used the Rx, but they are designed for your sort of situation.  I have used Old Macs extensively, and for a laminitic.  You can get several different densities of pad, which can all be cut to different shapes, and I have used a soft pad near the hoof (deforms around the hoof) and a medium pad under that (a bit less deformable, but provides a nice thick pad).
It was a different situation to yours - my mare got laminitis as a result of a general anaesthetic for something else, so I didn't have to search for the trigger, but the pathology is the same.  My vet put her in heart bars, which I hated - I'm a barefoot devotee - but at the time I was to distraught to argue.  When we came up to six weeks in shoes, I had read everything I could about treating laminitis barefoot.  The vet still said to shoe, and the Laminitis Trust said that I would NEVER be able to remove her shoes ever again, but with everything I'd read plus may years of having barefoot horses, I decided to take the shoes off.  At the same time, I took her off the ACP she had been on and chucked her out, in very well padded boots, to eat haylage and grass with her pals.  I was petrified, of course, but she didn't look back.  I had to keep her in the boots and pads permanently (night and day) for a month, and then she went onto some time with boots and some without, depending on ground conditions.  She is now fully recovered and her new foot has grown in, she is in work and has been galloping and schooling with no problems.

To the people demanding massively expensive controlled studies into all of this - it's not going to happen!


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			I can't, which is exactly my point.  A case report is not evidence enough to change clinical acumen, and you are right to question it.  I used this as an example as to why all the anecdotal evidence for barefoot trimming is not enough evidence either.

However, I can show you published work on the efficacy of shoeing a laminitic:

Equine Vet J Suppl. 1998 Sep;(26):111-8.
Digital perfusion, evaluated scintigraphically, and hoof wall growth in horses with chronic laminitis treated with egg bar-heart bar shoeing and coronary grooving.
Ritmeester AM, Blevins WE, Ferguson DW, Adams SB.

Equine Vet J. 1989 Sep;21(5):370-2.
Treatment of solar prolapse using the heart bar shoe and dorsal hoof wall resection technique.
Eustace RA, Caldwell MN.

Equine Vet J. 1989 Sep;21(5):367-9.
The construction of the heart bar shoe and the technique of dorsal wall resection.
Eustace RA, Caldwell MN.

Vet Clin North Am Equine Pract. 1989 Apr;5(1):73-108.
The treatment of laminitis in horses.
Goetz TE.

This is just what I can find in 5 minutes before work.  The first is probably the most significant, showing that applying bar shoes significantly improved perfusion of the laminae.
		
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I am going to try and read your referrals Alsiola and I hope that they  had a control group of laminitic horses taken barefoot. Regarding two of them, though, I know one and suspect that there are plenty of vets who think that Robert Eustace's enthusiasm for dorsal wall resection is uncalled for. It reminds me of the enthusiasm in the old days for firing tendons. What I don't understand is that if a horse is laminitic and you get the diet right it will regrow its own feet with attachment. What is the point of a dorsal wall resection when the hoof will grow again anyway? 

There is an interesting bit of research into navicular which compared different methods of treatment. ALL the horses improved, but no-one made the connection that in order to rule out the effects of shoeing, all the horses had their shoes removed. The improvements  were simply put down to the medication.

One of the things that is missing so far in this discussion of the benefits/drawbacks of shoes is that most laminitis is diet related. And unless you have the shoes off the horse, you miss all the very early signs of a laminitis build-up, which begins without pulses or lameness and manifests itself simply as an inability to walk happily on rough surfaces which were previously coped with well. If you do not have those signs any more because the horse is shod, how can you know that you have corrected the diet sufficiently to prevent a further acute attack? Perhaps the ongoing problems which seem to require dorsal wall resection are actually still dietary????

Your point about pain is very interesting. Of course there must be a balance, but, if it came down to it, I would choose a short period of lack of movement due to acute pain if it resulted in a horse which was totally pain free and able to work normally for the rest of its life. I can't help wondering how many of the "just about  comfortable" horses which are actually in constant low grade pain,  hobbling around in heartbar shoes could be perfectly sound without them, given a proper rehab (which can be VERY difficult with metabolic horses, I do understand that,  and this suggestion does NOT include horses with Cushings laminitis, which can be a dreadfully difficult thing to control). 

Off to read now to see if your clinical trials are as unbiased as they should be, if I can get a synopsis at least online.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

Digital perfusion, evaluated scintigraphically, and hoof wall growth in horses with chronic laminitis treated with egg bar-heart bar shoeing and coronary grooving.
Ritmeester AM, Blevins WE, Ferguson DW, Adams SB.

TEN horses, all shod. Five resectioned, five not.  The resectioned horses did better, fine, but no-one knows how they would have done if they had a proper barefoot rehab.

And you don't think 17 horses at Rockley is significant enough to take account of if published?


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

Equine Vet J. 1989 Sep;21(5):370-2.
Treatment of solar prolapse using the heart bar shoe and dorsal hoof wall resection technique.
Eustace RA, Caldwell MN.


Ten horses all in heart bars. No control group without shoes at all.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

Equine Vet J. 1989 Sep;21(5):367-9.
The construction of the heart bar shoe and the technique of dorsal wall resection.
Eustace RA, Caldwell MN.


Description of how to use a heart bar shoe in the resectioning of a foot and description of a number of cases treated. Not research, no control groups of any kind.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

Vet Clin North Am Equine Pract. 1989 Apr;5(1):73-108.
The treatment of laminitis in horses.
Goetz TE.

No research, description of how to trim and apply heart bars. Abstract not entirely clear, but strongly suggestive that heart bars were not tested against no shoes but were the only treatment considered.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

Conclusion.

On the evidence so far, there is no more research which says that heart bar shoes are better than barefoot than there is that barefoot is better than heart bars.

I stand by my comment that the use of heart bar shoes for treating laminitis is "received wisdom", not clinically tested.

I suspect it has become received wisdom because it has a painkilling effect, not a curative one, but I would just love the research to be done properly. (Yes, Solo, I know, I know!! )


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

deferred


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## amandap (9 February 2011)

The reliance on scientific trials is fair enough but the scientific world is rather cut throat and often driven by money too. 

A vet told me last year that 'wet grass' causes scour in horses. I asked him for evidence and he said he had observed it over his 45 years of being a vet.

I'm just a non scientific owner and have been studying BF approaches and thinking for the last nine years or so in my informal way. 
To me it all makes total sense but has huge implications for how we manage our horses from birth. 
Prof Chris Pollitt, Dr Robert Bowker, Dr James Rooney, Kathryn Watts have all done research into various aspects behind barefoot thinking. I'm lazy so will just give links for peeps who are interested to find out more and find the papers.

http://www.horseshoes.com/farrierssites/sites/rooney/index.htm
http://www.wildhorseresearch.com./index.htm
http://pathobiology.msu.edu/people/bowker.html
http://www.hoofrehab.com/AuburnUvetschool.htm
http://www.hoofrehab.com/hoof articles by Pete Ramey.htm
http://www.aanhcp.net/Laminitis Rep... Reduce Laminits by C Pollitt and K Watts.pdf
http://www.safergrass.org/


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			Conclusion.

On the evidence so far, there is no more research which says that heart bar shoes are better than barefoot than there is that barefoot is better than heart bars.

I stand by my comment that the use of heart bar shoes for treating laminitis is "received wisdom", not clinically tested.

I suspect it has become received wisdom because it has a painkilling effect, not a curative one, but I would just love the research to be done properly. (Yes, Solo, I know, I know!! )
		
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I agree with you wholeheartedly that there is no research directly comparing shod vs. unshod horses, and it is something I would like to see performed.  I haven't picked those papers because they are especially good science, or because I agree with the authors' views (as it happens I don't agree with many of Robert Eustace's approaches, conclusions or the actions of the LT as a whole!), just to demonstrate that there is literature out there on the benefits of shoeing, which does not exist for barefoot.  If reports on barefoot showing benefit are being prepared, I would wholly support their publication.  
Until there is either a direct comparitive study done shod vs. barefoot, or the literature gives us a comparable level of evidence that barefoot can work, then there is no justification not to recommend shoeing.


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## soloequestrian (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Until there is either a direct comparitive study done shod vs. barefoot, or the literature gives us a comparable level of evidence that barefoot can work, then there is no justification not to recommend shoeing.
		
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But surely the converse also applies i.e. there is no justification not to recommend bare.  Taken with 'do no harm', I'd say bare would win every time.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

amandap said:



			A vet told me last year that 'wet grass' causes scour in horses. I asked him for evidence and he said he had observed it over his 45 years of being a vet.
		
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This vet is using false logic.  What he has observed is a correlation between A - the grass being wet, and B - horses scouring.  Just because the two frequently occur together does not mean that A causes B.  How does he know that increases in day length don't cause scouring.  In this hypothetical case, increased day length is associated with wet grass (ie higher precipitation in spring), and also scouring.  A fairly absurd example, but it shows how a third variable, unaccounted for (in this case day length), can cause two unrelated events.  The human observer, being a natural pattern recogniser spots this and assigns causation to the events, where in reality none exists.

Equally, while there may be an association between barefoot treatment and laminitic recovery (as yet unproven), this is not the same as saying that barefoot treatment CAUSES laminitic recovery.  There may be a confounding variable, for example, it may be that barefoot treatment is associated with dietary change, and the dietary change causes laminitic recovery.  The shod vs unshod state of the horse may make no difference, but because it is coexistent with a third variable it gets called a causative factor.

The bottom line is we cannot trust what we observe with our own eyes, I can't, you can't, no-one can.  Unless the scientific approach is used, then the conclusions we draw mean nothing.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			But surely the converse also applies i.e. there is no justification not to recommend bare.  Taken with 'do no harm', I'd say bare would win every time.
		
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I would say not.  Although direct comparitive studies have not been performed, there is a body of literature describing improvement in laminitic horses that have been shod.  This does not exist for barefoot.

The NHS uses the following guidelines to grade the quality of evidence, (A best, to D poorest):

Level A: Consistent Randomised Controlled Clinical Trial, cohort study, all or none (see note below), clinical decision rule validated in different populations.
Level B: Consistent Retrospective Cohort, Exploratory Cohort, Ecological Study, Outcomes Research, case-control study; or extrapolations from level A studies.
Level C: Case-series study or extrapolations from level B studies.
Level D: Expert opinion without explicit critical appraisal, or based on physiology, bench research or first principles.

What research do we have?
Shoeing approach - We have some Level B studies (outcomes research), many Level C studies (many case series studies), and tons of Level D (expert veterinary opinion almost exclusively supports shoeing).

Barefoot approach - One rumoured, as yet unpublished Level C study.  Arguably no Level D evidence (I say arguably because I know you will cite Jaime Jackson etc. as experts, even though in this context they are not).

Does this demonstrate how clearly the evidence for barefoot approaches is overshadowed by the evidence for shoeing?


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

amandap said:



http://www.horseshoes.com/farrierssites/sites/rooney/index.htm

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A fairly sensible site, but not one that comes down in favour of either shoeing or barefoot.  This is verbatim from the page entitled "Barefoot or Shod":



			The various "systems," such as Duckett's dot, Natural Balance, Strasser trim, Bergeleens etc. may all have merit, but I think one is fooling oneself to believe that any one system applies to all horses and all feet. Any system offered is, in fact, a theory. There is nothing wrong with that, but theory must be adjusted to the immediate vagaries of the real world  the real foot. The basic thing, and I repeat myself, is to learn as much as possible about the normal working of the digit, and then go to the horse. Don't try to force a system, just do your thing, and your thing should be better because there is more in your brain to work with. Don't say, Rooney says to do thus and so or Bergey says do this or that. What you do say is I have read and understand Rooney and Ovnicek and the others, and I shall continue to read and learn whenever and wherever I can. Always, however, with a skeptical eye and a well-honed bulls**t detector. And now Im now going out and shoe that damn horse!
		
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amandap said:



http://www.wildhorseresearch.com./index.htm

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Looks to be an interesting research project.  No support for barefoot vs shod I could find, and in fact there is currently no information on their hoof research.



amandap said:



http://pathobiology.msu.edu/people/bowker.html

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Interesting research, but don't see any papers relevant to the debate.


amandap said:



http://www.hoofrehab.com/AuburnUvetschool.htm
http://www.hoofrehab.com/hoof articles by Pete Ramey.htm

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Seems to pretty much accept that managing horses barefoot is impractical, only their solution is glue on boots rather than shoes.  If anyone can explain the difference between a glue on boot, and a glue on imprint shoe with sole filler then please do.


amandap said:



http://www.aanhcp.net/Laminitis Rep... Reduce Laminits by C Pollitt and K Watts.pdf
http://www.safergrass.org/

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Both these are regarding the nutritional side of laminitis.  Any self respecting horse worker, be they a vet, a farrier or a barefoot trimmer recognises the importance of nutrition in laminitis.  Just because I personally recommend shoeing laminitics does not mean I don't also examine the diet extremely closely.


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## brucea (9 February 2011)

Methinks the lady doth protest too much


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## amandap (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Looks to be an interesting research project.  No support for barefoot vs shod I could find, and in fact there is currently no information on their hoof research.
		
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I think the research is ongoing until 2012.




alsiola said:



			Interesting research, but don't see any papers relevant to the debate.
		
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The relevance is the work Bowker has done that supports and is a basis for BF thinking and how the hoof works. Also the fact that Bowker collaborates with a few BF Fairriers to explain his work and barefoot rationale.



alsiola said:



			Seems to pretty much accept that managing horses barefoot is impractical, only their solution is glue on boots rather than shoes.  If anyone can explain the difference between a glue on boot, and a glue on imprint shoe with sole filler then please do.
		
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We're not reading the same stuff then. Ramey is one of Jaime Jacksons former students who is another ex Farrier. If you read his work ( Making Natural Hoofcare Work For You'), his book is reasonably priced and is a practical rather than theoretical book you will find he is very pro barefoot rationale and uses non stick on boots and pads to allow laminitic horses to move in comfort very often. I cannot explain any difference of a glue on boot to a glue on shoe, I have no experience of either.
I must have misread it then. I thought the glue ons were one option suggested which may be acceptable to vets and owners rather than nailing metal. Pete Ramey isn't a complete purist in natural healing.


alsiola said:



			Both these are regarding the nutritional side of laminitis.  Any self respecting horse worker, be they a vet, a farrier or a barefoot trimmer recognises the importance of nutrition in laminitis.  Just because I personally recommend shoeing laminitics does not mean I don't also examine the diet extremely closely.
		
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I have lost count of the times I have read or heard vets have recommended restrict hay, no mention of soaking which is the most basic error imo. That's just one example.

I put the links up for people to read and follow other links to find out stuff if they wish to.

I don't believe Robert Eustace is a BF advocate at all. Has he changed his thinking then?

The vet and wet grass story I told was an illustration of the fact that vets are given to forming opinions just like the rest of us.

I take it that the huge amount of barefoot recovery stories of laminitic horses does not constitute a body of evidence even when vets are involved?

I personally don't know if shoes are a help in laminitis or 'cause' recovery. I do know that a barefoot do no harm holistic approach and trim will cure laminitis, the trim alone will not cause a cure but it may give some relief I believe.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

brucea said:



			Methinks the lady doth protest too much
		
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Methinks the lady has no sensible reply.


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## soloequestrian (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Equally, while there may be an association between barefoot treatment and laminitic recovery (as yet unproven), this is not the same as saying that barefoot treatment CAUSES laminitic recovery.  There may be a confounding variable, for example, it may be that barefoot treatment is associated with dietary change, and the dietary change causes laminitic recovery.  The shod vs unshod state of the horse may make no difference, but because it is coexistent with a third variable it gets called a causative factor.

The bottom line is we cannot trust what we observe with our own eyes, I can't, you can't, no-one can.  Unless the scientific approach is used, then the conclusions we draw mean nothing.
		
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But you can say exactly the same about all the shoeing evidence - it's shod horses who are shod slightly differently.  They can't say that shoeing CAUSES laminitic recovery.  And actually, when you look at the shoes that are put on, they are slightly closer to the horse having a bare foot than a normal shoe is ie there is some support in the centre, which the ground gives to an unshod horse.

It isn't always the case that we can trust what we observe with our own eyes, but neither is it a case of always seeing a mirage.  



alsiola said:



			Although direct comparitive studies have not been performed, there is a body of literature describing improvement in laminitic horses that have been shod.  This does not exist for barefoot.

Does this demonstrate how clearly the evidence for barefoot approaches is overshadowed by the evidence for shoeing?
		
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Same point as above.  There is a body of either anecdotal or observational studies describing improvement in shod horses which are shod differently.  
I just don't understand why the default position is considered to be 'shod'.  Surely the default position should be the one that has been tested by quite a long period of evolution (and yes I know there will be an argument here about what we've done to horses in terms of selective breeding and environmental change, but the basic structure of the hoof, just like the horses basic behaviour, is unchanged).


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## amandap (9 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			I just don't understand why the default position is considered to be 'shod'.  Surely the default position should be the one that has been tested by quite a long period of evolution (and yes I know there will be an argument here about what we've done to horses in terms of selective breeding and environmental change, but the basic structure of the hoof, just like the horses basic behaviour, is unchanged).
		
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This is the nub I believe. As I said before there are huge implications for change in horse management if you take on a 'do no harm' barefoot philosophy.

For me the default has to be what the horse has evolved and we are the ones who need to change to provide improvement rather than continuing to trouble shoot problems that we are often causing.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

amandap said:



			I think the research is ongoing until 2012.
		
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So lets refrain from using it in support of any approach until it is completed and published.



amandap said:



			The relevance is the work Bowker has done that supports and is a basis for BF thinking and how the hoof works. Also the fact that Bowker collaborates with a few BF Fairriers to explain his work and barefoot rationale.
		
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This is the list of papers from his site.  The only possible one with relevance is "Functional anatomy of the cartilage..." - I don't have access to this journal to read the paper.

Bowker RM, Linder K, Van Wulfen KK, Perry RL, and Ocello PJ. Distributions of local anesthetics injected into the distal interphalangeal joint and podotrochlear bursa: An experimental study. Pferdeheilhunde. 12:609-612, 1996.
Bowker RM, Van Wulfen KK, Perry RL, and Linder KL. Anatomy of the equine synovial joint cavities of the forelimb and the hindlimb. Amer. Assoc. Eq. Pract. 42:33-47, 1996.

Bowker RM, Linder K, Van Wulfen KK, and Sonea IM. Anatomy of the distal interphalangeal joint of the mature horse: Relationships with navicular suspensory ligaments, sensory nerves and neurovascular bundle. Eq. Vet. J. 29:126-135, 1997.

Sonea IM, Wilson DV, Bowker RM, and Robinson NE. Tachykinin receptors in the equine pelvic flexure. Amer. J. Vet. Res. 29:306-312, 1997.

Bowker RM, Van Wulfen KK, Springer SE, and Linder KE. Functional anatomy of the cartilage, the distal phalanx and digital cushion in the equine foot and hemodynamic flow hypothesis of energy dissipation. Amer. J. Vet. Res. 59:961-968, 1998.

Sonea IM, Bowker RM, and Robinson NE. Distribution of substance P binding sites in equine airways. Eq. Vet. J. 31(3):238-242, 1999.

Rosenstein DS, Bowker RM, and Bartlett PC. Digital angiography of the feet of horses. Amer. J. Vet. Res. 61:255-259, 2000.

Bowker RM, Atkinson PJ, Atkinson TS, and Haut RC. Effects of contact stress in bones of the distal interphalangeal joint on microscopic changes in articular cartilage and ligaments. Amer. J. Vet. Res. 62:414-424, 2001.

VanWulfen KK and Bowker RM. Microanatomic characteristics of the insertion of the distal sesamoidean impar ligament and the deep digital flexor tendon on the distal phalanx in healthy feet obtained from horses. Amer. J. Vet. Res. 63:215-221, 2002.

VanWulfen KK and Bowker RM. Evaluation of tachykinins and their receptors to determine the sensory innervation in the dorsal hoof wall and insertion of the distal sesamoidean impar ligament and deep digital flexor tendon on the distal phalanx in healthy feet of horses. Amer. J. Vet. Res. 63:222-228, 2002.




amandap said:



			We're not reading the same stuff then. Ramey is one of Jaime Jacksons former students who is another ex Farrier. If you read his work ( Making Natural Hoofcare Work For You'), his book is reasonably priced and is a practical rather than theoretical book you will find he is very pro barefoot rationale and uses non stick on boots and pads to allow laminitic horses to move in comfort very often. I cannot explain any difference of a glue on boot to a glue on shoe, I have no experience of either.
I must have misread it then. I thought the glue ons were one option suggested which may be acceptable to vets and owners rather than nailing metal. Pete Ramey isn't a complete purist in natural healing.
		
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The argument put forward earlier in this thread was that the only reason shoes are de rigeur are because they are pain-relieving.  If you need to put boots on a laminitic to make it comfortable, then why is this different to using a shoe?  BTW I am not an advocate for total peripheral loading of feet, I usually use sole filler to provide a degree of sole pressure.  This is only my opinion though, so not to be trusted by either myself or anyone else!



amandap said:



			I have lost count of the times I have read or heard vets have recommended restrict hay, no mention of soaking which is the most basic error imo. That's just one example.
		
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The failures of vets in the past is not proof that barefoot works.  Just because barefoot trimmers have a good approach to nutrition does not mean their approach to trimming/not shoeing the foot is equally correct.  I always recommend soaking hay, and usually encourage testing the hay for its nutritional content as well.  I think one point where we agree is on the absolute importance of diet to the laminitic, but this is not relevant to the argument of shoeing vs. barefoot.



amandap said:



			The vet and wet grass story I told was an illustration of the fact that vets are given to forming opinions just like the rest of us.
		
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Absolutely we do, and we can be just as misguided.



amandap said:



			I take it that the huge amount of barefoot recovery stories of laminitic horses does not constitute a body of evidence even when vets are involved?
		
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Agreed.



amandap said:



			I personally don't know if shoes are a help in laminitis or 'cause' recovery. I do know that a barefoot do no harm holistic approach and trim will cure laminitis, the trim alone will not cause a cure but it may give some relief I believe.
		
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If you have found something that works for you and your horses then stick with it, I have no problem with that.  However, shouting "take off the evil oppressive metal shoes" (I exaggerate) at anyone asking for laminitis help is going a step further.

The "holistic" approach does work, but believe me barefoot does not have exclusivity on changing diet, exercise etc.  There seems to be a view that vets/farriers nail on some heart-bar shoes, forget about the rest of the horse and hope for a cure.  This isn't the case - I look at laminitis treatment as a three pronged attack - the dietary issues, the endocrine issues, and the foot issues.  All are interlinked, and a particular case may have issues with any or all of them.  Most modern vets will do the same.  The difference is we don't label ourselves with trendy words like "holistic" or "natural", we just crack on and do it.


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## brucea (9 February 2011)

I just don't understand why the default position is considered to be 'shod'. Surely the default position should be the one that has been tested by quite a long period of evolution (and yes I know there will be an argument here about what we've done to horses in terms of selective breeding and environmental change, but the basic structure of the hoof, just like the horses basic behaviour, is unchanged).
		
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I find it impossible to pick any flaws in that logic at all.




			For me the default has to be what the horse has evolved and we are the ones who need to change to provide improvement rather than continuing to trouble shoot problems that we are often causing.
		
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I think it would be interesting for us all to come back in 20 years and have this same discussion. By then I wonder whether shoeing will be seen as a tactical tool to be used when necessary, but the majority of horses will be barefoot and general widespread shoeing will be seen as a long term welfare issue and an outmoded practice?

Is 20 years perhaps too soon. It may take longer.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			But you can say exactly the same about all the shoeing evidence - it's shod horses who are shod slightly differently.  They can't say that shoeing CAUSES laminitic recovery.  And actually, when you look at the shoes that are put on, they are slightly closer to the horse having a bare foot than a normal shoe is ie there is some support in the centre, which the ground gives to an unshod horse.
		
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I don't claim shoeing does cause laminitic recovery.  I claim that there is more evidence supporting shoeing as a beneficial treatment for laminitis than there is evidence supporting barefoot trimming as a treatment for laminitis.



soloequestrian said:



			I just don't understand why the default position is considered to be 'shod'.  Surely the default position should be the one that has been tested by quite a long period of evolution (and yes I know there will be an argument here about what we've done to horses in terms of selective breeding and environmental change, but the basic structure of the hoof, just like the horses basic behaviour, is unchanged).
		
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Several points, some of which you mentioned:
1) Recent selective breeding has undone much of the work of evolution.  Stick a TB in the Australian outback for a couple of years and see what happens.
2) Horses evolved to live in a radically different environment to where they live today.  I have no doubts that for a wild horse, in its natural environment, shoeing is unnecessary and potentially detrimental.  For the modern horse, in a modern environment, with modern demands, shoeing is often necessary.  If you want to create a mock outback at your farm and keep your horses in a natural state, feel free.  The rest of us will continue to live in the real world.
3) Horses feet evolved to maximise survival in their environment.  Horses feet did not evolve to deal with acute laminitis.  Wild horses with acute laminitis were likely victims to predators fairly rapidly, so there is no way that a horse whose feet were mildly more apt to dealing with laminitis survived to pass on that trait.


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## amandap (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			The difference is we don't label ourselves with trendy words like "holistic" or "natural", we just crack on and do it.
		
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Oh well, if you believe 'natural' and 'holistic are just trendy then I will never see things the way you do. An holistic approach that barefoot uses is just that, the trim is only part and not the main focus. 
You left out social and mental wellbeing in your 3 prong approach.

I'm just an owner but I do know what makes sense to me.


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## soloequestrian (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			I don't claim shoeing does cause laminitic recovery.  I claim that there is more evidence supporting shoeing as a beneficial treatment for laminitis than there is evidence supporting barefoot trimming as a treatment for laminitis.
		
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Fair enough, but the types of studies that people seem to demand on here as being required for acceptance of using a barefoot approach seem very much more complex than those being cited as support for shod treatment.  The shod studies aren't controlled clinical studies, they are observational, and this is the type of evidence which is accumulating for the barefoot approach.  There may not be much of it in peer-reviewed journals yet, but there is a lot of it out there in other types of publication.



alsiola said:



			Several points, some of which you mentioned:
1) Recent selective breeding has undone much of the work of evolution.  Stick a TB in the Australian outback for a couple of years and see what happens.
2) Horses evolved to live in a radically different environment to where they live today.  I have no doubts that for a wild horse, in its natural environment, shoeing is unnecessary and potentially detrimental.  For the modern horse, in a modern environment, with modern demands, shoeing is often necessary.  If you want to create a mock outback at your farm and keep your horses in a natural state, feel free.  The rest of us will continue to live in the real world.
3) Horses feet evolved to maximise survival in their environment.  Horses feet did not evolve to deal with acute laminitis.  Wild horses with acute laminitis were likely victims to predators fairly rapidly, so there is no way that a horse whose feet were mildly more apt to dealing with laminitis survived to pass on that trait.
		
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1) I would be surprised if the feet didn't improve.  I would also be surprised if the horse had the behavioural experience to survive long enough to find that out.
2) I have a normal, everyday UK environment for my horses and their bare feet do just fine.  As before, the default should be 'bare' and shoes should only be applied for specific, short-term use, for example to use studs for an event horse during the competition season.  The vast majority of UK leisure horses wear shoes because for some reason we as horseowners are conditioned to believe that it's necessary.
3) Yes, but this has nothing to do with the shod/unshod debate!

Are you a vet, by the way?


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

amandap said:



			Oh well, if you believe 'natural' and 'holistic are just trendy then I will never see things the way you do.
		
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The words natural and holistic are trendy, not the concepts.  The concepts have been used for many years by vets, farriers, trimmers.  These days the trend seems to be to label oneself "holistic" as if this is a different approach to that taken by your vet and farrier.  It is this usage of the word that irritates me, not the principles behind it.



amandap said:



			An holistic approach that barefoot uses is just that, the trim is only part and not the main focus.
		
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In this regard, the barefoot approach, and the mainstream veterinary approach have much in common.  I'm sure there have been failures of vets in the past to view laminitis as more than just a foot problem, but modern approaches do not suffer from this.



amandap said:



			You left out social and mental wellbeing in your 3 prong approach.
		
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Very difficult things to quantify, and very difficult things to improve in a painful horse.  I agree though, it has been shown in humans that mental wellbeing is an important factor in many physical diseases.  Perhaps this is something where more effort should be directed, although I am not sure of the role that the vet could play in this.  If you have any good ideas on how to improve social/mental health in painful animals then I am genuinely interested to know.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			Fair enough, but the types of studies that people seem to demand on here as being required for acceptance of using a barefoot approach seem very much more complex than those being cited as support for shod treatment.  The shod studies aren't controlled clinical studies, they are observational, and this is the type of evidence which is accumulating for the barefoot approach.  There may not be much of it in peer-reviewed journals yet, but there is a lot of it out there in other types of publication.
		
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All true.  My personal feeling is that the key to the treatment of horses with laminitis is correction of diet, correction of endocrine problems, and correction of unbalanced feet.  I honestly don't believe that putting shoes on vs. leaving them off a correctly balanced foot is of paramount importance.  However, I do think a properly applied heartbar shoe can be a significant palliative measure in many horses.
If not shoeing horses is of long term benefit for treating laminitis, then I hope the day that this is shown comes quickly.  Equally, if shoeing is of long-term benefit then I also hope the day of proof comes soon.  I have no prejudice toward one or the other, I only recommend the one with the better evidence base.  If barefoot gains a better evidence base, then I will gladly recommend it.




soloequestrian said:



			1) I would be surprised if the feet didn't improve.  I would also be surprised if the horse had the behavioural experience to survive long enough to find that out.
		
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I will differ in opinion with you on the feet improvement, but as you are almost certainly correct in your second point, I doubt we can ever settle this one!



soloequestrian said:



			2) I have a normal, everyday UK environment for my horses and their bare feet do just fine.  As before, the default should be 'bare' and shoes should only be applied for specific, short-term use, for example to use studs for an event horse during the competition season.  The vast majority of UK leisure horses wear shoes because for some reason we as horseowners are conditioned to believe that it's necessary.
		
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I agree that there are probably many horses in the UK that could live barefoot quite happily, that are currently shod.  There are also a good number that couldn't.



soloequestrian said:



			3) Yes, but this has nothing to do with the shod/unshod debate!
		
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Well the original post was about chronic laminitis, and most of the previous posts have been about shoeing vs. not shoeing laminitics.  My point is that while the horse's foot is great at healthy living, it is not designed to deal with laminitis.



soloequestrian said:



			Are you a vet, by the way?
		
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You got it.


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## soloequestrian (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			You got it.
		
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In that case, I can see why you are so constrained by formal evidence.  It's a bit different for us as owners - we can decide on gut feeling, anecdotal evidence etc. with 'only' the threat of causing suffering to our animals if things go wrong, whereas you could be accused of professional misconduct.
The vet who operated on my mare's foot is an equine specialist.  The operation resulted in the horse having a penny-sized hole right through her hoof wall, which widened out as a cone to the ground.  It all healed very well, but my vet said that she should be shod at least until the hole grew out, or her hoof would split.  I disagreed, and took the shoes that he had insisted on off as soon as they were due to be refitted.  Her foot was absolutely fine, the hole grew down and I think I would have needed a sharp chisel to induce a split. 
I was a tiny bit sneaky though - I didn't actually tell the vet that I'd taken the shoes off.  The whole process is documented with photos, and I was going to send him them but have never got around to it.  Perhaps I should - if you guys were able to share the practical outcome of barefoot management then it might influence more of you to at least make owners aware that the barefoot route exists, even if you don't specifically recommend it.
The mare also had laminitis as a result of the GA, but I put that bit of the story in an earlier post.


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## amandap (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Very difficult things to quantify, and very difficult things to improve in a painful horse.  I agree though, it has been shown in humans that mental wellbeing is an important factor in many physical diseases.  Perhaps this is something where more effort should be directed, although I am not sure of the role that the vet could play in this.  If you have any good ideas on how to improve social/mental health in painful animals then I am genuinely interested to know.
		
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Well speaking probable 'codswallop'...  thinking 'out of the box' and encouraging owners to do this. Encouraging owners to have their horses with a friend or having a friend in the next area with a divide where they can touch. Areas can be made easily with electric fencing even on concrete. I use sections of tree trunk drilled to take the plastic electric fence posts. These can be moved easily and provided the power is good  and a horse is content escape is unusual. I've never had an escapee.
Stables are places where horses cannot see all round and if left alone, for a prey animal it must be inherently stressful. Smaller horses and ponies stabled that can't see out at all could have a gate instead of a door...
It's really using our brains to come up with solutions that fit in the particular circumstances.

It's a shame words (holistic and natural) that do have a correct descriptive meaning gather negative associations. 

Eta. Re using shoes. Shoes by their nature require interference with the horses hoof growth and stimulation by immobilization and ?support as well as the shaping of the hoof to fit the shoe.
In a BF approach the changes in the hoof as it grows down are of great importance in seeing the horses response to dietry changes etc.
The hoof is trimmed to what the horse is saying so encouraging good connected growth to grow down.

That's my very basic understanding of the difference. It is one time when I believe nature knows better than us humans.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			In that case, I can see why you are so constrained by formal evidence.  It's a bit different for us as owners - we can decide on gut feeling, anecdotal evidence etc. with 'only' the threat of causing suffering to our animals if things go wrong, whereas you could be accused of professional misconduct.
		
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In all honesty the whole professional misconduct thing is a bit overblown.  The RCVS deals with issues of professionalism, which basically comes down to being open and honest.  If a vet is completely open and truthful with an owner at all stages, then they should be pretty safe.  For example, if I recommended x-rays where I knew them to be unnecessary, then the RCVS would (correctly) come down hard on me.  If I took x-rays and totally misinterpreted them, then the RCVS should not be interested, as long as my mistake was genuine and I was open and honest about it.
Misdiagnosis/mistreatment is really an issue for the civil courts, and yes it can happen, but to be honest its exceptionally rare that anything gets to this stage.  The only case I can recall is one of a French showjumper, steroids, and laminitis.  Fairly well known in many equestrian circles but certainly the exception rather than the rule.

I would never hide behind courts, or tbh even RCVS issues if I was certain my actions were justified, moral, honest and correct.  I do base my actions on formal evidence, not gut feeling.  This isn't because I am concerned about potential legal ramifications, but because I truly trust evidence-based-medicine much more than I trust my own gut feelings.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			POINT ONE
I don't claim shoeing does cause laminitic recovery.  I claim that there is more evidence supporting shoeing as a beneficial treatment for laminitis than there is evidence supporting barefoot trimming as a treatment for laminitis. 


Several points, some of which you mentioned:
POINT TWO
1) Recent selective breeding has undone much of the work of evolution.  Stick a TB in the Australian outback for a couple of years and see what happens.
2) Horses evolved to live in a radically different environment to where they live today.  I have no doubts that for a wild horse, in its natural environment, shoeing is unnecessary and potentially detrimental.  For the modern horse, in a modern environment, with modern demands, shoeing is often necessary.  If you want to create a mock outback at your farm and keep your horses in a natural state, feel free.  The rest of us will continue to live in the real world.
3) Horses feet evolved to maximise survival in their environment.  Horses feet did not evolve to deal with acute laminitis.  Wild horses with acute laminitis were likely victims to predators fairly rapidly, so there is no way that a horse whose feet were mildly more apt to dealing with laminitis survived to pass on that trait.
		
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POINT ONE
As far as I can tell, there is no evidence at all that shoeing is beneficial to the long term recovery of a  laminitic. There is only evidence that one type of shoeing over another is beneficial.

POINT 1.
I am certain that if you take TBs and put them in an Australian desert fed a high fibre diet and given plenty of movement that they will produce fantastic feet, just as TBs do in this country when given the right conditions. I speak from experience, having barefooted several and evented one affiliated after conditioning her feet to cope.

POINT 2.
I believe your evaluation of the original evolution of the horse is correct. But your conclusion as to how difficult it is to mimic what nature intended the horse to have - low carbs/high fribre/movement  is completely wrong. It is perfectly possible to provide what most horses need "in the real world". What's more, dietary laminitis as you know comes from inside, not outside, and a horse whose feet are corrupted by its diet so that it cannot go without shoes is not a well horse.

POINT 3.
We agree. Modern horses were not evolved to cope with the way we currently keep them. I understand that there is currently an explosion of laminitis in this country, particularly in winter. It's perfectly obvious that this is being caused by modern ways of keeping horses - food stuffed full of sugar; ryegrass grazing designed for dairy cows; failing to let horses lose weight in winter, so they explode when frost causes high sugar or when the spring stuff comes through. I also believe that if more people had their horses with no shoes on there would be less laminitis. You can tell with a barefoot horse within 24 hours if it has had too much sugar, well in time to act to prevent an acute attack. Normally restriciting daytime access to grass will be all that is required.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

amandap said:



			Well speaking probable 'codswallop'...  thinking 'out of the box' and encouraging owners to do this. Encouraging owners to have their horses with a friend or having a friend in the next area with a divide where they can touch. Areas can be made easily with electric fencing even on concrete. I use sections of tree trunk drilled to take the plastic electric fence posts. These can be moved easily and provided the power is good  and a horse is content escape is unusual. I've never had an escapee.
Stables are places where horses cannot see all round and if left alone, for a prey animal it must be inherently stressful. Smaller horses and ponies stabled that can't see out at all could have a gate instead of a door...
It's really using our brains to come up with solutions that fit in the particular circumstances.
		
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Thanks.  I am glad to know that this side of things is fairly well covered by owners, although I probably will begin to make mention of it when seeing laminitics.



amandap said:



			It's a shame words (holistic and natural) that do have a correct descriptive meaning gather negative associations. 

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Absolutely agree.  If used correctly they are useful.  However, far too often I see horse owners using products and methods simply because they are described as natural or holistic, without stopping to think if there is any logic behind them, or sometimes if they ARE even natural products!
Equally I will admit to going the other way - I hear the word natural or holistic and my bulls**t detector goes into immediate overdrive!
Neither is a productive approach.



amandap said:



			Eta. Re using shoes. Shoes by their nature require interference with the horses hoof growth and stimulation by immobilization and ?support as well as the shaping of the hoof to fit the shoe.
		
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I have in front of me the textbook "Hickman's Farriery", published in 1977.  I cannot find the exact passage but I know the book well, and one of the key messages is "make the shoe fit the foot, not the foot fit the shoe."  This isn't a new concept, and no good farrier would even consider the fitting of the shoe as a factor when trimming a foot.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			I have in front of me the textbook "Hickman's Farriery", published in 1977.  I cannot find the exact passage but I know the book well, and one of the key messages is "make the shoe fit the foot, not the foot fit the shoe."  This isn't a new concept, and no good farrier would even consider the fitting of the shoe as a factor when trimming a foot.
		
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Do you own horses? One example of many.

I bought a lovely three year old ten years ago who had the most fantastic feet - wide heels, broad frogs, solid walls.

My farrier proceeded to alter his feet to bring his heels narrower, explaining when I questionned this that he felt the horse needed narrower heels to support his leg. What happened instead is something well documented in K C la Pierre's first book. His hoof grew forward in an attempt to restore the hoof/pastern axis - with the axis he wanted being the one shown by the first half inch of his foot, not the rest. My farrier increased the height of his heel to restore the hoof pastern axis in line with the lower 9/10 front of his hoof. In the end, I was about to shoe him with pads because his soles had gone so thin that he could not manage the stone tracks I do in his shod feet. His feet were by this time (3 years) no longer directly under his cannon bones, and therefore rocking weight back onto his heels and providing inadequate support.

There are PLENTY of farriers shaping feet to shoes instead of the other way round. In fact, if a farrier did not shoe any horse with a long toe by shaping the foot to bring the breakover back, he would be rightly accused of incorrect shoeing.

Perhaps the single biggest thing that shows the effect of shoes is the line of the front of the foot. Check a few out - the only horses that are truly coping with shoes are the ones whose feet, unrasped, have an unbroken straight line from the coronet to the shoe. Most horses have a different angle to the first 1/4 to 1/2 inch of growth. If the shoes are removed, this is the line that the foot will continue to grow at. If you want to see some very graphic examples of this process in action, check out rockleyfarm.blogspot.com there are some great ones posted in the last week or so.


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## alsiola (9 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			There are PLENTY of farriers shaping feet to shoes instead of the other way round. In fact, if a farrier did not shoe any horse with a long toe by shaping the foot to bring the breakover back, he would be rightly accused of incorrect shoeing.
		
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I have no doubt that there are some farriers who don't follow certain key principles, but this is a reflection of the farrier, not the principle.  I don't know quite what you mean in the second point - do you mean that long toes should not be rasped back?  



cptrayes said:



			Perhaps the single biggest thing that shows the effect of shoes is the line of the front of the foot. Check a few out - the only horses that are truly coping with shoes are the ones whose feet, unrasped, have an unbroken straight line from the coronet to the shoe. Most horses have a different angle to the first 1/4 to 1/2 inch of growth. If the shoes are removed, this is the line that the foot will continue to grow at. If you want to see some very graphic examples of this process in action, check out rockleyfarm.blogspot.com there are some great ones posted in the last week or so.
		
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Maybe we are blessed in my area to have some great farriers, but I spend a lot of time looking at horses feet and rarely see this.  I will certainly be keeping a close eye on it and will report back - I am x-raying laminitic feet tomorrow (although that horse has recently had a new farrier due to the old one doing an awful job, so it may not be representative).


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## MerrySherryRider (9 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			There are PLENTY of farriers shaping feet to shoes instead of the other way round.
		
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What an unfortunate area you live in. Luckily, I have not had experience of this, but then, my farriers have been trained by Martin Deacon. Perhaps that is why my experience of farriery is so positive.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			I have no doubt that there are some farriers who don't follow certain key principles, but this is a reflection of the farrier, not the principle.  I don't know quite what you mean in the second point - do you mean that long toes should not be rasped back?  


Maybe we are blessed in my area to have some great farriers, but I spend a lot of time looking at horses feet and rarely see this.  I will certainly be keeping a close eye on it and will report back - I am x-raying laminitic feet tomorrow (although that horse has recently had a new farrier due to the old one doing an awful job, so it may not be representative).
		
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You need to get down on your hands and  knees so your eyes are level with the coronet band and keep the hair out of the way to see it, it's only the first 1/4 inch or so before the shoe takes over and alters the line. If you haven't seen the effect then it is only because you have not been looking for it (there is no reason why you should), there will be plenty of examples in every livery yard. Most of the horses that I have seen taken barefoot, mine and two friends, were like it. Most of my friends horses which are shod are like it and those that are not are rare, but some of them have contracted and very upright heels!

I meant the opposite of what you thought. That a farrier should shape the foot to the shoe if the foot is too long in the toe.


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## cptrayes (9 February 2011)

horserider said:



			What an unfortunate area you live in. Luckily, I have not had experience of this, but then, my farriers have been trained by Martin Deacon. Perhaps that is why my experience of farriery is so positive.
		
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I have seen this in Reading (two locations), Wokingham (two locations), Bristol (three locations) and South Manchester (one location several farriers and horses) over the years. I've obviously been terribly unlucky with the places that my horses have lived


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## soloequestrian (10 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			In all honesty the whole professional misconduct thing is a bit overblown.  The RCVS deals with issues of professionalism, which basically comes down to being open and honest.  If a vet is completely open and truthful with an owner at all stages, then they should be pretty safe.  For example, if I recommended x-rays where I knew them to be unnecessary, then the RCVS would (correctly) come down hard on me.  If I took x-rays and totally misinterpreted them, then the RCVS should not be interested, as long as my mistake was genuine and I was open and honest about it.
Misdiagnosis/mistreatment is really an issue for the civil courts, and yes it can happen, but to be honest its exceptionally rare that anything gets to this stage.  The only case I can recall is one of a French showjumper, steroids, and laminitis.  Fairly well known in many equestrian circles but certainly the exception rather than the rule.

I would never hide behind courts, or tbh even RCVS issues if I was certain my actions were justified, moral, honest and correct.  I do base my actions on formal evidence, not gut feeling.  This isn't because I am concerned about potential legal ramifications, but because I truly trust evidence-based-medicine much more than I trust my own gut feelings.
		
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In that case, I think you are being very blinkered.  Take the time to go and look at some hardworking barefoot horses and see what their feet are like.  See if you can find any that have had barefoot rehab from laminitis, or from navicular.  If you wait controlled clinical studies to appear, you will never have this approach in your toolkit because they are not going to happen, just as they have never happened for the current shod approaches.


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## LucyPriory (10 February 2011)

Not all vets agree with shoeing a laminitic horse - I include an exerpt of a veterinary article  in italics below and have put the full text on a page on my blog (see end):

_Veterinarians...my colleagues: recommending shoes for a horse before you became aware of the overwhelming evidence against such a practice is forgivable, but if you continue that practice once you've been alerted to its dangers and understand the concepts, you're courting contempt. As recently as three years ago, I was prescribing eggbar shoes, pads, impression material and other bizarre procedures--I can't do that anymore. I deeply regret that many horses died at my hands because I didn't know what to do to save them. Now when I see horses with similar conditions, I can treat them without prescribing shoes, indeed often without anything more complicated than proper trimming of their hooves, movement, and diet. Most of these horses are better in a short time. Better yet, by keeping clients' horses out of shoes all together as they mature, the typical, super-prevalent hoof problems will largely be a thing of the past. I encourage all veterinarians to become students of the hoof and experience the huge degree of personal satisfaction that is attained by saving that "hopeless" case, and see the relief in the eyes of owners when they realize they'll never have to shoe their horses again--the gratitude and admiration I continue to receive from these folks begins a journey from ownership to stewardship._

_I implore all veterinarians to learn about the much better ways we have of truly protecting horses' feet with alternatives to steel shoes--the natural trim based upon the rediscovered and continually-improving understanding of the workings of the equine foot, and a myriad of different hoof boot designs with more coming all the time. Boots allow a horse's feet to have vital mechanism with every step, and can completely protect the feet. It's really hard for me to even fathom using a steel shoe at all because these devices are simply not offering anything beneficial to a horse...only harm. We can't continue to apply them and feel good about it._

Full text here:  http://barefoothorseblog.blogspot.com/p/barefoot-and-shoes-veterinary.html


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## lazybee (10 February 2011)

Hello,
 I've just been reading through your post. It's evident here's too many people with axes to grind hijacking this thread. Some trying to make themselves look smart by cutting and pasting veterinary abstracts and links (they've probably just googled). Rather than give advice (which is what you asked for) Some especially the barefoot advocates probably have one or two horses or many of the same race that are happy barefoot. Myself I only have one that's happy barefoot, 'an Arab'; the rest of my mixed bag 'no chance'

Horses obviously come in many different sizes, shapes and breeds their hooves are all different. I currently have one prone to laminitis amongst mine. The first thing I did was get a baseline x-ray to monitor the pedal bone. Usually a few days rest on a deep bed is enough for him to recover (not fully of course) and walk about normally. Then he gets back to work slowly over the next few weeks. We had an  Icelandic mare, who was flat footed when we got her. We had her PTS last year due to pedal bone rotation. She couldn't walk without shoes. we gave her three good years. Our farrier rasped the toe to take pressure off and fitted a thick leather pad between the shoe and hoof. Shod like this she returned to full work. However this was ultimately putting of the inevitable. There's no way to un-rotate the pedal bone or make the soles thicker. In the end we had to make the right but difficult decision to have her PTS when a horse (or any animal) can't be free to act as they should it's time to put you own feelings to one side and do what's right for them. In a nutshell Barefoot? mine couldn't walk at all. They have to be treated as an individual case and try to take little bits of advice from people who have been through it and see which matches your symptoms. 
Most of the links in the earlier posts are trying to sell you something, plastic pads, special shoes, a book etc There are no miracle cures. There are however plenty of people who are only to happy to take your money; they know you are vulnerable and are willing to try anything and clutch at straws.

P.S. don't forget vets and farriers are only human too, they work in good faith; they aren't always right.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			2) Horses evolved to live in a radically different environment to where they live today.  I have no doubts that for a wild horse, in its natural environment, shoeing is unnecessary and potentially detrimental.  For the modern horse, in a modern environment, with modern demands, shoeing is often necessary.  If you want to create a mock outback at your farm and keep your horses in a natural state, feel free.  The rest of us will continue to live in the real world.
		
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Though a paddock paradise environment would hugely benefit all horses physically and mentally it is not essential to having amazing barefoot hooves. You can get healthy bare hard working hooves in a very traditional management environment too. Don't buy it? Head down to Simon Earle's yard in Wiltshire. He trains and races barefoot thoroughbreds. In the winter they spend most of their lives stabled in a totally traditional yard. They get worked like any other thoroughbred in training - mixture of horse walker, road work and canter/gallop work on grass and all weather surfaces. And what are their feet like? 'Typcial' terrible thoroughbred feet? Lol - no way. I saw 10 different horses when I went to his yard, all different ages, some just started training, other racing fit. Every single one had the most incredible strong healthy feet. Simon doesn't use boots - doesn't find a need to. So what magic does Simon perform to have so many racing thoroughbreds with highly functoning barefeet? Is he a fluke?




			3) Horses feet evolved to maximise survival in their environment.  Horses feet did not evolve to deal with acute laminitis.  Wild horses with acute laminitis were likely victims to predators fairly rapidly, so there is no way that a horse whose feet were mildly more apt to dealing with laminitis survived to pass on that trait.
		
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Hummmmm.... not sure I agree with this. Everything that happens in a laminitic hoof is the horse trying to heal itself - how else do these natural processes develop if not evolution?


My next question to you is this:

If a horse has rotation or sinking and you don't put on a heart bar shoe in your thoughts the bone would just keep rotating/sinking. What happens when the bone penetrates the sole? If you did nothing would the bone keep rotating/sinking? Where would the bone end up?

Anecdotal I'm afraid but what are your thoughts on this? I was at a client's yesterday. One pony had suffered laminitis on and off for years. Up until 18 weeks ago she was shod in heart bar shoes and was basically hobbling lame and in constant pain. The owner had reached the end of the road and the next step was PTS. Then the owner got on the internet looking for another way - anything in her desperation. She happened along barefoot and found me. She did lots of reading and decided she had nothing to lose. When I first went to see the pony she was very depressed, no life in her eyes and not at all sound. Feet were a mess, heels horrible contracted. Heart bar shoes came off, conservative trim done, diet discussed in depth and changes made. I went to do the third trim yesterday. Shock horror her rotated pedal bone hadn't dropped through her sole! Lol. But surely once the heart bars were removed there was nothing keeping the pedal bone in place? Hummmmm..... hooves are looking much healthier, heels starting to decontract, lots of lovely new growth with a steeper angle down from the coronary band. But best of all the pony is sound, walking out over gravel even. Owner reports that her depressed and in pain pony suddenly has her personality back. She is happy, cheeky and bouncing around again, something she hasn't done in years. The owner was in tears the first time she lead the pony out and saw her sound. So why was this pony so crippled in heart bar shoes and so sound once they were taken off?

Don't get me wrong diet is hugely important but I have no doubt that this pony's shoes were making her worse rather than better. The evidence was bouncing around in front of me yesterday.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



			There's no way to un-rotate the pedal bone or make the soles thicker..
		
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Sorry - have to disagree. Soles can of course become thicker - if we feed a healthy diet for that horse and give the feet plenty of stimulation. Horses aren't born with thin soles or flat feet. As for pedal bone 'rotation' I know plenty of horses who have had rotation in the past and are back in work and working hard with it. So even if a horse get rotation it's no way the end of the line, far from it. Not sure why so many vets think otherwise...

Hooves are a very dynamic and ever changing structure. Far too often I see horses dismissed as having 'bad' feet and farriers saying 'oh that's just the way he was born'. Rubbish! That's like saying a thin horse will always be thin, or an injured tendon will never mend. For some horses managing them is more difficult - some horses are extremely sugar sensitive and for them to have healthy strong feet a very strict diet regime is required. But if a horse is eating what for them is an unhealthy diet (might be fine for a different horse) it's not just the feet that suffer, though those are the most obvious sign something is wrong. And it doesn't matter whether they are barefoot or shod - shoes do not cure dietary problems, they just hide them.


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## lazybee (10 February 2011)

I don't care about anyone's opinion and I'm not interested in having a debate. I am speaking from my own experience with my own horses. Is anyone else?


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## Clava (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			And it doesn't matter whether they are barefoot or shod - shoes do not cure dietary problems, they just hide them.
		
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This sums up things for me.


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## emmachiro (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



			I don't care about anyone's opinion and I'm not interested in having a debate. I am speaking from my own experience with my own horses. Is anyone else?
		
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Tried to, not sure if the poor person who put the initial thread is even reading this any more.  

To my mind, we're all passionate about our own beliefs and systems.  I find it sad that people can't look at the bigger picture.  The amount of pure arrogance from so called 'professionals' in the horse world is probably another reason why so many fail to get better.  



What works for some doesn't always work for others be it barefoot, shod whatever.  

Get over yourselves people!  Perhaps the best possible answer is if the two schools of thought try to work together for once rather than being so sure that their system is the only system, and in the process confuse the hell out the people that are desperately trying to understand where to go next with their beloved pets.


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## TGM (10 February 2011)

emmachiro said:



			What works for some doesn't always work for others be it barefoot, shod whatever.
		
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Agree with this!  Our old pony had Cushings and was a chronic laminitic - she was much happier and more comfortable in shoes, whereas I have known other laminitics where they were better off without shoes.  Much better to treat each case as an individual than stick to the blinkered view that one approach is best for all animals.


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

Perhaps the best possible answer is if the two schools of thought try to work together for once rather than being so sure that their system is the only system.
		
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Funnily enough I think those of us who shoe their horses are very open to the idea of removing them if it's in the interests of the horse (have done so myself on two horses).  However, those who promote barefoot with such zeal are never open to any suggestion that shoes (in some instances) may be a better way forward......


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## amandap (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



			I don't care about anyone's opinion and I'm not interested in having a debate. I am speaking from my own experience with my own horses. Is anyone else?
		
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Many people are speaking from their experiences. Some of the posters on this thread have seen many horses grow better feet with BF principles.
I only have one laminitic pony but have described briefly my arrangements for her...

Many of the posters have discovered this thinking through questioning when things went things go wrong for their horses. They have witnessed it's power and benefit for the general health of their horses as well as their feet.

When I say the hoof is made to fit the shoe, I mean the human _thinking_ about what is best for the horses foot comes into play and immediately we try to be active in 'correcting' hoof shape, movement of the horse etc. etc.
I have read many many stories which describe horses benefitiing hugely from diet and management changes and the 'do no harm' trim that only allows the horse to grow the hoof it needs as opposed to enforcing our ideas of what is right for the horses hoof. 

To see how hooves can change anyone can google barefoot hooves and see pictures and case studies galore...
For me it's the fundamental approach that I question the most, this is based in the thinking that the human knows better than nature.
Domestic horses are still the same species and the changes we have made to them by our breeding are fairly superficial in most cases. We have inflicted and perpetuated some awful genetic conditions by our selective breeding though. If domestic horses are so different form feral ones how come horses are in the wild at all in places like USA where they are all descended form escapees?
My belief is that domestic horses have many problems due to the way we manage them from birth. Foals are coddled in comfy stables and bowling green fields, what real exercise do their feet get? How are their internal hoof structures supposed to develop and strengthen? Then we shoe them at two commonly. 

Anyway, I am just explaining my thinking not trying to give a lecture...


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## TGM (10 February 2011)

amandap said:



			If domestic horses are so different form feral ones how come horses are in the wild at all in places like USA where they are all descended form escapees?
		
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Because the ones with crap feet and other man-made weaknesses were usually the first to die and therefore less likely to pass on their genetic weaknesses to the following generations.


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## Clava (10 February 2011)

TGM said:



			Because the ones with crap feet and other man-made weaknesses were usually the first to die and therefore less likely to pass on their genetic weaknesses to the following generations.
		
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but the ones today with "crap feet" you're assuming are born that way rather than become that way with what we do to them.


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## TGM (10 February 2011)

Clava said:



			but the ones today with "crap feet" you're assuming are born that way rather than become that way with what we do to them.
		
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Some horse do seem to have natural weaker feet than others, even before they get to the age when they are shod.  You can even have two youngsters with different breeding on the same feed, same pasture and yet one can have weaker feet than the other.


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## touchstone (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



			I don't care about anyone's opinion and I'm not interested in having a debate. I am speaking from my own experience with my own horses. Is anyone else?
		
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I am 


"Funnily enough I think those of us who shoe their horses are very open to the idea of removing them if it's in the interests of the horse (have done so myself on two horses). However, those who promote barefoot with such zeal are never open to any suggestion that shoes (in some instances) may be a better way forward......"


I tried shoes normal and remedial several times in the hope of helping my horse; each time they made my horse worse.  I think all the barefoot proponents would agree that shoeing probably is the best option if commitment to changing diet, environment , management etc isn't there.   I think that many proponents have been on the receiving end of unsuccessful conventional treatments, barefoot is often a last resort, so I don't think you can blame people for being enthusiastic about it when it has worked where other methods failed.


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## Clava (10 February 2011)

TGM said:



			Some horse do seem to have natural weaker feet than others, even before they get to the age when they are shod.  You can even have two youngsters with different breeding on the same feed, same pasture and yet one can have weaker feet than the other.
		
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That's interesting, I can't say I've ever noticed that with any of our youngsters, but then we did very little with them at a young age and so didn't test them on surfaces. I totally agree though that different youngsters may have reacted differently on the same grazing and management just as adults do.


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## MerrySherryRider (10 February 2011)

LOL ! Just recieved a warning from TFC. I have been censored by the Barefoot Brigade. Seems they don't tolerate people who criticise their opinions. Scary stuff.
Well done BB Button Pushers... first and only warning since I joined in 2003. Maybe this section should be renamed Barefoot At All Costs And With Unquestioning Obedience To The Cause.


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

I think all the barefoot proponents would agree that shoeing probably is the best option if commitment to changing diet, environment , management etc isn't there.
		
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And of course there is always the insult that those of us that keep shoes on a horse are not committed in anyway to the best interests or welfare of our horses. And just can't be plain bothered.


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

horserider said:



			LOL ! Just recieved a warning from TFC. I have been censored by the Barefoot Brigade. Seems they don't tolerate people who criticise their opinions. Scary stuff.
Well done BB Button Pushers... first and only warning since I joined in 2003. Maybe this section should be renamed Barefoot At All Costs And With Unquestioning Obedience To The Cause.
		
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What have you said to cause such offence??????


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## amandap (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			And of course there is always the insult that those of us that keep shoes on a horse are not committed in anyway to the best interests or welfare of our horses. And just can't be plain bothered.
		
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Yes, this is a problem when discussions are opposed in critical points. I for one *do not* think that myself. I know that the majority of horseowners are doing what is best for their horses. I also know that we are never going to all think the same way but listening to other views is one way I keep some sort of perpective and learn.

I did not report anyone btw.


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## peanut (10 February 2011)

touchstone said:



			"Funnily enough I think those of us who shoe their horses are very open to the idea of removing them if it's in the interests of the horse (have done so myself on two horses). However, those who promote barefoot with such zeal are never open to any suggestion that shoes (in some instances) may be a better way forward......"
		
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Having contributed at the beginning of the thread about considering taking shoes off my horse, the above is pretty much now how I feel. 



horserider said:



			LOL ! Just recieved a warning from TFC. I have been censored by the Barefoot Brigade. Seems they don't tolerate people who criticise their opinions. Scary stuff.
		
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What a pity.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

TGM said:



			Some horse do seem to have natural weaker feet than others, even before they get to the age when they are shod.  You can even have two youngsters with different breeding on the same feed, same pasture and yet one can have weaker feet than the other.
		
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Just as you can take two human beings. Feed them exactly the same things. One might get fat, the other stay skinny. What's the difference between the two people?


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## lochpearl (10 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			I'm a committed barefooter. I'm so committed that some people think I should BE committed  

Shoes have a place when the owner is unable or unwilling to provide what their particular horse needs to be happy barefoot. For a small minority of horses this can be VERY difficult to provide and for many, particularly in spring and summer, it can be a bit of a nuisance.

Yes, shoes have  a place.

But NOT in the management of a laminitic.


1) They mask the very early signs, so the horse can appear to go into acute laminitis with no warning when an acute attack might have been prevented by earlier action.

2) They reduce pain in an acute attack by preventing movement of the hoof wall pulling at the laminae and by taking pressure off the sole. Pain exists for a reason. It is there to stop the horse from moving while the laminae are so inflamed that they will pull apart if stress is placed on them. Mask that pain and the horse will move, with its weight taken on the walls/shoe (ie on the laminae) and not the sole  and make pedal bone rotation MORE likely, not less. 

3) NAILING to an inflamed and painful foot while making the horse stand on one painful inflamed foot? Barbaric.
		
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so if we are all lazy and don't have the interests of our horses at heart how come a lot of us have horses which are shod and aren't laminitic? I assume you are unable and unwilling to care for your animal to stop it getting laminitis?

The OP didn't post to get all you barefooters to try and make her feel bad and to go barefoot, she wanted help.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

horserider said:



			LOL ! Just recieved a warning from TFC. I have been censored by the Barefoot Brigade. Seems they don't tolerate people who criticise their opinions. Scary stuff.
Well done BB Button Pushers... first and only warning since I joined in 2003. Maybe this section should be renamed Barefoot At All Costs And With Unquestioning Obedience To The Cause.
		
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Wasn't me either - everyone's entitled to their opinion.


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## TGM (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			Just as you can take two human beings. Feed them exactly the same things. One might get fat, the other stay skinny. What's the difference between the two people?
		
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Well that is a whole can of worms in itself - seems to be some controversy over whether there is a 'fat' gene!  A debate I'm definitely not getting into!


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## Clava (10 February 2011)

lochpearl said:



			The OP didn't post to get all you barefooters to try and make her feel bad and to go barefoot, she wanted help.
		
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I don't see anyone trying to make the OP feel bad and she is getting advice and help by the bucket load from both sides.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			And of course there is always the insult that those of us that keep shoes on a horse are not committed in anyway to the best interests or welfare of our horses. And just can't be plain bothered.
		
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Not sure where you get this from... after all every single barefooter started out with shod horses. I had my horses shod for years - I think I was a pretty good and caring owner back then. It's just I didn't know what I know now and even more significantly I hadn't seen all the things I have seen now. I would never criticise anyone for shoeing and if you can find a post of mine where I have then please point me in the direction. I have never ever started a thread on this forum or any other telling people they should go barefoot. I only ever answer other peoples' posts when they ask for advice. And I only ever explain my thinking and how I do things and the evidence I have seen with my own eyes to back up the words. The reason we are all so passionate about it is because of how we've seen it work on our own horses. Simple as that really. I have plenty of friends who still shoe their horses. My OH, in fact, shoes his horse - I am working on him ;-) but it's not a source of conflict whatsoever. And I get on very well with plenty of farriers. Just because people don't agree on things doesn't mean you stop liking them. I vote labour. I have friends who vote Tory. I cannot understand for one moment why someone would vote Tory but I wouldn't hold it against them ;-)


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			Not sure where you get this from... after all every single barefooter started out with shod horses.
		
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From this post - time and again.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

Me again!

No one has yet answered my question about where they think the pedal bone would end up if heart bar shoes weren't used in cases of rotation but I'll ask another question...

what do people think shoes are doing to make a horse sound that wouldn't be sound barefoot?


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## quirky (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			Me again!

No one has yet answered my question about where they think the pedal bone would end up if heart bar shoes weren't used in cases of rotation but I'll ask another question...

what do people think shoes are doing to make a horse sound that wouldn't be sound barefoot?
		
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Why do you have to resort to point scoring .
It's like being back at school .

It comes across as an 'I know more than you' na na na na na attitude.
Just wondering if it is really necessary .


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Why do you have to resort to point scoring .
It's like being back at school .

It comes across as an 'I know more than you' na na na na na attitude.
Just wondering if it is really necessary .
		
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Sorry - if it comes across like that, it honestly isn't my intention. I'm genuinely interested in peoples answers.


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## brucea (10 February 2011)

Originally Posted by horserider  
LOL ! Just recieved a warning from TFC. I have been censored by the Barefoot Brigade. Seems they don't tolerate people who criticise their opinions. Scary stuff.
Well done BB Button Pushers... first and only warning since I joined in 2003. Maybe this section should be renamed Barefoot At All Costs And With Unquestioning Obedience To The Cause.
		
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That's a pity - sorry to hear that - it wasn't me either, you have to REALLY offend me before I push the button and I don't offend easily!

But I think your last sentence there is a bit unfair - I don't think any of the committed barefooters believe that at all. Remember a number of the UKNHCP leadership team are farriers- it is just that they are farriers that see there are other, possibly more effective, approaches.


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## emmachiro (10 February 2011)

Is there a farrier on here who would be able to give an answer?  

If you're after an answer from Jo public who has an idea, but doesn't have training I'm not sure it's a fair question?


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## LucyPriory (10 February 2011)

brucea said:



			Remember a number of the UKNHCP leadership team are farriers- it is just that they are farriers that see there are other, possibly more effective, approaches.
		
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As were Jamie Jackson and Pete Ramey.  And Bruce there is a vet up your way who barefoot trims too.  Older guy, very interesting to talk to.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

emmachiro said:



			Is there a farrier on here who would be able to give an answer?  

If you're after an answer from Jo public who has an idea, but doesn't have training I'm not sure it's a fair question?
		
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I have asked both questions of various farriers and got various different replies  but more input from farriers here would be great. As for Jo public I would expect some thoughts/opinions as to how shoes work to keep horses sound that can't manage barefoot.


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## amandap (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			And of course there is always the insult that those of us that keep shoes on a horse are not committed in anyway to the best interests or welfare of our horses. And just can't be plain bothered.
		
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amymay said:



			From this post - time and again.
		
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This cuts both ways though doesn't it? Barefoot advocates are sometimes seen as cruel and fanatical for making their horses go with out shoes.

 No one has said anyone on this thread is cruel or that shoeing horses with laminitis is cruel. The thinking has been questioed imo robustly but it's how we each read into what is written that translates it to having such implicatiions. That cuts both ways as well.  

Most of us have been in very difficult situations with our horses and are at a loss what to decide next and I know that everyone of us makes the best decision we can at that time. 

I can't say I would _never_ have a horse shod because I might come to the conclusion with professional advice that is best at that time.


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## quirky (10 February 2011)

emmachiro said:



			Is there a farrier on here who would be able to give an answer?
		
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There are at least 2 farriers who come on here that I know of but they don't get on so much as they are busy shoeing our horses most of the day:.


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## touchstone (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			And of course there is always the insult that those of us that keep shoes on a horse are not committed in anyway to the best interests or welfare of our horses. And just can't be plain bothered.
		
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Not at all, in some horses the changes needed can be difficult to control or manage in which case it is sensible to shoe; it doesn't make anybody a bad owner, and I've never seen anybody be accused of that???


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## emmachiro (10 February 2011)

quirky said:



			There are at least 2 farriers who come on here that I know of but they don't get on so much as they are busy shoeing our horses most of the day:.
		
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  Good one!


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## amandap (10 February 2011)

I've mentioned Pete Ramey's book 'Making Natural Hoofcare Work For You'.
I'd like to quote a little bit from the beginning of the first chapter which echos exactly what I felt when I first read about Jaime Jackson's thinking.
quote from Pete Ramey.
_"I was first introduced to natural hoofcare in 1998. A friend loaned me a copy of "Horse Owners Guide To Natural Hoofcare" by Jaime Jackson. I read it, hoping to pick up some new hoof knowledge that would improve my shoeing. That book made so much sense to me I didn't have to take Jaime's word for even one sentence. Somehow I knew I was reading the truth."_
 End quote.

That's one farrier talking about another farrier's thinking and findings.


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## soloequestrian (10 February 2011)

I've posted this before, but it seems to fit well with the current discussion:
http://www.hoofrehab.com/21stCenturyFarrier.html


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

touchstone said:



			Not at all, in some horses the changes needed can be difficult to control or manage in which case it is sensible to shoe; it doesn't make anybody a bad owner, and I've never seen anybody be accused of that???
		
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Oh no, Touchstone, I think the inference was quite clear.  If you can't accomodate your horse barefoot you are not committed and can't be bothered.

And that is what turns many of us off these discussions.


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## Spring Feather (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



			There's no way to un-rotate the pedal bone or make the soles thicker.
		
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This statement is simply not true.  The pedal bone rotation in your horse may not have reversed but you cannot say that for all horses.  My horse had rotation 7 years ago.  I monitored the feet via use of xrays and photographic records.  The final xrays taken showed totally normal pedal bone location hence complete reversal of pedal bone.  Your statement about soles not becoming thicker is also untrue, as witnessed again by my horse's soles growing back to their regular thickness.

Like most owners of laminitic horses I tried everything and listened to all.  My vet and my farrier worked with me, gave advice, listened to my thoughts and between the 3 of us we managed to get my horse sound.  We tried heartbars, they crippled the horse and were taken off.  Taking the shoes off and having my farrier (NOT barefoot trimmer BTW) trim horse in a particular way, going against traditional veterinary methods at the time, and making feeding changes all contributed to the full recovery of my horse.  I was, and have always been, incredibly thankful that I was able to work with professional people who were willing to think outside the box.  

My horse is old now and is retired for the most part however is still 100% sound.  I have never had shoes put back on in the past 7 years and the horse has remained sound with no return to laminitic status.

So, I have no wish to debate this topic either, but I felt the need to put my experience forward, as you did.


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## emmachiro (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			I have asked both questions of various farriers and got various different replies  but more input from farriers here would be great. As for Jo public I would expect some thoughts/opinions as to how shoes work to keep horses sound that can't manage barefoot.
		
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But don't you see?  That's like me expecting everyone to have an opinion on how chiropractic treatments differ from physio treatments, and to then expect them tell my why this difference exists, and be able to argue the toss either way if I question them further!  It's just not particularly productive - don't you think we're going round in circles here???

Most people are happy with what they know works for their horse!


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

Spring Feather said:



			This statement is simply not true.  The pedal bone rotation in your horse may not have reversed but you cannot say that for all horses.  My horse had rotation 7 years ago.  I monitored the feet via use of xrays and photographic records.  The final xrays taken showed totally normal pedal bone location hence complete reversal of pedal bone.  Your statement about soles not becoming thicker is also untrue, as witnessed again by my horse's soles growing back to their regular thickness.

Like most owners of laminitic horses I tried everything and listened to all.  My vet and my farrier worked with me, gave advice, listened to my thoughts and between the 3 of us we managed to get my horse sound.  We tried heartbars, they crippled the horse and were taken off.  Taking the shoes off and having my farrier (NOT barefoot trimmer BTW) trim horse in a particular way, going against traditional veterinary methods at the time, and making feeding changes all contributed to the full recovery of my horse.  I was, and have always been, incredibly thankful that I was able to work with professional people who were willing to think outside the box.  

My horse is old now and is retired for the most part however is still 100% sound.  I have never had shoes put back on in the past 7 years and the horse has remained sound with no return to laminitic status.

So, I have no wish to debate this topic either, but I felt the need to put my experience forward, as you did.
		
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I think this is the most valuable and worthwile post on here.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

emmachiro said:



			But don't you see?  That's like me expecting everyone to have an opinion on how chiropractic treatments differ from physio treatments, and to then expect them tell my why this difference exists, and be able to argue the toss either way if I question them further!  It's just not particularly productive - don't you think we're going round in circles here???

Most people are happy with what they know works for their horse!
		
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But surely as a horse owner considering whether to use a chiropractor or a physio you would do some research into both, find out as much as possible and then make an informed opinion as to which you want to use? How else do you make a decision when faced with a choice?


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			Oh no, Touchstone, I think the inference was quite clear.  If you can't accomodate your horse barefoot you are not committed and can't be bothered.

And that is what turns many of us off these discussions.
		
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Point me in the direction of the inference please?


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## emmachiro (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			But surely as a horse owner considering whether to use a chiropractor or a physio you would do some research into both, find out as much as possible and then make an informed opinion as to which you want to use? How else do you make a decision when faced with a choice?
		
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I have to go to work, will get back to you that one.


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			Point me in the direction of the inference please?
		
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I'm not trawling back through the whole post - by Cptrays makes it quite clear that to not go bare foot means that as an owner you can't be bothered, as does Touchstone a few posts back.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			I'm not trawling back through the whole post - by Cptrays makes it quite clear that to not go bare foot means that as an owner you can't be bothered, as does Touchstone a few posts back.
		
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I've had a read of their posts and I wouldn't draw that inference but I'm sorry you do. I certainly don't believe people who don't try barefoot can't be bothered. When I had shod horses it was firstly because I didn't know there was an alternative. Then when I started to hear about barefoot I thought the principles sounded logical but I had no problems with my horses so why fix what ain't broke? It was only when I did get a problem with one of my horses that I decided to give it a try. And it was then I saw how much my horse benefited, how the problem that sparked it was solved and made me find out more about the whole thing. Only then did I realise how little I knew about hooves - this after twenty odd years of being around horses.


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## DragonSlayer (10 February 2011)

Nari said:



			We're obviously very lucky at my yard then because most of the farriers who come up are very aware of unshod options & will cheerfully recommend them to owners if they feel shoes aren't the best option. I've never heard a trimmer suggest shoes though .....
		
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Same with my farrier. He is fantastic, knows his onions and I'm happy in the knowledge that he spent many years in training.

If it works, don't fix it.


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

mrdarcy said:



			I've had a read of their posts and I wouldn't draw that inference but I'm sorry you do.
		
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Then clearly you're not reading as closely as you think.




*Cptrays*: Shoes have a place when the owner is unable or unwilling to provide what their particular horse needs to be happy barefoot.

........ about whether you can manage to take the personal responsibility and provide the very detailed level of care that a barefoot approach to curing your horse's sick body will need (it's not just his feet of course, it started in his gut) and if you can.  If you can't, you should leave the responsibility with your farrier and vet to tell you what to do, which is psychologically by far the easier option.
		
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*Touchstone*: I think all the barefoot proponents would agree that shoeing probably is the best option if commitment to changing diet, environment , management etc isn't there.
		
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The inference is quite clear.  If you can't be bothered to manage your horse in a way that will support a barefoot approach, then really you ought to question your commitment to the welfare of your horse.  This is what gets peoples backs up - because like it or not not every horse can go barefoot.  And it doesn't matter how many times people say they can - it won't change the basic fact that they can't.  And it has nothing to do with whether as an owner you are comitted or not.


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## touchstone (10 February 2011)

"I think all the barefoot proponents would agree that shoeing probably is the best option if commitment to changing diet, environment , management etc isn't there."


And of course there is always the insult that those of us that keep shoes on a horse are not committed in anyway to the best interests or welfare of our horses. And just can't be plain bothered.
__________________

I believe that this is the post that you are referring to Amymay?

It is not slating people who can't provide those things, it is simply a fact that removing the shoes is just part of the picture, the whole kit and kaboodle involves long term management changes, and if those changes aren't practical for folks then as I said, shoeing is probably the sensible approach.  Perhaps I should have used the words 'ability to' rather than commitment?  My dad has all his horses shod, mine is barefoot - we get along quite happily together with no criticism on either part.  In no way was I inferring that owners who shoe aren't committed or caring and I'm sorry that you read it that way.


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

touchstone said:



			"I think all the barefoot proponents would agree that shoeing probably is the best option if commitment to changing diet, environment , management etc isn't there."


And of course there is always the insult that those of us that keep shoes on a horse are not committed in anyway to the best interests or welfare of our horses. And just can't be plain bothered.
__________________

I believe that this is the post that you are referring to Amymay?

It is not slating people who can't provide those things, it is simply a fact that removing the shoes is just part of the picture, the whole kit and kaboodle involves long term management changes, and if those changes aren't practical for folks then as I said, shoeing is probably the sensible approach.  Perhaps I should have used the words 'ability to' rather than commitment?  My dad has all his horses shod, mine is barefoot - we get along quite happily together with no criticism on either part.  In no way was I inferring that owners who shoe aren't committed or caring and I'm sorry that you read it that way.
		
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Ability / Comittment essentially the meaning is the same.  And I think that is very unfair and blinkered view to take.


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## touchstone (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			Ability / Comittment essentially the meaning is the same.  And I think that is very unfair and blinkered view to take.
		
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Unfair and blinkered?  I am confused now - I am essentially saying that yes. sometimes barefoot isn't right for some horses and owners and in those circumstances it is better to shoe.   Rather that than remain barefoot at all costs, which is what we seem to be getting accused of too!
If you haven't the means to keep a horse sound and comfortable without shoes because of contraints in how you have to manage your horse it is hardly the owners fault and I have never said that it was. There are horses that are just difficult to take/keep barefoot, and there's nothing wrong with shoeing then either imho.   
I shall bow out of this thread as it seems I am just aggravating people unintentionally.


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## LizzieJ (10 February 2011)

At the advice of my vet and farrier 4 years ago, we took my tbs shoes off.  She didn't have laminitis but did have dreadful stereotypical tb feet.  We changed her diet too and 18 months later she was till lame despite the repeated efforts of my vet and farrier (alongside a barefoot trimmer too) her feet did not cope without shoes even without working so we put shoes back on her.  She is now shod and sound but it took three years from taking the shoes off until she was - her feet had got so bad we couldn't keep shoes on her really after that 18 months.

My hunter wears her shoes out in less than 7 days in the winter - she has very good typical native pony feet ( I think it's the Dales pony stomp that makes her so heavy on them) despite being 17hh and no soundness issues.  Luckily her feet do cope with such regular shoeing fine but I can't see how she could hunt without shoes no matter how hard her feet got seeing as the tungsten tipped nails only give me an extra day or two!

I don't have a school and my hacking is all on stony tracks or roads so even our unshod ponies when we were kids ended up being shod as we got older because despite being unshod for years they got sore the more we did with them.


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## Amymay (10 February 2011)

touchstone said:



			Unfair and blinkered?  I am confused now - I am essentially saying that yes. sometimes barefoot isn't right for some horses and owners and in those circumstances it is better to shoe.   Rather that than remain barefoot at all costs, which is what we seem to be getting accused of too!
If you haven't the means to keep a horse sound and comfortable without shoes because of contraints in how you have to manage your horse it is hardly the owners fault and I have never said that it was. There are horses that are just difficult to take/keep barefoot, and there's nothing wrong with shoeing then either imho.   
I shall bow out of this thread as it seems I am just aggravating people unintentionally.
		
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But you are still saying the same thing _because of contraints in how you have to manage your horse_.


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## LizzieJ (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			But you are still saying the same thing _because of contraints in how you have to manage your horse_.
		
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Maybe that means wanting to work them if they don't really cope with it


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## lazybee (10 February 2011)

*amymay* I agree with you completely but I lost interest way back. You are dealing with people with a closed mind, probably with one horse or a couple of the same type. They've read a couple of books and surfed the net, now they're experts. Best to sit back and laugh at their ludicrous statements. I am


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## soloequestrian (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



*amymay* I agree with you completely but I lost interest way back. You are dealing with people with a closed mind, probably with one horse or a couple of the same type. They've read a couple of books and surfed the net, now they're experts. Best to sit back and laugh at their ludicrous statements. I am 

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Um, troll?


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## MerrySherryRider (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



*amymay* I agree with you completely but I lost interest way back. You are dealing with people with a closed mind, probably with one horse or a couple of the same type. They've read a couple of books and surfed the net, now they're experts. Best to sit back and laugh at their ludicrous statements. I am 

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Ditto this. What concerns me is that some posters, feeling vunerable with a lame horse may read some of the claims/attitudes that have been made on this and previous threads by the more extreme barefooters,and  might be influenced by it when it is to the detrement of their horse. The mantra, 'Do no harm' is incorrect. There is such a concept as doing harm by omission.
There also seems to be an implication that if you don't have time to 'do barefoot', you take the easy option and slap shoes on. Hooves have to cared for whether shod or unshod, the same holistic approach applies to keeping horses healthy and sound.


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## MerrySherryRider (10 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			Um, troll?
		
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Why ? Because her opinion differs to yours ? Any more button pushing to be done then, anyone?


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## lazybee (10 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			Um, troll?
		
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 Not at all. Go back and have look at some of the other pages and you'll see what I mean.


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## soloequestrian (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



			Not at all. Go back and have look at some of the other pages and you'll see what I mean.
		
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I've read the whole thing, and haven't seen any ludicrous statements from people who have a positive opinion of barefoot.  I don't see any of them saying that they are laughing at the Shod Brigade, or saying that people who shoe their horses are closed minded.  I don't understand why what started as an interesting debate has turned into a slagging-off-barefoot thread again.  All I see from the barefoot people is a real determination to get useful information over to horseowners who perhaps haven't had access to it before.  If they then want to research it and discard it, that's up to them, but none of this is ridiculous.  What I see from some of those who are 'against' barefoot are personal insults - I don't particularly want to go into my background on a public forum but it's definitely a lot more than reading a few books on the topic, and in no way do I consider myself an expert.


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## LizzieJ (10 February 2011)

I think it's the insinuation that every horse would happily go barefoot if they were managed correctly which is simply not true ime.


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## lazybee (10 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			I've read the whole thing, and haven't seen any ludicrous statements from people who have a positive opinion of barefoot.  I don't see any of them saying that they are laughing at the Shod Brigade, or saying that people who shoe their horses are closed minded.  I don't understand why what started as an interesting debate has turned into a slagging-off-barefoot thread again.  All I see from the barefoot people is a real determination to get useful information over to horseowners who perhaps haven't had access to it before.  If they then want to research it and discard it, that's up to them, but none of this is ridiculous.  What I see from some of those who are 'against' barefoot are personal insults - I don't particularly want to go into my background on a public forum but it's definitely a lot more than reading a few books on the topic, and in no way do I consider myself an expert.
		
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I need to say I have a barefoot horse, he's a Arab and has been barefoot all his life he's NEVER been trimmed either. his hooves are as hard as iron and a perfect shape. I have tried with the others, as obviously it would be great benefit for me if they were all the same; it just isn't possible. It depends how much the horses are used. If I want to take them out every day their hooves wear too fast (apart for the arab), so they need shoes, simple. They aren't ornaments in the field and are worked every day. Some hooves work harden, some don't.


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## cptrayes (10 February 2011)

LizzieJ said:



			At the advice of my vet and farrier 4 years ago, we took my tbs shoes off.  She didn't have laminitis but did have dreadful stereotypical tb feet.  We changed her diet too and 18 months later she was till lame despite the repeated efforts of my vet and farrier (alongside a barefoot trimmer too) her feet did not cope without shoes even without working so we put shoes back on her.  She is now shod and sound but it took three years from taking the shoes off until she was - her feet had got so bad we couldn't keep shoes on her really after that 18 months.

My hunter wears her shoes out in less than 7 days in the winter - she has very good typical native pony feet ( I think it's the Dales pony stomp that makes her so heavy on them) despite being 17hh and no soundness issues.  Luckily her feet do cope with such regular shoeing fine but I can't see how she could hunt without shoes no matter how hard her feet got seeing as the tungsten tipped nails only give me an extra day or two!

I don't have a school and my hacking is all on stony tracks or roads so even our unshod ponies when we were kids ended up being shod as we got older because despite being unshod for years they got sore the more we did with them.
		
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It is quite possible that your hunter would cope if you built up to the hours over a long enough time. Material science is littered with examples where it is the harder material which wears, not the softer - think of how a barber sharpens a cut-throat razor on a leather strop and you'll see what I'm getting at. The softer material of her horn might well wear less than the hard metal of a shoe, particularly if taking off her shoes allows her to be more light-footed.


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## LizzieJ (10 February 2011)

I don't know but at 3 she used to wear her feet down so much it made her lame and she wasn't working then so she's been shod ever since she was broken and is 16 now


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## amandap (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



*amymay* I agree with you completely but I lost interest way back. You are dealing with people with a closed mind, probably with one horse or a couple of the same type. They've read a couple of books and surfed the net, now they're experts. Best to sit back and laugh at their ludicrous statements. I am 

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Charming.  I'll take myself off then. I am a bit insulted my beliefs are the subject of mirth. I can't say I'm glad some of us have made you laugh but at least you've got something positive out of reading this thread.


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## Fii (10 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			You should think carefully, using the information given on this thread and other threads, about whether you can manage to take the personal responsibility and provide the very detailed level of care that a barefoot approach to curing your horse's sick body will need (it's not just his feet of course, it started in his gut) and if you can, then follow all the leads you have been given, read the books, and find someone who has experience of barefoot rehab of acute laminitis to help you get through this and if you can't, you should leave the responsibility with your farrier and vet to tell you what to do, which is psychologically by far the easier option.
		
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But not all laminitis starts in the gut does it?
 What about concussion, from hard ground, and stress from foaling, or injury, these can all bring on laminitis, or are you saying that all these start from the gut as well ?


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## cptrayes (10 February 2011)

amymay said:



			Then clearly you're not reading as closely as you think.

The inference is quite clear.  If you can't be bothered to manage your horse in a way that will support a barefoot approach, then really you ought to question your commitment to the welfare of your horse.  This is what gets peoples backs up - because like it or not not every horse can go barefoot.  And it doesn't matter how many times people say they can - it won't change the basic fact that they can't.  And it has nothing to do with whether as an owner you are comitted or not.
		
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The inference is what you read into it and not what I wrote.  If you cannot or will not does not mean "if you can't be bothered" and I would never say such a thing. 

Let me give an example. I have a horse who cannot eat grass. It causes him big health problems but among them is an inability to grow feet strong enough to go without shoes. Unfortunately for him shoes cripple him with navicular. So, I  reached a stage where I "will not" give him a life without grass. I could, but he's not a horse I care enough about to go through that kind of expense and trouble. After curing his navicular and the health issues by removing him from grass and working hard with his issues for six months, thereby saving his life, I gave him away to people who were happy to provide what he needs. 

There are many, many horses who could successfully go barefoot if their owners could take them off the grass during daylight hours in the summer. The person who is in a livery yard who chooses to keep the horse turned out 24/7 and therefore has to shoe, chooses to shoe. They "will not" provide what their horse needs but I make no judgement on their choice. It is YOU reading a judgement into it. 

If someone "cannot" provide what a horse needs then they cannot. There is no judgement inherent in that statement either. Again, it is you reading a judgement into it. 

I, in turn, cannot change facts which are facts. And the fact is that the barefoot community are unanimous that their experience is that the majority of horses, though not all, who cannot walk across stones barefoot after a careful rehab have problems with their diet. They have something wrong with their digestive systems that is preventing their bodies from working properly to build them hard strong feet. They have a low grade disease. If owners choose to shoe and mask the symtoms rather than address the cause of it, then it is their right to make that choice when the vast majority of horses will cope perfectly well with being shod. If you find it offensive that I am suggesting that your horse may have a low grade level of laminitis if it cannot manage barefoot, then so be it, but you extrapolate to a level of criticism which was not present in what I wrote.


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## LucyPriory (10 February 2011)

Interesting point regarding hard/soft wearing CP.

Old endurance mare used to wear through her shoes complete with titanium tips in 3 weeks.  The boots she wore for transition I still have, still with tread, over 10 years old, and so clumsy in comparison to the newer models. She was fine unshod until the day I had her PTS with Cushings.  Best legs on any horse I've ever seen or probably ever will.  Miss her still.

Current horse I have is the most difficult I've experienced in 15+ years of barefoot (although she has great legs too).  

This horse has feet of iron (major effort to trim) but has hind gut problems which are largely set off by diet (relatively easy to fix) and stress (which is hard because I can not control the circumstances which cause it at the moment).  And of course these impact on her solar corium causing inflammation which can make her footy at times.  At least though I get an early warning sign so I can take steps to prevent her previous chronic lami returning.  

But even so when she was in work during the summer she managed just about everything and would have done better if I could have put more effort into her.

As the last farrier she was introduced to hit her over the head and previously she has been roped and thrown shoeing is not really an option.

I should add she is pretty easy to handle but partly because of the above I am very choosy about who is allowed to.

So to fix the lami she arrived with I pulled her shoes (under very heavy sedation) and took it from there.


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## cptrayes (10 February 2011)

Fii said:



			But not all laminitis starts in the gut does it?
 What about concussion, from hard ground, and stress from foaling, or injury, these can all bring on laminitis, or are you saying that all these start from the gut as well ?
		
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The thread is about a dietary laminitic and what the owner should do now. Of course there are other causes. Do you think I'm an idiot  ?


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## cptrayes (10 February 2011)

LizzieJ said:



			I don't know but at 3 she used to wear her feet down so much it made her lame and she wasn't working then so she's been shod ever since she was broken and is 16 now 

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Don't fix what ain't broke  !  It's people shoeing sound 3 year olds for no real reason that I have a problem with, not lame ones. But I don't envy you your shoeing bill , my Shirex 17hh hunter is zero cost thank goodness!


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## LucyPriory (10 February 2011)

Fii said:



			But not all laminitis starts in the gut does it?
 What about concussion, from hard ground, and stress from foaling, or injury, these can all bring on laminitis, or are you saying that all these start from the gut as well ?
		
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I believe they do.  The exact biochemical pathway of laminitis is still being researched, but it is generally agreed it starts in the caecum.

Acidosis, which can be caused by stress, diet, retained placenta or any other form of toxic input can create an inhospitable environment for the bacteria which digest the fiborous content of hay etc.  These then die off.  

To cut a long and complex and unfinished story short - this eventually causes inflammation of the coria and disruption of the lamellar bonds.  At this point depending on the amount of damage you will get laminitis, or LGL or somewhere in between.


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

lazybee said:



			. It depends how much the horses are used. If I want to take them out every day their hooves wear too fast (apart for the arab), so they need shoes, simple. They aren't ornaments in the field and are worked every day. Some hooves work harden, some don't.
		
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My horses are endurance horses - I take them out everyday and compete all summer. They still have plenty of hoof left as growth = wear. I have clients with horses of all different types from shetlands to warmbloods to thoroughbreds. And if you look back at my post about Simon Earle and his thoroughbred race horses that is another example of hard working horses that don't need shoes... thoroughbreds at that. Who would have thought that possible?


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## LizzieJ (10 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			Don't fix what ain't broke  !  It's people shoeing sound 3 year olds for no real reason that I have a problem with, not lame ones. But I don't envy you your shoeing bill , my Shirex 17hh hunter is zero cost thank goodness!
		
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Yes the bill is a bit 

She even manages to wear them out on her summer holiday in the field...


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## emmachiro (10 February 2011)

Sorry, know we've moved on from here but wanted to answer Mr Darcy



mrdarcy said:



			Me again!

No one has yet answered my question about where they think the pedal bone would end up if heart bar shoes weren't used in cases of rotation but I'll ask another question...

what do people think shoes are doing to make a horse sound that wouldn't be sound barefoot?
		
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Second Quote "But surely as a horse owner considering whether to use a chiropractor or a physio you would do some research into both, find out as much as possible and then make an informed opinion as to which you want to use? How else do you make a decision when faced with a choice?"

Re decision when faced with a choice, of course you research into both, most people speak to their vet, their friends or look on the internet.  You make a  choice, see if it works, then change and research again if it doesn't work.  Some horse owners try physio first, then change to chiro or vice versa, depending on what works best.  That's not exactly rocket science.  I was putting the context of your question into my field, and on the basis of that found your question rather obtuse.

My problem with your original question "what do people think shoes are doing to make a horse sound that wouldn't be sound barefoot?[/QUOTE]".... is that Jo public has a fairly good idea how feet work on a superficial level (no offence meant to anyone).

But do they know enough about the true mechanics, neurology, proprioceptive feedback, vascular system, systemic issues such as cushings on toxicity levels etc to be able to answer your question?  I would say no.  How about ligament structure, stay apparatus, breakover, medio-lateral balance, the importance of the frog, concussion/forces?  And that's just from the top of my head with regards to how feet work and how we treat them subsequently.

So if people don't have a true understanding of anatomy, neurology etc how the hell can they be in a position to comfortably answer your question about what it means to the above when you have a shoe on a horse's foot, or when you let it go barefoot?  

Hence I don't see what you're trying to achieve by asking a question that you would expect to see on a finals exam paper on this forum?  What's the point?

Can't fault you on your passion, but have to say that you are in danger of coming across like you're trying too hard.  And I sit on the fence re shoeing/barefoot btw.


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## Fii (10 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			The thread is about a dietary laminitic and what the owner should do now. Of course there are other causes. Do you think I'm an idiot  ?
		
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 No actually i don't think you are an idiot, i have read with great interest your posts on  barefoot, Although i can't see anywhere in the op's post where she has said it is dietary.
  My question wasnt ment to upset you, it was a genuine question.


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## Zerotolerance (10 February 2011)

Sorry I haven't read all through the 22 pages on this thread, but, although for a completely different reason, I have used Sound Horse shoes, formerly called Sigafoos, on my 24 year old, in front, with great success for the last 4 years. Although they are hideously expensive at about £180 a pair, they have been brilliant and are nothing like any other glue on shoes. They never, ever come off, even when hunter trialling in mud etc. They may not be relevant in this case, but the website is worth a look:-


http://www.soundhorse.com/


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## mrdarcy (10 February 2011)

horserider said:



			Ditto this. What concerns me is that some posters, feeling vunerable with a lame horse may read some of the claims/attitudes that have been made on this and previous threads by the more extreme barefooters,and  might be influenced by it when it is to the detrement of their horse. .
		
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Or, alternatively, someone may read this thread who is at the end of the line with their horse, give barefoot a try and end up with a sound happy horse.


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## brucea (10 February 2011)

give barefoot a try and end up with a sound happy horse.
		
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I did, and you would have had a hard job finding anyone more hostile to barefoot than me when I first encountered the concept.


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## Fii (10 February 2011)

LucyPriory said:



			I believe they do.  The exact biochemical pathway of laminitis is still being researched, but it is generally agreed it starts in the caecum.

Acidosis, which can be caused by stress, diet, retained placenta or any other form of toxic input can create an inhospitable environment for the bacteria which digest the fiborous content of hay etc.  These then die off.  

To cut a long and complex and unfinished story short - this eventually causes inflammation of the coria and disruption of the lamellar bonds.  At this point depending on the amount of damage you will get laminitis, or LGL or somewhere in between.
		
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 Just so i can keep up, what is LGL, i am not so good with abbreiviations.
  So do you think that a pony with concusion laminitis may have another underlying problem within the gut? Or can the stress of hard uneven ground on the feet be the cause without any other facters?


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## quirky (10 February 2011)

Fii said:



			Just so i can keep up, what is LGL, i am not so good with abbreiviations.
		
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Low Grade Laminitis


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## alsiola (10 February 2011)

LucyPriory said:



			I believe they do.  The exact biochemical pathway of laminitis is still being researched, but it is generally agreed it starts in the caecum.

Acidosis, which can be caused by stress, diet, retained placenta or any other form of toxic input can create an inhospitable environment for the bacteria which digest the fiborous content of hay etc.  These then die off.  

To cut a long and complex and unfinished story short - this eventually causes inflammation of the coria and disruption of the lamellar bonds.  At this point depending on the amount of damage you will get laminitis, or LGL or somewhere in between.
		
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Certainly not everyone believes this...

Acidosis is not well defined here - do you mean caecal acidosis? Or true acidosis (i.e. of the blood)? Or acidaemia?  All are strictly defined scientific concepts.  

If you think retained placenta causes laminitis via caecal acidosis then I would advise you to do some reading around the subject of endotoxaemia.


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## Izzwizz (10 February 2011)

Ive not read all the pages to this thread, really cant be bothered.  Its got too in depth.  I think that what people have lost sight of is that every horse is different, just like people, and what suits one will not do for another.  The Barefoot Brigade will continue to make the Shod Team feel like they are not doing right by their horses when the bottom line is we all want whats best for our individual equines.  My own mare had remedial shoeing last year, shes now sound after her tendon injury thanks to my excellent vet and Farrier.  I completely trust them both and shes looking absolutely fabulous.  The info is helpful regarding unshod horses, but it doesnt need ramming down peoples throats - thankyou.  

Just my opinion of course....


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## Fii (10 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Low Grade Laminitis 

Click to expand...

  Thanyou 
 I sometimes feel a right idiot asking, but if you dont ask you onley get half the story.


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## brucea (10 February 2011)

Ive not read all the pages to this thread, really cant be bothered. Its got too in depth. I think that what people have lost sight of is that every horse is different, just like people, and what suits one will not do for another. The Barefoot Brigade will continue to make the Shod Team feel like they are not doing right by their horses when the bottom line is we all want whats best for our individual equines. My own mare had remedial shoeing last year, shes now sound after her tendon injury thanks to my excellent vet and Farrier. I completely trust them both and shes looking absolutely fabulous. The info is helpful regarding unshod horses, but it doesnt need ramming down peoples throats - thankyou. 

Just my opinion of course....
		
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I'm glad your mare has had a good result, but I don't think there is the need to adopt perjoratives such as "Barefoot Brigade" however catchy the alliteration.


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## brucea (10 February 2011)

Concussion related laminitis stands out there as an an anomaly for me in that all other lamintiis is hind gutrelated, but this is mechanical. Of course there may be stress related aspects to it that affect the hind gut.

On our cob's last ever shoeing, the farrier was in a real mood - something had wound him up - and he was really hammering the shoes on - smacking them as hard as he could wih the hammer. Shortly afterwards there was a thin red line of bruising round the hoof - a 2-3mm line clear as a bell. He was unsound for a few weeks after that - quite footy really. Now as it turns out this pony is IR and is pretty sensitive, but this is an example of a mechanical "laminitic" type response that isn;t hind gut related. I think the laminae were "shocked" by the impact.


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## Izzwizz (10 February 2011)

brucea said:



			I'm glad your mare has had a good result, but I don't think there is the need to adopt perjoratives such as "Barefoot Brigade" however catchy the alliteration.
		
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Just trying to make it a little more light hearted and a bit less intense...... lighten up!


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## LucyPriory (11 February 2011)

Fii said:



			Just so i can keep up, what is LGL, i am not so good with abbreiviations.
  So do you think that a pony with concusion laminitis may have another underlying problem within the gut? Or can the stress of hard uneven ground on the feet be the cause without any other facters?
		
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I haven't done an intensive study, I can only comment on what I see and the output of numerous discussions with vets, farriers, lami researchers and nutritionists.

Most of the horses I deshoe have evidence of LGL or low grade laminitis - ie stretched white line, multiple event lines, thin soles and feet which are unable to maintain the healing angle to the ground.

If you work a foot which is sufficiently compromised, hard enough then there is a possiblity that the additional trauma to the weak foot could lead someone dealing with the consequences to give a diagnosis of 'concussion' laminitis. But the true causal factor is most likely to be the fact that the foot was already compromised by diet etc.

I have seen feet with severe concussion injuries, but the sample is very small, so not statistically sound, (although big enough probably to be published by the standards of some studies I have seen), but in none of these cases did the horse end up with laminitis - but they didn't have stretched white lines to start with.

Unfortuately a much higher proportion of horses are having issues with their diet etc than many of us realise because we are not taught the warning signs.  It took me _years_ literally to realise that my vets diagnosis of 'recurrent sprains' was wrong and in fact my mare had LGL.  Massive lesson which I've never forgotten.


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## cptrayes (11 February 2011)

Izzwizz said:



			Ive not read all the pages to this thread, really cant be bothered.  Its got too in depth.  I think that what people have lost sight of is that every horse is different, just like people, and what suits one will not do for another.  The Barefoot Brigade will continue to make the Shod Team feel like they are not doing right by their horses when the bottom line is we all want whats best for our individual equines.  My own mare had remedial shoeing last year, shes now sound after her tendon injury thanks to my excellent vet and Farrier.  I completely trust them both and shes looking absolutely fabulous.  The info is helpful regarding unshod horses, but it doesnt need ramming down peoples throats - thankyou.  

Just my opinion of course....
		
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Izzwizz can you please advise us how we can post what we know without people feeling as if we are ramming it down their throats?  

As long as people keep posting things like "laminitics need heart bars" and "horses need shoes if they do a lot of road work" we will keep saying that this is not true. I just don't know how we can stop making people who just don't want to hear it from feeling that we are ramming it down their throats? Serious question. Which bits of what has been written on this thread, for example, should not have been written?

I personally have no objection to being part of a Brigade. It's not a term of abuse as far as I can see. Maybe someone should write the poem "The Charge of the Barefoot Brigade"? Will we all die in the battle to convince more vets and farriers to add a barefoot rehab to their armoury of solutions for foot related lameness? I doubt it!


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## MerrySherryRider (11 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			Izzwizz can you please advise us how we can post what we know without people feeling as if we are ramming it down their throats?  

As long as people keep posting things like "laminitics need heart bars" and "horses need shoes if they do a lot of road work" we will keep saying that this is not true. I just don't know how we can stop making people who just don't want to hear it from feeling that we are ramming it down their throats? Serious question. Which bits of what has been written on this thread, for example, should not have been written?

I personally have no objection to being part of a Brigade. It's not a term of abuse as far as I can see. Maybe someone should write the poem "The Charge of the Barefoot Brigade"? Will we all die in the battle to convince more vets and farriers to add a barefoot rehab to their armoury of solutions for foot related lameness? I doubt it! 

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Probably stop making sweeping statements like all horses being fine mananging any amount of road work unshod and your attitude to vets and farriers in previous posts is very off putting. Ramming opinions down peoples throats detracts from the very valid points made by some of those with experience of managing unshod horses, which is the tragedy.

I absolutely commit myself to keeping my horses without shoes but for some it is not in their interests and they are shod and I resent the inference that I am taking the easy option. Caring for the shod hoof is as important as caring for an unshod one.
 Being reported to TFC won't stop me attempting to have a balanced debate in the interests of those who read these posts at a time when they are vunerable enough to try anything that sounds 'knowledgeable'. Asking for scientific evidence instead of anecdotal accounts is deemed as unreasonable. 

At the end of the day each horse is an individual, what works for some doesn't work for all.


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## lazybee (11 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			"The Charge of the Barefoot Brigade"? Will we all die in the battle to convince more vets and farriers to add a barefoot rehab to their armoury of solutions for foot related lameness? I doubt it! 

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Just like the original 'charge of the Light brigade' you wouldn't complete your mission; on the grounds that you faced the overwhelming proven track record of your opponent, also most of your brigade wouldn't make it to the field due to having sore feet. Come on lighten up.


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## cptrayes (11 February 2011)

lazybee you tell me to lighten up after making a joke about writing a poem? 

None of our brigade have sore feet, that's the whole point. We know how to get horses to do everything they would with shoes on without sore feet. And keeping them standing in stalls in wet straw, fed corn, waiting for a battle to start and then expecting them to do the charge of the Light Brigade is not how it works, which is why horses who went into battle had shoes on in the first place.


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## quirky (11 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			We know how to get horses to do everything they would with shoes on without sore feet.
		
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Generalising here and I appreciate you can't speak for every horse out there worked without shoes 

but

are shoeless horses worked at all times on all surfaces with nothing on their feet ie. boots/socks?

I don't see how a horse worked in boots/socks can be referred to as barefoot, inasmuch as if I go out wearing something on my feet I am not barefoot, so how can a horse out with something on their feet be referred to as barefoot ?


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## cptrayes (11 February 2011)

horserider said:



			Probably stop making sweeping statements like all horses being fine mananging any amount of road work unshod and your attitude to vets and farriers in previous posts is very off putting. Ramming opinions down peoples throats detracts from the very valid points made by some of those with experience of managing unshod horses, which is the tragedy.

I absolutely commit myself to keeping my horses without shoes but for some it is not in their interests and they are shod and I resent the inference that I am taking the easy option. Caring for the shod hoof is as important as caring for an unshod one.
 Being reported to TFC won't stop me attempting to have a balanced debate in the interests of those who read these posts at a time when they are vunerable enough to try anything that sounds 'knowledgeable'. Asking for scientific evidence instead of anecdotal accounts is deemed as unreasonable. 

At the end of the day each horse is an individual, what works for some doesn't work for all.
		
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I take it this is a reply to me personally?


"stop making sweeping statements like all horses being fine mananging any amount of road work unshod"

I have made no such sweeping assertions.


"your attitude to vets and farriers in previous posts is very off putting"

My personal experiences are true and recent and I have every right to relate them. I'm sorry if they make people uncomfortable by the implication that their own vets and farriers might not be as trustworthy as they think, but I have had messages from two people in the last six months whose vets and farriers told them that their horses would never be ridden again thanking me for suggesting a barefoot rehab. While horses are still being put to sleep without a barefoot rehab being tried I will continue to balance upsetting some people in order to prevent others from the heartache of losing a horse unnecessarily.


" I resent the inference that I am taking the easy option"

With a difficult horse, and there are plenty, it IS more difficult to manage them so that they can go barefoot than it is to shoe. This is simply a fact. It implies no criticism of the person who chooses to shoe instead. Take, for example, a horse who needs to be kept off grass during daylight. I have one.  He has to be kept in during the day and I have then to provide a bed, food, and muck him out. If he was shod I would  avoid the expense and  the work. Another example. my own hunter being one. Some horses have to work very consistently in  order to cope with their workload. So if my hunter does not go out on the roads several times a week, he becomes unable to cope with going out on the roads. It is more difficult to manage him barefoot than it would be shod.


"Asking for scientific evidence instead of anecdotal accounts is deemed as unreasonable. "

Who has said this is unreasonable? We ALL want it. No-one has said that wanting scientific evidence is unreasonable. What IS unreasonable is expecting a loosely-connected group of people who post on here because they can share valuable information about barefoot to PAY for it. There is no money to pay for it amongst barefooters, so all we are able to do is tell you our anecdotal experiences.  What IS unreasonable is writing off a huge body of anecdotal evidence as having no validity whatsoever just because it has not been scientifically tested. Particularly when shoes have not been scientifically tested either. 

I'm still stumped as to what I am supposed to write differently in order not to "ram things down people's throats". It seems to me that what people are really saying is "I don't like what you are writing and therefore you should not write it". I don't like a lot of what people write but we live in a democracy believing in freedom of speech and I will defend your right to write things I don't like until I die. But I reserve the right to answer you. If you don't like what I write, put me on ignore.


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## cptrayes (11 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Generalising here and I appreciate you can't speak for every horse out there worked without shoes 

but

are shoeless horses worked at all times on all surfaces with nothing on their feet ie. boots/socks?

I don't see how a horse worked in boots/socks can be referred to as barefoot, inasmuch as if I go out wearing something on my feet I am not barefoot, so how can a horse out with something on their feet be referred to as barefoot ? 

Click to expand...


I don't personally use boots except, rarely, in the first few weeks. Some owners are unable to give the horses what they need to be 100% sound on all surfaces without boots and  see boots as better than shoes, because they can be removed when the horse is not being ridden.

I think it is possible to worry too much about what "barefoot" means, there is no dictionary definition.


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## quirky (11 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			I think it is possible to worry too much about what "barefoot" means, there is no dictionary definition.
		
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Hmm, then how come barefoot is held up as some type of Utopia if there is no such term defined ?


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## cptrayes (11 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Hmm, then how come barefoot is held up as some type of Utopia if there is no such term defined ?
		
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I don't think you are confused at all, I think you know exactly what is meant by everything that has been written on here and that you are trying to split hairs to create an argument. No thanks, I have more important things to argue about.


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## brucea (11 February 2011)

If you work a foot which is sufficiently compromised, hard enough then there is a possiblity that the additional trauma to the weak foot could lead someone dealing with the consequences to give a diagnosis of 'concussion' laminitis. But the true causal factor is most likely to be the fact that the foot was already compromised by diet etc.
		
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Good point Lucy, you may well be quite right about that. In that horse's case, yes, I believe they werre already compromised - but not showing any symptoms until after the concussive damage was done.


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## quirky (11 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			I don't think you are confused at all, I think you know exactly what is meant by everything that has been written on here and that you are trying to split hairs to create an argument. No thanks, I have more important things to argue about.
		
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I do understand most things, I'm a bright button .

What I am trying to say, which you don't seem to be able to accept is ......

The barefooters (no such word ) go on about their horses being able to go barefoot blah, blah, blah.

But, how many are truly barefoot?
Having boots/socks on does not constitute a barefoot horse in my eyes.
A barefoot horse would be one that has no shoes on and survives happily without man made attachments being applied for work at any time.

Are there actually any barefoot horses out there by that definition ?

Genuine question .


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## brucea (11 February 2011)

Nic Barker has just posted some fantastic videos of her hunt hirelings on Rockley Farm blogspot - 

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2011/02/barefoot-performance-proper-job.html

I've met some of these horses myself - no boots, no shoes, real barefoot performance.

A visit to her place should be mandatory for all trainee aspiring horse vets


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## brucea (11 February 2011)

And we have some barefoot horses who perform brilliantly too....barefoot horses are all over the place!


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## soloequestrian (11 February 2011)

quirky said:



			I do understand most things, I'm a bright button .

What I am trying to say, which you don't seem to be able to accept is ......

The barefooters (no such word ) go on about their horses being able to go barefoot blah, blah, blah.

But, how many are truly barefoot?
Having boots/socks on does not constitute a barefoot horse in my eyes.
A barefoot horse would be one that has no shoes on and survives happily without man made attachments being applied for work at any time.

Are there actually any barefoot horses out there by that definition ?

Genuine question .
		
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I've got one who will stomp over flints in his bare feet, and does many miles on rough forestry tracks in the summer with no boots, one who wears boots a minority of the time, and a third who needs boots to cope with some of the hacking and jumping.  I'd like to get them all out of boots completely, and I am working hard at it, but in the meantime the boots are great.  The difference between using boots and using shoes is that the shoes are on all the time, but boots are only on when you need them.  Shoes constrain many of the physiological processes in the foot and effectively act as a splint so that the hoof structures are not able/don't need to develop.  Boots don't do this.  I consider all mine to be barefoot, but only one is an absolutely true performance barefooter.


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## MerrySherryRider (11 February 2011)

brucea said:



			And we have some barefoot horses who perform brilliantly too....barefoot horses are all over the place! 

Click to expand...

Doesn't one of yours have a problem with recurring absesses ?

Following frequent advice from the Barefoot brigade on using boots, I think the belief of all horses being able to be worked normally over all terrain, unshod, is flawed. Since 'Barefoot' become reinvented as utopia for all, a few years back- as opposed to many tough ponies and cobs never being shod 40 years ago -the market in hoof boots has ballooned. Funny that. Maybe the mantra should be Barefoot-with-boots-in-your-pocket.

Anyway, none of this helps the OP who actually asked for shoeing advice before thread was hijacked by a few their own agenda.


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## paddy555 (11 February 2011)

A barefoot horse would be one that has no shoes on and survives happily without man made attachments being applied for work at any time.

Are there actually any barefoot horses out there by that definition



my first horse, barefoot all his life and PTS at 31. He didn't just survive happily he worked hard!!!  
My old arab has done 20 years work barefoot, 
My connie X
my heinz 57
my arab 
my other arab
my Peruvians x 2

is that enough? LOL 
sorry I haven't read the rest of the thread as no doubt it is the usual boring barefoot shod stuff but your question amused me.


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## soloequestrian (11 February 2011)

horserider said:



			Following frequent advice from the Barefoot brigade on using boots, I think the belief of all horses being able to be worked normally over all terrain, unshod, is flawed. Since 'Barefoot' become reinvented as utopia for all, a few years back- as opposed to many tough ponies and cobs never being shod 40 years ago -the market in hoof boots has ballooned. Funny that. Maybe the mantra should be Barefoot-with-boots-in-your-pocket.
		
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But boots and shoes are not in any way equivalent.... I think the mantra often IS 'boots in your pocket'.  Why do you see this as 'failure'?  I think of boots in similar terms to rugs - 20 years ago my delicate flower of a TB wouldn't have been able to live out 24/7 in the north of Scotland because the rugs weren't up to it.  Now, with various advances in materials etc, he can - the rugs are brilliant and his health and welfare are better than they would have been.  Same with the boots.  He isn't yet (I have high hopes) a performance barefoot horse, but he can go bare most of the time because I have the option to use boots when I need them, which I wouldn't have done 20 years ago.


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## Clava (11 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Are there actually any barefoot horses out there by that definition ?

Genuine question .
		
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My two ponies and my three liveries are all bootless barefoot or unshod horses, yes they exist. My TB is barefoot over stones ...but I do own a pair of boots which I used at the start.

horserider - this thread was not hijacked, the OP did ask about shoeing but most threads allow for alternatives the OP may not have considered or it would be a very limited forum. Surely more options are better than just a few.


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## quirky (11 February 2011)

Must say I am surprised that there are true barefoot horses out there and not just the odd one by the sounds of it .


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## LucyPriory (11 February 2011)

quirky said:



			Must say I am surprised that there are true barefoot horses out there and not just the odd one by the sounds of it .
		
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And all but one of the Houston Mounted Police Force. 8 hour shifts sometimes more, all on the road and worse.

They use boots for transition and riots, but generally end up completely bare.


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## brucea (11 February 2011)

Doesn't one of yours have a problem with recurring absesses ?
		
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Thanks for asking. Yes - interestingly enough he did for a number of months. There was a lot of healing had to go on in his feet - and he went through quite a lot of decontraction.  

I've a picture that was taken 6 months after the shoes came off - the shoe against the hoof. You can see how much change there was caudally.

Not the best or prettiest foot in the world - but pretty functional







By the way - I have no problem using boots when I need to - becuase they are bare footed the other 23 hours of the day and getting the benefits of it.


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## LucyPriory (11 February 2011)

http://www.thehorseshoof.com/success_Houston1.html http://www.thehorseshoof.com/success_Houston2.html

If you want to find out more about them - the links above should work


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## Jesstickle (11 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			I really do want to know.  I am not fundamentally for shoeing and against barefoot.  At the moment it is simply that the body of evidence for shoeing is much stronger than the body of evidence for barefoot.  I am aware that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", but I cannot ethically recommend a treatment that is unproven over one that is proven.  Obviously I am keen to see any studies on barefoot trimming as if the current body of evidence points toward an incorrect conclusion, the sooner the veterinary and horse owning community knows about it, the better.

I appreciate that getting funding for studies is not easy - there are thousands of potential studies that could be performed every year that will never be performed in all likelihood.  However, funding difficulties exist for everyone, not just barefoot practitioners.  I really dislike the calling of conspiracy theories e.g. there is no money in shoeing, so no-one will fund it.  Yes, a big company with a new drug or treatment will fund a trial (often a woefully inadequate and inaccurate trial but that is beside the point), but there remain many charitable organisations who fund studies with no commercial motivation.  As an example, I believe you mentioned the Laminitis Trust earlier in the thread.  The LT gains money through licensing its safe feed tick to feed manufacturers, its premium rate "advice" line and charitable donations.  Why does it have a financial motivation to encourage shoeing?  Or how about the HBLB Trust, whose only stated aim is to improve horse welfare in the UK?
Calls to imagine conspiracy theories do nothing more than liken the foot trimmer to the homeopath.  Funding is available to those with the time and knowledge to perform the studies adequately.

I do also have some problems with the philosophy of some foot trimmers.  For example, earlier in this thread it was stated that Imprint shoes were detrimental as they made the horse too comfortable, so it moved around more.  The implication being that debilitating pain is an appropriate tool to use.  I do not know if these are your views, but regardless, they are espoused by barefoot devotees and reflect dimly on the community.


The joy of living in an enlightened age of scientific reasoning is that we no longer have to rely on the anecdotal.  Experience has shown time and time again that anecdotal evidence can be completely wrong, and that only properly conducted trials can be trusted.  For example, for many years A&E doctors gave spinal cord trauma patients steroids, because it was supported by logic, and had anecdotally good success.  Eventually a double-blind placebo controlled randomised trial was performed, and the death rate of patients receiving steroids was significantly higher.  Years of medical "wisdom" and anecdotal "evidence" was overturned, and standard practices were changed.  How many patients died due to the power of anecdotal evidence however?  
Human instinct cannot be trusted - we are hard-wired pattern spotters.  The human who mistook a pattern of leaves for a tiger and mistakenly ran survived better than the one who mistook the tiger for leaves.  If we are to improve medical knowledge, we now realise it is not sufficient to trust our own pattern-recognising behaviour.

For every anecdotal success that barefoot supporters can list, I could counter with a success story for shoeing.  How about the 17 year old mare with a history of lameness?  She had chronic laminitis with mild rotation and moderate sinking, and had not been ridden for 3 years.  I saw her at this point when she was requiring a minimum of 2 sachets of bute daily to stay sound.  3 months after applying heart bar shoes I had the pleasure of watching her buck around the field bute free, and 6 months later of meeting her owner riding her out on a hack.  Of course we made some dietary and management changes as well - no lami case will be a success without this whether we use shoes or not.

I haven't read Jaime Jackson's book on Founder - I did read his article on P3 rotation posted in this thread.  I struggled to place too much faith in it after he described the skeleton as non-weightbearing.  The article as a whole was full of speculation and theorising without any proof.  This makes me loathe to waste my hard-earned on a full books worth of the same.

When I ask for evidence of the superiority of barefoot over shoeing approaches to treating laminitis, then to be convinced I would need to see a study showing statistically significant differences between the two, such as length of time spent on box rest, length of time receiving painkillers, objective lameness grading, survival time.  If this exists then please point me in the right direction.
Another study might compare non-diseased horses kept barefoot vs non diseased horses kept shod, and compare the incidence of lameness between the two.  Again, this does not exist to my knowledge.

I am not interested in supporting one treatment or another based on fundamental beliefs, but based on published sound evidence.  My rebuttal of barefoot trimming is based solely on the evidence, and I would happily be convinced as to its superiority.
		
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OMG. I have no idea who you are or where you came from but I am deeply in love with you. Will you marry me? Someone who actually understands scientific trials, methods and funding on HHO. Hurrah!


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## lazybee (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			I am not interested in supporting one treatment or another based on fundamental beliefs, but based on published sound evidence.  My rebuttal of barefoot trimming is based solely on the evidence, and I would happily be convinced as to its superiority.
		
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This I what I've been trying to say throughout this thread, but have lacked your eloquence. 
I have also mentioned I have one, and only one barefooter he doesn't even need trimming. The rest do. I only have one with a full set and that's my big driving Normandy cob. They all have their own individual requirements. It's my responsibility to give them what they need by keeping an open mind.


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## MerrySherryRider (12 February 2011)

brucea said:



			Thanks for asking. Yes - interestingly enough he did for a number of months. There was a lot of healing had to go on in his feet - and he went through quite a lot of decontraction.  

I've a picture that was taken 6 months after the shoes came off - the shoe against the hoof. You can see how much change there was caudally.

Not the best or prettiest foot in the world - but pretty functional







By the way - I have no problem using boots when I need to - becuase they are bare footed the other 23 hours of the day and getting the benefits of it.
		
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Absesses and chunks of heal falling away 2 years after shoes came off ??
Equally, that photo disturbs me everytime you post it. Whoever owned that horse when the photo was taken must have been incredibly neglectful. The mind boggles. The horse is better off without shoes if the owner thinks that is an acceptable way to leave a horse.

Never had an absess in any of my present and past unshod horses, but hard work and self trim or old fashioned farrier seems to keep them healthy. Sometimes bad trimming is the cause allowing gravel to enter the hoof. Change trimmer perhaps ?


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## Clava (12 February 2011)

horserider said:



			Equally, that photo disturbs me everytime you post it. Whoever owned that horse when the photo was taken must have been incredibly neglectful. The mind boggles. The horse is better off without shoes if the owner thinks that is an acceptable way to leave a horse.
		
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Why?


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## MerrySherryRider (12 February 2011)

Clava said:



			Why?
		
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Would you leave that shoe on that horse then ?

LOL ! Scrub that, put my glasses on and can see the shoe is not nailed on.


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## soloequestrian (12 February 2011)

jesstickle said:



			OMG. I have no idea who you are or where you came from but I am deeply in love with you. Will you marry me? Someone who actually understands scientific trials, methods and funding on HHO. Hurrah!
		
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Um, read this bit again
'When I ask for evidence of the superiority of barefoot over shoeing approaches to treating laminitis, then to be convinced I would need to see a study showing statistically significant differences between the two, such as length of time spent on box rest, length of time receiving painkillers, objective lameness grading, survival time. If this exists then please point me in the right direction.
Another study might compare non-diseased horses kept barefoot vs non diseased horses kept shod, and compare the incidence of lameness between the two. Again, this does not exist to my knowledge.'

How can you use an argument like this against recommending barefoot when these types of study haven't been done in shod?  How on earth would you carry out the laminitis study - you would need many, many in the sample before you could say anything statistically valid because you would be dealing with different individuals in different situations.  Unless you had facilities in which you could keep a herd of similar horses in which you were willing to induce laminitis and then treat differently.    
The second might be more likely, but very long term and again to say anything statistically valid, numbers would have to be huge and horses pair-matched.
Please don't assume the rest of us are thick because we say that these types of study are UNLIKELY to happen.


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## Jesstickle (12 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			Um, read this bit again
'When I ask for evidence of the superiority of barefoot over shoeing approaches to treating laminitis, then to be convinced I would need to see a study showing statistically significant differences between the two, such as length of time spent on box rest, length of time receiving painkillers, objective lameness grading, survival time. If this exists then please point me in the right direction.
Another study might compare non-diseased horses kept barefoot vs non diseased horses kept shod, and compare the incidence of lameness between the two. Again, this does not exist to my knowledge.'

How can you use an argument like this against recommending barefoot when these types of study haven't been done in shod?  How on earth would you carry out the laminitis study - you would need many, many in the sample before you could say anything statistically valid because you would be dealing with different individuals in different situations.  Unless you had facilities in which you could keep a herd of similar horses in which you were willing to induce laminitis and then treat differently.    
The second might be more likely, but very long term and again to say anything statistically valid, numbers would have to be huge and horses pair-matched.
Please don't assume the rest of us are thick because we say that these types of study are UNLIKELY to happen.
		
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Of course you wouldn't induce laminitis. How on earth do you think clinical studies progress now in humans? We don't go round giving people cancer or HIV! As you say, you get as big a sample set as possible and you normalise as much as possible and you go from there. That is EXACTLY how many, many current studies work. They run over the course of 15 or 20 years. It is unlikely because it is low on the list of priorities for most vets and scientists NOT because it is too difficult to do. 

And I think that the poster was saying that they are neither pro or anti bare foot or shod. That they sit on the fence. I think they're point was that they would like the 'barefooters' for want of a better word, to calm down their zeal until someone can prove it actually works. By the sounds of it they want shod and unshod investigated to solve the argument.

And I didn't say anyone was thick,  I was just happy to find someone who understands scientific rigour and the issues of funding. I wasn't even really commenting on this thread. 

Lighten up love


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

quirky said:



			I do understand most things, I'm a bright button .

What I am trying to say, which you don't seem to be able to accept is ......

The barefooters (no such word ) go on about their horses being able to go barefoot blah, blah, blah.

But, how many are truly barefoot?
Having boots/socks on does not constitute a barefoot horse in my eyes.
A barefoot horse would be one that has no shoes on and survives happily without man made attachments being applied for work at any time.

Are there actually any barefoot horses out there by that definition ?

Genuine question .
		
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My current hunter, I'mjust about to go out and plait him up:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IaGqwoQlnmA/TOvlktjYQHI/AAAAAAAAAqg/NHHYx77wYNo/s1600/Coming+Down+WR.jpg

My previous eventer - look at the landing. He is one of five who I have affiliated up to novice (3ft 9 max at affiliated level, not what most people would define as "novice").

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IaGqwoQlnmA/SKsobjsaQpI/AAAAAAAAAU4/Qo7zu6lPsBU/s1600-h/george080110-2.jpg

These horses are only a couple out of hundreds of us doing this kind of thing. This is why we are so frustrated that people want scientific evidence that barefoot works when they have no such evidence that shoeing works. I wonder how many of the people who call for scientific evidence believe in homeopathy. Homeopathy fails every scientifically conducted trial that it is put through, human and animal.


ps jesstickle they DO induce laminitis to test horses. There at least one project where they force fed fructans to induce laminitis which is commonly used to illustrate the dangers of fructans.  I'm pretty sure steroids have been tested in the same way.


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## brucea (12 February 2011)

Absesses and chunks of heal falling away 2 years after shoes came off ??
		
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Yep - that happened last summer. He had an abscess in the spring that grumbled on. A chunk of the heel flaked off, and underneath was all the abscess gunk. 

There has been a long term healing process. Hoof shape changes have been going on since he was unshod - it's been later starting in the left foot and taken longer than the right, but it was the most contracted. We have sets of xrays all the way through and the vet has been seeing him regularly.

It took 9 years of shoeing to get his hooves to where they were - and a long term healing process for them to recover brings no surprises. He has also move environments in the last 18 months and that had an effect (positive on the whole) on all of them.

When he was shod, it was by one of the best regarded farriers in the area. But I had a choice between a horse that was simply getting less and less sound in shoes, or doing something radically different.


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## soloequestrian (12 February 2011)

jesstickle said:



			Of course you wouldn't induce laminitis. How on earth do you think clinical studies progress now in humans? We don't go round giving people cancer or HIV! As you say, you get as big a sample set as possible and you normalise as much as possible and you go from there. That is EXACTLY how many, many current studies work. They run over the course of 15 or 20 years. It is unlikely because it is low on the list of priorities for most vets and scientists NOT because it is too difficult to do. 

And I think that the poster was saying that they are neither pro or anti bare foot or shod. That they sit on the fence. I think they're point was that they would like the 'barefooters' for want of a better word, to calm down their zeal until someone can prove it actually works. By the sounds of it they want shod and unshod investigated to solve the argument.

And I didn't say anyone was thick,  I was just happy to find someone who understands scientific rigour and the issues of funding. I wasn't even really commenting on this thread. 

Lighten up love
		
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But find me a study on (shod) treatment of laminitis in horses that was run in the same way as clinical studies for treatments in humans.
It's all very well understanding controlled studies, scientific rigour and the like - we could all devise a perfect clinical trial, but devising one that is practical and ethical is something very different.  You don't prove that something works, you disprove that it doesn't, or show that it works better than something else.
If you read back, you'll see that the poster is a vet who is unwilling to recommend unshod treatment for laminitics until there is clinical evidence to back it's efficacy.  I'm arguing that this won't happen, and that at least owners should be made aware of the option - they can then go and investigate the large body of anecdotal work that does exist and decide for themselves, like I did for my (now sound and working) horse who had laminitis.  It's very unscientific, but the shod route would have had her in a very restricted area for at least 2 months after the laminitis had gone.  The barefoot route, which I chose, meant that she was back out with her pals, leading a normal life, very much earlier.  For a horse who gets extremely stressed stabled, it was I think obviously a better option.
Please stop saying 'lighten up' when you are discussing serious and interesting issues.


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			I wonder how many of the people who call for scientific evidence believe in homeopathy. Homeopathy fails every scientifically conducted trial that it is put through, human and animal.
		
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Certainly not this one.  There are two reasons not to believe in homeopathy:
1) It is logically absurd.
2) Trials have shown it does not work.

Reason 1 is a crap reason in reality - many things that seem illogical in the paradigm of the time are later shown to make sense.  Reason 2 is irrefutable.
I really think we should probably do away with homeopathy talk in this thread - firstly it is even further off topic than we have all been so far, and secondly I don't think it is anyone's best interests to be compared with homepaths.


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			But find me a study on (shod) treatment of laminitis in horses that was run in the same way as clinical studies for treatments in humans.
		
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If you look through my previous posts on this thread then you will see how quality of evidence is graded.  As stated there, we do not have large randomised clinical trials directly comparing shoeing with barefoot management.  However we do have many papers supporting shoeing, certainly for laminitics.  The examples I listed earlier in the thread were not supposed to be examples of great papers, or of great proof, just to demonstrate that there IS evidence for shoeing that does not exist for barefoot.  I have spent a bit more time looking for better papers to use as examples:

Evaluation Using Hoof Wall Strain Gauges of a Therapeutic Shoe and a Hoof Cast with a Heel Wedge as Potential Supportive Therapy for Horses with Laminitis
NICOLAS HANSEN MS, HH, FLORIAN BUCHNER DVM, PhD, JÜRGEN HALLER Ing., GERHARD WINDISCHBAUER DI Dr
Veterinary Surgery
Volume 34, Issue 6, pages 630636, November 2005

Direct comparison in an experimental setting of unshod, therapeutically shod and hoof cast with wedge, and their effects on dorsal hoof wall strain.  DHW strain was significantly lower in both shod and cast groups compared with unshod.

And to show fairness here is a published paper in favour of barefoot:
Published in Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law Veterinary Association Journal,  
January 2008 
1 
METAL, MYTH & EQUINE MISERY 
Robert Cook
http://www.strasserhoofcare.org/articles_pdf/2.pdf

Compare the language used in both papers - there is a significant difference.  Also, a key point in the article...
Today, most horsemen still believe that the purpose of the horseshoe is to protect the hoof.  But evidence gathered in the last 25 years shows this to be incorrect.9-11 In fact, shoes cause serious harm to the hooves and ultimately to the whole horse.12

Here are those references.



			9. .Strasser H and Kells S: A lifetime of soundness. Sabine Kells, PO Box 44, Qualicum Beach, BC Canada V9K 1S7. 1998 
10. Strasser H: Shoeing: A necessary evil? Ed: Kells S. Sabine Kells, PO Box 44, Qualicum Beach, BC Canada V9K 1S7. 1999 
11. Jackson J: The natural horse. Star Ridge Publishing, Harrison AR 1997 
12. Strasser H and Kells S: Listing of the harmful effects of shoeing. 2002. 
Available at www.thehorseshoof.com/listing.html.
		
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9,10 and 12 from a man now prosecuted for animal welfare issues, and credited with inventing a brutal trimming technique.  11 - a book, not published evidence.
When writing a paper it is fine to build on the conclusions of others, but only if those conclusions are sound.  It is easy to fool people by putting a reference, because many will not check either the quality or the content of the reference, and simply believe it is true because it is referenced.
I am not cherry picking a bad paper for barefoot here, this is simply the first one I came across in over 100 papers I glanced over that are on the topic of laminitis.


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## madaboutollie (12 February 2011)

Hi again all - it's me, the original poster 

Many thanks for all your private messages - from both the Barefoot Brigade and the Shoe Team (I can say this without getting struck off or beheaded or having my eyes poked out with a hoof pick because I have one barefoot horse and my laminitic, who's own personal motto is 'No shoe, no horse')

Just to update you, the steel heart bars have been removed, as my lovely gelding is clearly not tolerating them.  I have opted to put the Stable Support System on for a few weeks (styrofoam pads) to give his feet a rest, as I feel they've had a lot of trauma recently.

So, barefoot aside for this moment in time please, does anyone have any ideas on where to go next?  Has anyone had success with Imprint shoes after the steel heart bars have failed?  Or the adjustable Eustace shoe?

My horse remains happy and resilient and a long, long way from giving up on life, so any advice would be gratefully and warmly received.


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## Jesstickle (12 February 2011)

soloequestrian said:



			Please stop saying 'lighten up' when you are discussing serious and interesting issues.
		
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I only said it once. I wasn't discussing anything serious. I don't give a toss what you all do with your horses feet and I made no contribution one way or the other on the matter.

I made a light hearted commented about how I was happy to see someone who knew how to read a paper and you jumped on me and accused me of calling you thick.

Just because you think this is the most important thing in the world doesn't mean we all have to. If I want to make a joke I'm perfectly within my rights to do so. 

To the OP, I'm really sorry but I don't know anything about rehab for lamis. I've never had a laminitic pony in my life and I'm not a vet. I do hope however that you find something which makes him comfortable. Please pass on a low sugar, high fibre treat from me and my beasts


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## Jesstickle (12 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			My previous eventer - look at the landing. He is one of five who I have affiliated up to novice (3ft 9 max at affiliated level, not what most people would define as "novice").

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IaGqwoQlnmA/SKsobjsaQpI/AAAAAAAAAU4/Qo7zu6lPsBU/s1600-h/george080110-2.jpg

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lovely horse


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## amandap (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			9,10 and 12 from a man now prosecuted for animal welfare issues, and credited with inventing a brutal trimming technique.
		
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Dr H Strasser is a woman. Please read the link posted earlier... history of barefoot movement by Jaime Jackson. Strasser does not perform a non invasive (do no harm) trim.   I don't believe that invalidates all her work though.


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## cassy1993 (12 February 2011)

Do whatever your vet and farrier suggests I asked on hear a while aback about my horses broken pedal bone and the barefoot bregade tryed to get me to go barefoot then but thankfuly I didn't. They think it fixes every thing


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## LucyPriory (12 February 2011)

amandap said:



			Dr H Strasser is a woman. Please read the link posted earlier... history of barefoot movement by Jaime Jackson. Strasser does not perform a non invasive (do no harm) trim.   I don't believe that invalidates all her work though.
		
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Not only a woman - but a VET.

alsiola - I fully support your right to an opinion and for to have your own views regarding barefoot v shod.  Shame though that as a vet you didn't know the welfare case was based on a technique invented and taught by a vet and that this vet is still permitted to do this.

As for statistically valid scientific studies - just how many of these exist?  Please can you direct me to them because as far as horses are concerned they seem to be very few. 

I used to have to edit research material and it completely undermined my faith in how research is conducted.  I have seen nothing produced in recent history by the veterinary community which has restored this faith, but I am happy to change my POV if someone can supply the evidence.


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## quirky (12 February 2011)

madaboutollie said:



			So, barefoot aside for this moment in time please, does anyone have any ideas on where to go next?  Has anyone had success with Imprint shoes after the steel heart bars have failed?  Or the adjustable Eustace shoe?
		
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Yes, I had success with Imprints.
His hoof was too brittle to nail a shoe to and it wasn't in the equation to leave him without.
Not cheap but they allowed his hoof time to recover.
I would recommend them.

Are you in Lancashire? Mark Caudwell is an excellent remedial farrier and I believe he has worked with Robert Eustace.

Good luck with your horse, I hope you make some progress.


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

cassy1993 said:



			Do whatever your vet and farrier suggests I asked on hear a while aback about my horses broken pedal bone and the barefoot bregade tryed to get me to go barefoot then but thankfuly I didn't. They think it fixes every thing
		
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This is not the whole truth Cassy. I for one told you that I would shoe for a pedal bone fracture and there was considerable discussion and quite a lot of criticism from some barefooters of others. In your case we were not " a Brigade" in any sense.


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

LucyPriory said:



			Not only a woman - but a VET.

alsiola - I fully support your right to an opinion and for to have your own views regarding barefoot v shod.  Shame though that as a vet you didn't know the welfare case was based on a technique invented and taught by a vet and that this vet is still permitted to do this.
		
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I don't know the full details of the case, and I really am not that interested in whether she is a woman/man, vet/trimmer or whatever else.  Judge people by their actions not their qualifications.




			As for statistically valid scientific studies - just how many of these exist?  Please can you direct me to them because as far as horses are concerned they seem to be very few.  I used to have to edit research material and it completely undermined my faith in how research is conducted.  I have seen nothing produced in recent history by the veterinary community which has restored this faith, but I am happy to change my POV if someone can supply the evidence.
		
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There are some, not as many as I, or anyone else would like.  It is a sad fact of veterinary medicine that we have very poor evidence for the efficacy of many treatments.  This doesn't strengthen the claims of barefoot in any way, which has even poorer evidence for its efficacy.  Here is a recent example, unrelated to this debate:

Tiludronate infusion in the treatment of bone spavin: A double blind placebo-controlled trial
EQUINE VETERINARY JOURNAL
Volume 42, Issue 5, July 2010, Pages: 381387, M. R. GOUGH, D. THIBAUD and R. K. W. SMITH

Multi-centre, randomised, double-blind and placebo controlled.  This is a study of high evidence value.  These studies can be and are performed.  Of course, this was funded by the drug manufacturer, but funds are available elsewhere.  Maybe whoever supplies Pete Ramey with boots could consider making a contribution to the advancement of equine science?


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Certainly not this one.  There are two reasons not to believe in homeopathy:
1) It is logically absurd.
2) Trials have shown it does not work.

Reason 1 is a crap reason in reality - many things that seem illogical in the paradigm of the time are later shown to make sense.  Reason 2 is irrefutable.
I really think we should probably do away with homeopathy talk in this thread - firstly it is even further off topic than we have all been so far, and secondly I don't think it is anyone's best interests to be compared with homepaths.
		
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The homeopathy discussion is valid. One because horse lovers are often the kind of people who believe in it,  and I will eat my hat if some of the people who are criticizing barefooters for being unable to come up with scientific research don't believe in it.

Two because in humans it DOES work. Not for the reasons that the homeopaths say it works, but because the consultations are way, way, way in excess of the length of time anyone gets to talk to a non-homeopathic doctor. It's the talking and the faith of the patient that cures, of course, not the funny water. In that situation, if someone was suffering from a disease that all else had failed, wouldn't you, if you were a doctor, refer them for homeopathy if you could?

All we want is for vets and farriers to listen about the number of horses that we have managed to bring sound when they had had every treatment available and were still lame. And to tell owners that there may, just, be a last resort before having their horses shot or permanently retired. You can tell them that you cannot recommend it wholeheartedly as it is not scientifically tested, but that there is information in the public domain should the owner choose to research it. Will you do that, after what we have told you that we can do? And if not, what other information can we give you that would change your mind instead of telling those owners to retire their horses or put them to sleep?


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Maybe whoever supplies Pete Ramey with boots could consider making a contribution to the advancement of equine science?
		
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Maybe the Farriers Registration Council or Worshipful Company of Farriers should prove their products aren't the primary cause of failure to restore soundness in horses with navicular syndrome, and ddft, collateral ligament and impar ligament strain first?  Maybe vets should prove that adequan, tildren and HLA which they charge large amounts of  money to administer actually work better than a barefoot rehab? 

Have you looked at the Rockley Farm stuff? Are you aware that a typical length of time to restore soundness is well under four months? My navicular (diagnosed by xray) rehab had adequan tildren HLA and bar shoes and was still so lame that his owner was  a day of having  him put to sleep. He was sound with me in TEN WEEKS and did a farm ride with jumping in twelve and has been sound ever since.

This is what is so frustrating alsiola, and why we are called zealots and a lot of other nasty things. You see, we just can't believe that if we were vets we wouldn't be on the phone to Rockley to ask Nic how in heaven's name she is producing these astonishing results time after time.  Not on this forum trying to justify why we won't tell our clients that these horses even exist.


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

LucyPriory said:



			alsiola - I fully support your right to an opinion and for to have your own views regarding barefoot v shod.
		
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My opinions are worthless.  So are yours, so are everyone elses.  What isn't worthless is evidence based medicine.  This is the point that I have been repeatedly trying to put across.  It is not my opinion that treating laminitics with shoes is superior to barefoot, it is what the evidence currently supports.  If, as others allude to, you have a case report in preparation on barefoot management, then I urge you to push as hard as you can to get it published.  I support the advancement of knowledge regardless of whether it upsets people, disagrees with the opinion of many, puts people out of business or anything else.
I try and keep my opinions to myself, as they are not relevant to a discussion of facts.  As it happens my personal opinion is that laminitics need multi-faceted care: nutrition, endocrine problems and foot balance all need addressing.  As has been pointed out to me in this thread then the social/psychological needs of the horse must also be met.  If we have all of this sorted, then whether we finish by sticking a shoe on the foot or not probably makes little overall difference, although I have no doubts that some horses will do far better shod, and others will do far better unshod.  My personal experience suggests that shoeing is helpful more often than not.  This is anecdotal crap though, so ignore it.
I am not judging barefoot by standards any different to how I judge my own work.  If I treat a horse with antibiotics and it gets better, then I am happy the horse is better.  In truth, I cannot in any scientifically valid way say that my antibiotics cured the horse's problem.


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## LucyPriory (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Tiludronate infusion in the treatment of bone spavin: A double blind placebo-controlled trial
EQUINE VETERINARY JOURNAL
Volume 42, Issue 5, July 2010, Pages: 381387, M. R. GOUGH, D. THIBAUD and R. K. W. SMITH

Multi-centre, randomised, double-blind and placebo controlled.  This is a study of high evidence value.  These studies can be and are performed.  Of course, this was funded by the drug manufacturer, but funds are available elsewhere.  Maybe whoever supplies Pete Ramey with boots could consider making a contribution to the advancement of equine science?
		
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This research was based on 108 - not statistically valid and only 87 completed the trial according to the protocol - so even less validity.

Still looking for proper science - anyone got any?


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Evaluation Using Hoof Wall Strain Gauges of a Therapeutic Shoe and a Hoof Cast with a Heel Wedge as Potential Supportive Therapy for Horses with Laminitis
NICOLAS HANSEN MS, HH, FLORIAN BUCHNER DVM, PhD, JÜRGEN HALLER Ing., GERHARD WINDISCHBAUER DI Dr
Veterinary Surgery
Volume 34, Issue 6, pages 630636, November 2005

Direct comparison in an experimental setting of unshod, therapeutically shod and hoof cast with wedge, and their effects on dorsal hoof wall strain.  DHW strain was significantly lower in both shod and cast groups compared with unshod.
		
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I'm sorry, but that study has nothing to do with whether the horse recovered, or how well, does it? As I said before, my own belief is that heart bars appear to work because they reduce pain, and reducing DHW strain will reduce pain. So will bute and danilon and sedation will allow a horse to cope with it.  That study does not show anything about the best prospects for long term soundness of the horse, only for reduction in DHW strain in the short term (in the long term, with a correct diet, the DHW strain issue resolves itself by the production of a newly attached foot. Barefooters report that horses come much sounder, or sound, and that flat footed horses concave up (as the pedal bone is pulled up inside the foot)  after only a relatively small amount of the top of the foot has regrown, so we are not talking major lengths of time here for the pain to be treated by other means.


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			Maybe the Farriers Registration Council or Worshipful Company of Farriers should prove their products aren't the primary cause of failure to restore soundness in horses with navicular syndrome, and ddft, collateral ligament and impar ligament strain first?  Maybe vets should prove that adequan, tildren and HLA which they charge large amounts of  money to administer actually work better than a barefoot rehab?
		
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Of the 3 treatments you list, I have read studies on adequan and tildren.  Adequan has fairly weak evidence supporting it, and I would rarely recommend it.  Tildren has some of the best quality evidence possible showing it to be useful.  HLA I am sadly ignorant of the current evidence status. (I am a first opinion equine vet - I see loads of laminitis, but other lameness cases I tend to send to my colleagues who are more interested in, and better at dealing with them.  They send me the medicine ones back!  )
The issue here is that barefoot trimming is not the only other treatment modality that is raved about.  If we have to prove these treatments are better than barefoot, do we also have to prove they are better than acupuncture, chiropractice, EMRT, homeopathy, etc etc.  The list is potentially endless.  Unfortunately at the moment barefoot has no more evidence supporting it than any of these other modalities, so there is no reason to test against an unproven treatment.  If there was some evidence produced for barefoot, then the reason to test becomes greater. 




			Have you looked at the Rockley Farm stuff? Are you aware that a typical length of time to restore soundness is well under four months? My navicular (diagnosed by xray) rehab had adequan tildren HLA and bar shoes and was still so lame that his owner was  a day of having  him put to sleep. He was sound with me in TEN WEEKS and did a farm ride with jumping in twelve and has been sound ever since.

This is what is so frustrating alsiola, and why we are called zealots and a lot of other nasty things. You see, we just can't believe that if we were vets we wouldn't be on the phone to Rockley to ask Nic how in heaven's name she is producing these astonishing results time after time.  Not on this forum trying to justify why we won't tell our clients that these horses even exist.
		
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I don't think I've called you anything nasty.  I am happy with the results I see when treating laminitis, and as I have said before when you have a well balanced foot I don't believe shoe on/off status makes all that much difference.  Please don't assume what I do or don't tell my clients.  In fact, not 2 days ago I spoke to a client whose pony had been shod with Imprint shoes, and had not done spectularly well with them.  The conclusion we came to was that the best way forward was to remove the shoes and not replace them.  I am not a closed minded person, I just need things to be justified to me (not by stories on a forum or blog) before I can recommend them without a heavy heart.


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			My opinions are worthless.  So are yours, so are everyone elses.
		
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THIS IS NOT TRUE!

The first time any drug or treatment is discovered it is only the opinion of the researcher that carries the study forward to clinical trials. It's only the opinion of the researcher that makes them look in a particular area in the first place.

Just because evidence is anecdotal does NOT MAKE IT INCORRECT.

For example:

ecstasy is currently being used, illegally, to treat post traumatic stress disorder. Some bright spark put two and two together and thought that the feeling of wellbeing and friendliness that ecstasy creates could possibly be used to help remodel the memories of sufferers. Apparently, it's extremely successful. This is entirely anecdotal. But on the strength of those anecdotes some psychiatrists are using it and helping people. There is money at stake here of course, and I am sure that some drug company will be scientifically testing it soon to produce a packaged drug that they can charge a lot of money for.

The problem with our barefoot anecdotes is that it is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. It will mean massive loss of revenues by vets and remedial farriers.



ps I said "we are called", and we are. I didn't say you had called me anything.  I take your answer to mean, no, you will not tell someone who is about to put to sleep a navicular horse that it is possible that barefoot might cure it?


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

LucyPriory said:



			This research was based on 108 - not statistically valid and only 87 completed the trial according to the protocol - so even less validity.

Still looking for proper science - anyone got any?
		
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Your understanding of statistical validity is incomplete.  There is no magic number that makes a study significant or insignificant.  It is based on various things I cannot recall.  I am no statistician so I cannot tell you exactly, but statisticians worked with the researchers here and it is statistically significant.


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			THIS IS NOT TRUE!

The first time any drug or treatment is discovered it is only the opinion of the researcher that carries the study forward to clinical trials. It's only the opinion of the researcher that makes them look in a particular area in the first place.
		
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True, but until that drug has been through clinical trials it is completely unproven.  If that researcher were to recommend it as a treatment then his opinion would be worthless.




			Just because evidence is anecdotal does NOT MAKE IT INCORRECT.
		
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Just because there is anecdotal evidence does not mean there is any validity to the claim.  To return to homeopathy, there are many anecdotal reports of its efficacy in horses on this forum alone.  Both you and I know that no matter how many anecdotes we hear, the claim that homeopathy is effective on horses is never going to get any truer.
At the moment, there is nothing in the literature to distinguish your anecdotal reports from those of homeopathy zealots (I am prepared to insult homeopaths).  As such, there is no reason why the veterinary profession should treat the two any differently.  It is up to the barefoot community to produce evidence that it is not in the same league as homeopathy.  This does not need to be top quality evidence - well written case reports in reputable journals would suffice to pique some interest.




			For example:

ecstasy is currently being used, illegally, to treat post traumatic stress disorder. Some bright spark put two and two together and thought that the feeling of wellbeing and friendliness that ecstasy creates could possibly be used to help remodel the memories of sufferers. Apparently, it's extremely successful. This is entirely anecdotal. *But on the strength of those anecdotes some psychiatrists are using it and helping people.* There is money at stake here of course, and I am sure that some drug company will be scientifically testing it soon to produce a packaged drug that they can charge a lot of money for.
		
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The emphasis is mine.  Without proper evidence we do not know if these psychiatrists are helping people or harming them.




			The problem with our barefoot anecdotes is that it is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. It will mean massive loss of revenues by vets and remedial farriers.
		
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Farriers maybe.  I say maybe because on a time taken/price charged basis they are often better off doing more trims and less shoeing.
Explain to me how vets would lose out if barefoot became the accepted treatment for laminitis.  I do not apply shoes.  I receive no financial gain from a farrier applying a shoe.  When I see a horse with laminitis the only thing that is important is the best way to get the horse sound in the short and long term.  If it turned out that the best treatment was barefoot was the best treatment, based on evidence, then that is what I would recommend.





			ps I said "we are called", and we are. I didn't say you had called me anything.  I take your answer to mean, no, you will not tell someone who is about to put to sleep a navicular horse that it is possible that barefoot might cure it?
		
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Well don't complain about it to me then.  Personally I feel that calling someone a member of the "Barefoot Brigade" or whatever anyone else has said is far less insulting than implying that vets refuse to recommend barefoot because they are spineless immoral people who would rather look after their profits than the horses they see.
If I had exhausted all options supported by evidence for treating navicular, I would have no qualms with saying:
"We have tried all the accepted treatments for your horse's disease, but unfortunately we have not been successful.  I hesitate to recommend this to you, as there is no evidence to back it up, and I do not want to give you false hope, but there are anecdotal reports of barefoot trimming being beneficial.  I cannot recommend it strongly, but as we have no other options to explore I would be remiss if I did not mention it.  The final decision is your own and I will support you either way."
As before, please don't make assumptions about the way that I, or any other vet, practices.


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## LucyPriory (12 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Your understanding of statistical validity is incomplete.  There is no magic number that makes a study significant or insignificant.  It is based on various things I cannot recall.  I am no statistician so I cannot tell you exactly, but statisticians worked with the researchers here and it is statistically significant.
		
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I am not a statistician either but I spent decades working with them, and they would never accept such low numbers (unless they were being paid to do so).

As indeed I used to, until the shame of it became unbearable, that so many people were being mislead, including the expert community, and not just by the dodgy research.  So sorry, but no this research is not valid statistically (unless you are prepared to accept very broad boundaries), the numbers are too low.

As you know for statistical significance it is necessary to use a valid sample size and a valid methodology for selection of the sample. (and this opens up another can of worms)

As a rough rule of thumb, the sample should be about 10% of the universe, but not smaller than 30 and not greater than 350. 

It is important to define what confidence level is required and what margin of error is acceptable. A confidence level of 95% and an error margin of 5% provides a result that will be within 5% of the true answer 95% of the time.  

The correct sample size is a function of those three elements--the universe, the desired error margin, and the preferred confidence level. For varying sizes of universe here are the ideal sample sizes (the first at a 10% error margin, the second at 5%): 

50 in the universe, sample 33 or 44 
100 in the universe, sample 49 or 80 
200 in the universe, sample 65 or 132 
500 in the universe, sample 81 or 217 
1000 in the universe, sample 88 or 278 

My advice? Never marry a statistician


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

OK lets use cannabis as the example, then, since the ecstasy one isn't yet finished. Cannabinoids are now being licenced for use in the treatment of MS and diseases that cause chronic pain. 

This drug started entirely anecdotally, where someone tried their son's stash and found it helped. When enough people had done the same thing, a drug company produced a drug they can sell. 

At some point, the number of anecdotes becomes a driving force and I sincerely hope we are nearly there with barefoot.


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

LucyPriory said:



			I am not a statistician either but I spent decades working with them, and they would never accept such low numbers (unless they were being paid to do so).

As indeed I used to, until the shame of it became unbearable, that so many people were being mislead, including the expert community, and not just by the dodgy research.  So sorry, but no this research is not valid statistically (unless you are prepared to accept very broad boundaries), the numbers are too low.

As you know for statistical significance it is necessary to use a valid sample size and a valid methodology for selection of the sample. (and this opens up another can of worms)

As a rough rule of thumb, the sample should be about 10% of the universe, but not smaller than 30 and not greater than 350. 

It is important to define what confidence level is required and what margin of error is acceptable. A confidence level of 95% and an error margin of 5% provides a result that will be within 5% of the true answer 95% of the time.  

The correct sample size is a function of those three elements--the universe, the desired error margin, and the preferred confidence level. For varying sizes of universe here are the ideal sample sizes (the first at a 10% error margin, the second at 5%): 

50 in the universe, sample 33 or 44 
100 in the universe, sample 49 or 80 
200 in the universe, sample 65 or 132 
500 in the universe, sample 81 or 217 
1000 in the universe, sample 88 or 278 

My advice? Never marry a statistician 

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I find statistics extremely interesting, and it something I wish I knew more about. Actually considering an OU course in Medical Statistics as a hobby.  It is true that vets are sad sad people!
Potentially our reliance on statisticians is a folly - when I read a paper I will question if statistical analysis has been performed, and to what level, but not whether the methodology was correct.  I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted if I mention incorrect choices of statistical tests.  However, I don't have the knowledge to determine if the correct test was used, or if the methodology was correct.  If you know of any good resources for this information, without it getting too in depth then please let me know.  I have tried and failed.
When you say 1000 in the universe, what do you define as universe?  Every horse? Every lame horse? Every lame horse with a diagnosis of lower hock joint arthritis?  If its every horse, then given that there are c.6billion humans in the universe, would a medical study need 600 million samples for validity?  If its either of the latter two, then how do we know what these numbers are?  Every horse we could maybe get a handle on.  Every lame horse would surely come down to plucking a number out of the air?

My understanding was that to determine approximate number of samples needed, then you needed to know the variance of the value being measured, and the expected difference between positive and negative samples.  Between these you could work out the number needed for significance at whatever level you like, say 95%.  Equally I guess the fidelity of measurement would matter?  I.e. the more accurately one can measure, the less samples will be needed.  Is this covered in the error level in your post?


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## alsiola (12 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			OK lets use cannabis as the example, then, since the ecstasy one isn't yet finished. Cannabinoids are now being licenced for use in the treatment of MS and diseases that cause chronic pain. 

This drug started entirely anecdotally, where someone tried their son's stash and found it helped. When enough people had done the same thing, a drug company produced a drug they can sell. 

At some point, the number of anecdotes becomes a driving force and I sincerely hope we are nearly there with barefoot.
		
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People made anecdotal reports to doctors --> Doctors wrote case reports --> Drug companies did proper testing --> Drugs were licensed

Only after the case report phase _at the very least_ would any right minded doctor recommend the treatment.  Most would wait until proper testing was done.  Some would wait for a licensed product.

We are not yet at the stage with barefoot where any case reports have been produced.  While it is incumbent upon vets (I feel, not legally) to publish case reports of horses they have seen treated barefoot succesfully (or otherwise, we don't want any publication bias!), it *is not incumbent upon them to recommend a treatment that has only anecdotal support*.

If you are succesfully treating animals, then try speaking to a vet and explaining to them that you have had good results with a new technique, and would like them to prepare a case report for publication.  If someone approached me with this then I would certainly listen.  (If I were to do it funding would be needed, not for me but for my boss whose time I was using!).  This is the way to proceed, not waxing lyrical on public forums.  While you may get converts in this manner, all this will accomplish is more anecdote.  If you truly believe barefoot works (and I'm fairly certain that you do), then what you need is not more anecdote, but simply a small amount of more formal evidence.


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## LucyPriory (12 February 2011)

Quite - although it is relatively easy to define the universe on paper, for example all horses diagnosed as suffering from x.  We all know that an incorrect diagnosis is all too frequent. And truly if I had a brick for every one I've come across just personally, I'd be pretty wealthy by now.  

If I remember correctly I think you expressed a distaste for observation - but of course degree of lameness is judged by observation.  The trouble with observation is not that it is right/wrong, but that it is in the eye of the beholder. 

Which is why it is always entertaining to watch a bevy of vets do a lameness evaluation.  See I am pretty sad too! 

But enough already - it is off topic too much.


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## cptrayes (12 February 2011)

Alsiola you write as if we are asking you to "prescribe" barefoot. We are not stupid, surely you realise that by now? We do understand that scientific evidence is not available. We know that you cannot recommend an "experimental" procedure over an approved one. We also know that research is not going to happen in the short or medium term. But we know that our experiences are NOT value-less just because they are not part of a clinical trial.

"Waxing lyrical" on forums is our only way of letting people know that they don't need to have their horses shot. Many of them are not lucky enough to have a vet like you who says that they would mention a barefoot rehab as a last resort. We are a group of people with experiences to share but there is no organisation between us. We do not have funds to do this research, we have no organisation and there is no reason why we should. We know what can be done, we see the results in front of our eyes.

If you continue to pick holes in examples where anecdotal evidence was of value lets go right back to aspirin. Long long long long before doctors had licenced drugs or any drug was scientfically tested at all, aspirin was in widespread use BECAUSE IT WORKED. People recommended other people with headaches to chew willow bark. It was entirely anecdotal. It was entirely true.

There ARE case studies for the recovery of foot-lame (non laminitic) horses. If you want them, contact Rockley and they can put you in touch with the vets who referred the horses there.


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## Lainey123 (13 February 2011)

My vet refered my horse to Rockley as other option was pts. I found Rockley and it was a last resort for a horse that had been lame for 2 years, many different shoes, tildren, IRAP, you name it he had it and nothing worked. 

All i can say is that my horse is no longer lame, and is back hunting again, and competing again this summer. He's the best he has ever been and without Rockley i wouldn't have a horse. Everyone was against it as you could flex his soles with your finger, had badly underun heels. Now, he is amazing, never in a million years did i think that he would come back this good. Give Nic a call what have you got to lose, after all it's only an email or phone call. She is an amazing woman.x


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## MerrySherryRider (13 February 2011)

madaboutollie said:



			Hi again all - it's me, the original poster 

Many thanks for all your private messages - from both the Barefoot Brigade and the Shoe Team (I can say this without getting struck off or beheaded or having my eyes poked out with a hoof pick because I have one barefoot horse and my laminitic, who's own personal motto is 'No shoe, no horse')

Just to update you, the steel heart bars have been removed, as my lovely gelding is clearly not tolerating them.  I have opted to put the Stable Support System on for a few weeks (styrofoam pads) to give his feet a rest, as I feel they've had a lot of trauma recently.

So, barefoot aside for this moment in time please, does anyone have any ideas on where to go next?  Has anyone had success with Imprint shoes after the steel heart bars have failed?  Or the adjustable Eustace shoe?

My horse remains happy and resilient and a long, long way from giving up on life, so any advice would be gratefully and warmly received.

Click to expand...

Really hope you find the answer for your lad, its good to hear that he is happy,resilient and coping. Bet you never expected such a hot debate when you started this post ! Hopefully, someone on here will be able to give you first hand experience of the information that you are looking for. Good luck with him, he's lucky to have an owner so determined to do the best for him.


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## LucyPriory (13 February 2011)

horserider said:



			Really hope you find the answer for your lad, its good to hear that he is happy,resilient and coping. Bet you never expected such a hot debate when you started this post ! Hopefully, someone on here will be able to give you first hand experience of the information that you are looking for. Good luck with him, he's lucky to have an owner so determined to do the best for him.
		
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Second that


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## soloequestrian (13 February 2011)

madaboutollie said:



			Hi again all - it's me, the original poster 

Many thanks for all your private messages - from both the Barefoot Brigade and the Shoe Team (I can say this without getting struck off or beheaded or having my eyes poked out with a hoof pick because I have one barefoot horse and my laminitic, who's own personal motto is 'No shoe, no horse')

Just to update you, the steel heart bars have been removed, as my lovely gelding is clearly not tolerating them.  I have opted to put the Stable Support System on for a few weeks (styrofoam pads) to give his feet a rest, as I feel they've had a lot of trauma recently.

So, barefoot aside for this moment in time please, does anyone have any ideas on where to go next?  Has anyone had success with Imprint shoes after the steel heart bars have failed?  Or the adjustable Eustace shoe?

My horse remains happy and resilient and a long, long way from giving up on life, so any advice would be gratefully and warmly received.

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Okay, so this is still on the barefoot theme, but might be worth you looking at - there are hoof-casts or hoof-wraps (can't remember the exact name, but someone else might) - which are bandages which you can wrap the foot in and then they go hard and get left on for a while.  That is a really bad description because I haven't used them or even seen them, but have heard good things about them for horses with particularly sensitive soles.


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## cptrayes (13 February 2011)

It's not perfect but I have just found this:

http://www.hoofrehab.com/Taylor26horses.html

26 laminitic horses. No shod ones, so equal to the studies into heart bar shoes with no barefoot ones. Much greater numbers.


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## alsiola (13 February 2011)

cptrayes said:



			It's not perfect but I have just found this:

http://www.hoofrehab.com/Taylor26horses.html

26 laminitic horses. No shod ones, so equal to the studies into heart bar shoes with no barefoot ones. Much greater numbers.
		
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Great, I am glad that there are people out there doing this work.  Is there any possibility this will be written up into a proper case report?  The stats there are interesting but it would need a good deal of 'fleshing out' before publication.


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## soloequestrian (13 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			The examples I listed earlier in the thread were not supposed to be examples of great papers, or of great proof, just to demonstrate that there IS evidence for shoeing that does not exist for barefoot.  I have spent a bit more time looking for better papers to use as examples:

Evaluation Using Hoof Wall Strain Gauges of a Therapeutic Shoe and a Hoof Cast with a Heel Wedge as Potential Supportive Therapy for Horses with Laminitis
NICOLAS HANSEN MS, HH, FLORIAN BUCHNER DVM, PhD, JÜRGEN HALLER Ing., GERHARD WINDISCHBAUER DI Dr
Veterinary Surgery
Volume 34, Issue 6, pages 630636, November 2005

Direct comparison in an experimental setting of unshod, therapeutically shod and hoof cast with wedge, and their effects on dorsal hoof wall strain.  DHW strain was significantly lower in both shod and cast groups compared with unshod.
		
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This was a study on dead horses, or rather the disembodied limbs of dead horses.  That doesn't count as robust evidence for the efficacy of shoeing!


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## Tiny Fluffy Coblet (14 February 2011)

The lack of decent statisticaly sound empirical evidence is depressing in most fields of equine science not just shod/unshod. Part of the issue is that one can fiesibly keep 300 mice in a large lab under exacting conditions, horses not so much. Though I would say that most evidence for remedial shoeing as has been mentioned compares only to standard shoeing not to barefoot and I have yet to find a study comparing standard shoeing with not in sound horses.

I would like to see:
 - a study using a sample of over 100 (in each group) sound horses of varying breeds showing that the size/shape of the hoof differs significantly from a shod to an unshod hoof. The second part of the study using internal examination (x-ray at least) to show that the internal structures differ significantly (digital cushion ect)

 - a study using a sample of over 100 (in each group) sound horses of varying breeds showing that the action differs significantly (with particular reference to heel/toe first landing and breakover)

 - Studies showing that any differences in the above are actualy beneficial?

If I ever win a multi-million rollover jackpot you people will be the first to see my published work.....

It would be very nice if there could perhaps be a central database that extracted information directly from vetinary records (which I imagine would be in a database anyway?) regarding treatment, care, success rates, contributory factors, situation ect on lameness and everything else for that matter. 

If the db had no access to personal information of owners or names of horses ect merely the fact of 'shod horse gets laminitis having had previous bout- suspected cause breaking into grain bin - showed little improvement in heart bars but recovered well after having shoes removed' or 'unshod horse had recurrant abcesses, diet was altered with no improvement, now sound with shoes'. 

If it was set up right it shouldn't waste the Vet's time and I'm fairly sure people wanting to prove/disprove things would be prepared to pay a fee to use it therefore funding it. Would be useful to vets too I'd imagine. Unfortunately in my experience most veterinary practices are not open to helping with research or providing any information unless it is to other vets. I'm not sure if it is confidentiality related or what.


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## alsiola (14 February 2011)

Tiny Fluffy Coblet said:



			It would be very nice if there could perhaps be a central database that extracted information directly from vetinary records (which I imagine would be in a database anyway?) regarding treatment, care, success rates, contributory factors, situation ect on lameness and everything else for that matter. 

If the db had no access to personal information of owners or names of horses ect merely the fact of 'shod horse gets laminitis having had previous bout- suspected cause breaking into grain bin - showed little improvement in heart bars but recovered well after having shoes removed' or 'unshod horse had recurrant abcesses, diet was altered with no improvement, now sound with shoes'. 

If it was set up right it shouldn't waste the Vet's time and I'm fairly sure people wanting to prove/disprove things would be prepared to pay a fee to use it therefore funding it. Would be useful to vets too I'd imagine. Unfortunately in my experience most veterinary practices are not open to helping with research or providing any information unless it is to other vets. I'm not sure if it is confidentiality related or what.
		
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Retrospective studies can be useful, and are sometimes performed usually as a clinical audit.  This is done by many of the larger equine hospitals (Universities and Newmarket ones I know do it).  The problem is that unfortunately there is no standard record keeping software, and none of the available software is even close to doing it automatically.  It comes down to someone sitting and trawling through records, which is why only the biggest places can afford to do it. Data protection and confidentiality wise, I am not entirely sure.  I think it would probably be OK to publish based on these as long as no identifying information was used.  The big hospitals are covered because the first thing you do when you arrive is sign a form saying they can use your horse's information in research.

The other problem with these sort of studies is definitions.  When designing studies, extremely strict criteria are laid out as to what constitutes a diagnosis.  For example, a recent paper on hind limb suspensory desmitis defined the disease as:
Hindlimb lameness
Negative Low 6 point nerve block
Negative Tarso-metatarsal joint nerve block
Positive deep branch of lateral plantar nerve block
With various other criteria as to why a horse could not be included in the study, e.g. recent treatments, concurrent problems.
When doing a retrospective study, we do not know what criteria have been used by different vets, so horses with different conditions may be lumped together, and horses with the same condition may be given different diagnoses.  Unfortunately this is a reality of practice - not all owners have the funds to perform all testing for a truly definitive diagnosis, and not all vets believe it is always needed.  For example, if funds are limited and I am going to treat with rest and bute, does it matter whether I am treating a TMTJ arthritis with rest and bute, or treating a high suspensory desmitis with rest and bute?  Why waste limited money on tests that won't change the course of action.  
All this leads to a great deal of unreliability in records, that can only really be accounted for by a human assessing each one individually.  Nice idea though, and I really wish it was a practical option.


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## LucyPriory (14 February 2011)

alsiola said:



			Why waste limited money on tests that won't change the course of action.
		
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How refreshing!   - if only all vets were this practical - having had one vet wanting to do £3.5k worth of tests on an injury we agreed was a groin strain and which ultimately resolved to full soundness in 48 hours without bute.  Why?


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## criso (14 February 2011)

Tiny Fluffy Coblet said:



			It would be very nice if there could perhaps be a central database that extracted information directly from vetinary records (which I imagine would be in a database anyway?) regarding treatment, care, success rates, contributory factors, situation ect on lameness and everything else for that matter.
		
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Even when they do follow up, they don't necessarily go into that level of detail.

I'm in the interesting postion of having a horse that appears in 2 research projects, the Rockley one and a follow up of the sort of retrospective studies you mention at the hospital where the MRI was carried out.

For Rockley he was assessed by the same vet, using the same criteria, at the same place where he had been assessed regularly during 2 years of lameness.  No one is in a postion to fund a new MRI so we can't compare that so that was the best we could do to try and get an objective assessment of his progress.

The hospital sent me a questionnaire.  I was asked to assess his level of lameness against a scale at different points, e.g. before the MRI, after 6 months, 12 months.

Even assuming I am experienced enough to accurately assess a lame horse especially the sort of low level bilateral lameness you can get with foot problems, there is no guarantee I am using the same criteria as my vet.

Nowhere did it ask what treatment was followed (in his case remedial farriery and assorted drug therapies) and because it had a 12 month cut off, it didn't really get the true outcome.  I did do my best to give them as much information as I could as accurately as I could but I;m not sure scientific studies should depend on my opinion.

At best all you are going to get from that is rough percentages of horses coming back into work after similar MRIs, nothing to tell you which if any of the treatments recommended worked.


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## cptrayes (15 February 2011)

LucyPriory said:



			How refreshing!   - if only all vets were this practical - having had one vet wanting to do £3.5k worth of tests on an injury we agreed was a groin strain and which ultimately resolved to full soundness in 48 hours without bute.  Why?
		
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Ditto big time. Alsiola I love you  !


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