Re: Stone Bruise (was Re: lameness question)

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:04:37 -0400, Ocean of Nuance
<lizzardwomanRMOVE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Laurel Reddick wrote:
>
>(snip)
>
>> You're welcome concerning MTG.  Yes, my friends shoe their horses.
>> Curtis is a farrier.  They pull the shoes for the winter as it is too
>> slippery with the snow and ice to ride shod during the winter.  Their
>> terrain is like a moonscape with huge rocks and craters from all the
>> clear cut logging that has gone on.  And they work their horses long
>> days and ride multiple horses during the day.  
>> 
>> We have had the hoof boot discussion many times.  They are sup****tive
>> of the concept, but they just really aren't interested in the time and
>> tedium involved of having to size boots for all their horses, putting
>> them on and pulling them off, using gaiters to avoid rubs etc.  They
>> have 8 horses of their own and 10 colts in training.  When the colts
>> come up to them, many are barefoot and Curtis promptly shoes them.  He
>> has always shod ours when they go up there and we have no problem with
>> that at all.  We would never expect them to do something that is
>> really foreign to how they want to do things.  And with our young QH's
>> they have excellent feet from being kept barefoot during their feet
>> formative years--so it is no big deal for them to be shod for a few
>> months.
>
>I wonder how many BF only types would agree shoeing is both appropriate 
>and not harming these horses?  I wonder if Cindi would agree.
Hard to say.  I think many would hope that their horses could cope
with the terrain, but when they saw the terrain and the job the horses
had to do in for hours on end they likely would acknowledge that
booting them might not be practical in that setting.  Going on one
cattle drive up there gave us better insight.  I know "rabid" bare
footers who have sent their horses up to them for training and all
have agreed to have their horses shod while there.  There are some
barefoot working horses up there who were born and raised on the
terrain and have good tough feet genes.  Each horse is so
different--probably Molly could do it as she has amazing thick hooves
with these rock hard soles.  Boomer is more run of the mill and chips
up easily and he got ouchy on the first outing without shoes up there
so we said go ahead and shoe the two as I didn't want them to be
uncomfortable in any way--other than being bit to death with black
flies and mosquitoes <g>.  Holy smokes you should see the bugs
there--Swat is a highly used product and one of my projects for the
day is to get some and send it up on the bus as the stores are out of
it up there.
Laurel