Length of training...and what does it cover?

Something that comes up frequently, in discussions about barefoot or natural hoofcare, is the length of time for which farriers train.

In the UK, the training to become a registered farrier takes over 4 years, a combination of college based learning and apprenticeship.

There's no doubt that farrier training here is undoubtedly some of the most detailed in the world, and (understandably!) this is often contrasted unfavourably with the lack of training and regulation of barefoot practitioners.

So lets look at the reality:

• Farrier training DOES last for 4+ years, and covers shoeing and trimming. In this time the course also deals extensively with making tools and shoes.

• At worst barefoot "trimmers" can practice with absolutely no training, completely self-taught, and there are also lots of "learn to trim in a weekend"-type courses out there, which certainly don't inspire confidence, either in horse-owners or other equine professionals. HOWEVER, although the law isn't changing, standards are, and from now on, all barefoot practitioners should be trained to a new national occupational standard (or NOS), "Equine Barefoot Care", which I talked about here. It is up to owners to check who their practitioner trained with, though, as training to this standard is not a legal requirement.

• There is a farriery NOS as well, which sets the standards for farrier training, and this has just been revised. There are a few elements (trimming, anatomy and physiology) which are common to both NOS, but the farriery NOS does not train for barefoot and the barefoot NOS does not train for shoeing (though there are a few dual-qualified practitioners within UKNHCP).

• Finally, while there is nothing wrong with a training course lasting for 4 years, there are many good, thorough training courses which are very much shorter. For instance, Andy teaches post-graduate law students, whose accelerated course for corporate and commercial law lasts 7 months - and they are going to some of the toughest law firms in the country ;-) The UKNHCP course (which follows the current barefoot NOS) is a little more leisurely, as we allow students 15-18 months to complete their training.

Stride length and surfaces

When I go to see a horse, I always like to see it walked and trotted up, certainly the first time I see it, and often on regular occasions afterwards as well, particularly if anything has changed.

I would find it pretty impossible to comment sensibly on a horse unless I had seen it move, and you get a better picture as well if you can see a horse on different surfaces.

What's sometimes interesting for owners is when I then trot the horse for them - often, they haven't seen their horses trot in a straight line on a hard surface before although if they long rein or lunge, they will have seen their horses trot a circle on a surface.

It can come as a surprise for them to see that stride length in a sound horse changes, depending on the surface the horse is trotting on, whether it is on a circle or not, etc - but it shouldn't really be unexpected.

After all, there is a reason for running dressage competitions on arenas, rather than roads - more extravagant strides. There is also a reason why dressage tests ask for extension on the longest straight lines - across the diagonal or down the long side - rather than on a circle.

Its the same with people - runners on hard surfaces take shorter strides than those on shock-absorbing surfaces (trainers can skew this, as the body is fooled into thinking that its running on a soft surface even on roads). Runners cornering shorten up too.

The biomechanical reason for the shorter stride is to reduce impact stresses on joints and soft tissue, so its actually a very sensible thing to do on a concussive surface or when turning. If you watch a group of horses trotting along a road, most will have a shorter stride (shod or barefoot) than they do when they trot on grass - watch them cross to another surface or go in a straight line and you will see stride length increase.

I'm on commission from the farriers...

I seem to be recommending that a lot of people try shoeing their horses at the moment, particularly after this post only a few days ago ;-)

Of course, this isn't because I WANT the horses back in shoes, but I feel the need to present it as an option for some owners.

Partly this is because I am very conscious that getting a horse's hooves good enough for barefoot performance can be a tough choice for owners, and sometimes shoes make life much easier.

Its also partly because "barefoot evangelism" does nothing to endear barefoot to horse owners, or to other equine professionals, and I don't want to join that clique - if we can't be open-minded about shoes, why should we expect anyone else to be open-minded about barefoot?

The other practical issue is that, because barefoot horses are a rarity, and because the most "noteworthy" point about these horses is their hooves, if there is a problem with a barefoot horse its human nature for the vet, owner, trainer, yard owner and anyone else involved in the horse's care to focus on the feet - even if its highly unlikely to be the feet that are the problem.

I think the nearest analogy is probably with the first women in the workplace - they were under enormous pressure not just to achieve, but to over-achieve, to out-perform their male colleagues because any failure would have been "because she's a woman".

So for instance I talked to an owner a month ago about trying front shoes on her horse. In fact he has great feet, and her management of him is good, but he can be a bit of a plod and the other members of the family thought he was slow because he didn't have shoes on.

I didn't think that was the issue, but let's be realistic, a set of shoes wasn't going to do him any harm and it was the only way they could bottom out for themselves whether that was the problem. They had him shod, and it made no difference to his energy levels (!) and they hated the fact that he tripped and slid on the roads, so after 6 weeks his shoes came off again, and glory be, the owner, the farrier and I are all still speaking to each other ;-)

Then yesterday I talked to another client about shoeing her horse; again its someone whose horse has great feet (after more than a year barefoot!) and who has seen the effects of diet in action - her horse went very lame after a grass flush in August, but has recovered well since she drastically restricted the grazing. However, the horse is generally not as forward-going as she would like, and has become short-striding over the last few months as well. The vet's opinion is that the horse is overweight, but its become very much fitter recently but is still not moving as well as it did in the Spring.

My own suspicion is that the horse has a knee problem, as she has restricted carpal flexion in both front legs and moves better on a softer surface, but I am no vet, and there is a possibility that the horse still has sole sensitivity as well. The owner doesn't want to keep the horse off grass completely, and restriction has not made further improvement, so all I can do is suggest that the owner try shoes or hoof boots to eliminate the possibility that the feet are the problem :-) If it IS the knees, then shoes really won't make a difference, and the owner is smart enough to realise that. We shall see :-)

A reward for a very diligent horse-owner

I went to see some horses in Cornwall a few weeks ago, and posted about them earlier: http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2009/10/quote-of-day.html

As I won't be seeing the horses regularly, it was wonderful to receive an email today from the horses' owner, giving me an update. Her Arab horse, in particular, had been worrying her because he had become very short-striding and when I saw him was landing dramatically toe-first. His owner reported he had shoulder and back problems, and his landing may well have been a contributory factor.

The great news in her email was the Arab is already a rock-crunching barefoot horse and is going really well:

"in fact two days after shoes off I stopped his daily bute and he's not had it since. Having shoes off is the best thing in the world I could have done for them."

Her farrier may be in for a surprise when he realises her horses will be doing MORE mileage barefoot than shod ;-)

Your Horse Live: 14th/15th November

This year's Your Horse Live is at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire in 2 weeks time, and UKNHCP will be having a stand there.

Sarah and I will be manning the stand, along with other UKNHCP members and friends, and we hope that it will be a fun opportunity to show what levels of performance barefoot horses are capable of - we won't have horses there, but there will be lots of video clips and photos, plus copies of "Feet first" and info on the UKNHCP training programme.

If you're in the area, come along and say hello :-)

Good grief!

...read this quote and its yet again brought home the enormous depth of ignorance that is out there...

"Shoes are essential for the performance horse not only to protect the hoof but also to preserve the

hoof complex and the structures contained within the hoof capsule during the rigors of

competition."

The really depressing statistic is yet to come - this is from a paper that was presented to an American equine veterinary conference only a few months ago.

I haven't read all the papers yet, but there were 16 in total, of which 2 were devoted to "correct" shoeing and 5 were devoted to managing pain or analgesia in the lame horse....

A slightly better quote came from one of the farriers' papers':

"therapeutic shoeing is a modality for treatment of the unhealthy foot generally showing structural damage and the long-term goal is to improve the foot for that individual horse and achieve soundness. "

Even so, I sometimes feel as if I am in a parallel universe - hoof health is REALLY not as complicated as they would like to make out...

Been there, done that...

It has to be said that there is nothing like taking young, inexperienced horses across Exmoor hunting for making you appreciate your seasoned hunters ;-)

So todays' blog features Jacko and Charlie, because they are such good boys.

Someone reminded me a couple of days ago that Jack used to be impossible to load - in fact you couldn't get him within 60 feet of the trailer when he first arrived.

Those days are long gone, and yesterday he demonstrated how far he has come, not only loading perfectly at home but loading up again without fuss straight from the meet (on a busy road with other horses heading off in all directions) to travel to where the day was actually due to begin.

Dex still doing it!

News from Kelly and Dexter, who jumped another double clear at British novice at the weekend - apparently even the coursebuilder was impressed with his bare hooves :-)

Wild!

After a week of high pressure and blue skies, we've got autumn with a vengeance now, with the wind howling outside and all horses refusing to leave the shelter of the barn and ad lib haylage :-)

Good news from the weekend that Angel seems to have overcome his cow phobia! Sam took him for a long blast out on Sunday and was charged by a whole herd of steers, which would have been enough to put him into a blind panic when he first arrived, but he coped really well and she was very impressed with him. I thought he might be a bit tired after his 2 days hunting last week but apparently he was feeling very fit and well and certainly when I long-reined him yesterday he gave me the impression that he was ready for anything(!)

Mileage - week ending 18th October

Felix and Charlie have both broken the 200 mile mark this season already, and we've still got a few weeks to go before the opening meet!

Angel went twice this week, and behaved like a fallen Angel the first time, but was much better the second time. Bailey has had to nanny him, which is cramping her style, so she is finding him a little dull :-)

Hector is steadfastly refusing to go quietly anywhere, and so having torn his muscle again, we are back to square one (!).

Abscess treatment

Oh dear, it seems to be my week for being controversial...Unintended, but things always happen in spates.

Apologies for the graphic photos, but this is what I found when I went to see an insulin resistant horse yesterday. It has had several bouts of laminitis in the last few years, and is under a local vet for treatment.

Obviously, due to its insulin resistance it is much more prone to laminitis than a normal horse, and so inevitably its more prone to abscessing.

At the weekend, the owner called the vet out as the horse was very lame and obviously had developed an abscess in this hoof. As many (but not all!) vets do, this vet decided that the only way was up, and started digging.

To be fair, the hole dug did allow the abscess to drain, but unfortunately the hole was made so deep that the vet is now warning of coffin bone infection. I hate to say it, but coffin bone infection is much more likely to be a problem if you dig holes so deep that you expose the coffin bone...

"My horse can't go barefoot"

I've known for a long time that shoeing is a much easier option for owners than barefoot.

It doesn't surprise me, therefore, that most owners want shoes on their horses.

I'm also used to the enormous ignorance about "barefoot" which we encounter all the time - the typical internet opinion: "rip the shoes off, oh look, my horse is crippled - that must be because it can't go barefoot"...But it doesn't stop it from depressing me when I hear it :-0

These owners already know all about what is "natural" for their horses, and they tell you that the horse is on the best possible diet - fabulous grass 24/7 and a lovely feed supplement in a glossy bag, perhaps with some conditioning mix for when its in work.

They also know that there is some sort of "barefoot trim" - but thats fine - their farrier has done 4 years training so of course he knows all about trimming, and what a bonus, he only charges a fraction of what a UKNHCP practitioner would charge to trim their horse. He tells them, though, that horsey has poor hooves "because of its conformation" - or possibly genetics (maybe its had the hooves "bred out of it"), so although they can try barefoot when its out on soft ground, it will need shoes for work.

They like the idea of barefoot because its cheap AND "natural", but sadly, they aren't able to save money for long, because their horse is so lame without its shoes that they shoe it again a few weeks later.

They are then in the position of being able to say authoritatively that barefoot just doesn't work for every horse, and they know, because they tried it.....

If it ain't broke...

I went to see another "navicular"* horse yesterday. It had a strange pattern of lameness, not typically "navicular", which the owner described in detail, and the onset had been sudden, rather than the usual insidious slow deterioration.

A range of vet investigations had been done, but had stopped short of MRI, so it still wasn't clear whether the problem was DDFT or not - the X-rays weren't bad, but the horse had nerve-blocked sound to the back of the foot, hence the diagnosis.

I hadn't seen it before, but had had its lameness described in detail, so both the owner and I were in for a surprise when it appeared significantly sounder on the lunge yesterday.

What had changed? It had been shod the day before with heartbars :-)

Now, neither the farrier, the owner nor I expect heartbars to be the end of the story, but they have certainly provided an improvement in soundness for this particular horse at the moment.

Some horses actually go immediately worse in heartbars; some are sounder - although in my experience the soundness does not last longer term, and most horses become lame again over time.

For this horse, though, they had made the difference between a lame horse unwilling to go forward and a horse which was to all intents and purposes sound in trot and very willing to go forward. It may be that the improvement doesn't last, in which case there are other options, but for now, if it ain't broke...

* For guidance on the use of this term in this blog, see this post: rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2009/10/navicular-horses.html

Don't lose sight of the horse

There are legions of experts out there, particularly in the horse world, each with their own opinion. Sometimes (frequently!) one expert's opinion is even completely contrary to another expert's opinion.

If you go to a farriery conference, you will hear one expert telling you that horse's foot balance is best determined by a T-square and that heels must be parallel with it to be balanced. The next expert will tell you that a T-square is not only useless but dangerous, as it can indicate incorrect foot balance.

If you talk to an equine nutritionist, one will tell you that magnesium supplementation is valuable for many horses, and another will tell you that there is no such thing as a magnesium deficiency in horses.

Once you get onto the subject of barefoot, then the opinions become even more polarised and occasionally more heated (!), and if you start discussing training techniques or saddle-fit, then of course everyone has their favourite guru, whose techniques and products are often exclusive of any other method ;-)

With so many opinions, often the only thing everyone can agree on is that we need to do "what is best for the horse" - whatever that might be - and that the welfare of the horse has to be paramount.

So how can you pick your way through apparently conflicting advice and decide what really is "best" for your horse?

In my view, the secret is never to lose sight of the horse in front of you. I've often said to students, if the "expert" is telling you one thing but the horse is telling you another, the "expert" is wrong and horse is right.

That holds good whether you have a saddle fitter who is saying the fit is fine, but a horse who is swinging his head at you when you tack up, or a hoofcare practitioner who is telling you the hooves are fine but that the horse is not becoming sounder, or a nutritionist who is telling you that XX feed company's supplement is perfectly balanced but you can see that the horse was healthier on a different diet (or, dare I say it, a vet who tells you that navicular syndrome is incurable but you can see that there are lots of ex-navicular horses out there performing rather well barefoot!).

There are lots of people who can tell a pretty convincing tale, but if your horse's behaviour or health - or the evidence of your own eyes - are telling you another story, then you should believe that, and not the "expert".

Mileage - week ending 11th October

I concentrated on Angel this week, and also had a busy week with clients' horses, so mileage was nothing special this week, although I've updated the totals.

Jacko and Andy and Felix and a friend of ours had a day of "black runs" yesterday where the terrain was apparently right at the margins of what horses can actually go down :-0

Angel and Bailey went out for a day of quietly learning manners, which went well, despite Bailey's best efforts to fling her petticoats over her head when asked to stand still(!).

Quote of the day...

...from yesterday from a farrier :-) It links in nicely to the post about Shoeing as healing, earlier in the week(!).

I was out doing a consultation on some horses, which the owner is taking barefoot but which will be trimmed by her farrier, as its too far away for me to get to regularly. The owner has been super-conscientious over the last few months about sorting out their diet and environment, so it was a case of agreeing on the trimming.

One was already unshod, the other came out of shoes. Having walked and trotted them both, we all agreed that the second horse immediately had much better foot placement, as opposed to its a dramatic toe-first landing in its shoes. The farrier's comment? "I know its controversial, but I don't believe in nailing steel to a horse's feet"!

Now he can see that there is an alternative ;-)

More about grass...!

As a follow on from yesterday, here's a link to a post today on the UKNHCP forum coincidentally on this very topic :-)

Perhaps in a few years time horse-owners, vets and farriers (not to mention dairy farmers!) will be much more aware of the problems caused by high sugar, low fibre forage - also known as "24/7 turnout in spring and summer" - but at the moment its only really the owners with barefoot performance horses who have made the connection.

Believing is seeing!

Even yesterday, someone was asking about our track system and said to me "but surely horses graze all the time in the wild?". Thats sort of true, but of course feral horses don't graze all the time on vivid green, artificially enclosed and maintained pasture - and when they are moved to that type of pasture, surprise surprise they go lame.

Grass and lameness

Here are some interesting statistics from the world of dairy cows, for anyone who still thinks that horses should be eating lush green grass(!)

DEFRA statistics report that on average, 20-30% of a herd of dairy cows is lame at any one time, and there are 20-70 new cases of lameness per year in every 100 cows.

And what do you think the primary cause of lameness is? You've guessed it - laminitis.

We already know that horses need a much higher fibre, low sugar diet than dairy cows, but it sounds as if dairy cows don't do much better on rich grass than horses do; if even dairy cows are suffering this badly, then its hardly surprising that so many horses struggle with sore feet even on pasture that is considerably "safer".

Shoeing as "healing"?

I came across an interesting opinion from a US farrier recently, an opinion that differs fundamentally from most farriers' opinions I have read or heard in the UK, where most farriers freely admit hooves are healthier without shoes but that shoeing is a necessary evil.

The farrier in question was quoted as saying that "farriery isn't just nailing on shoes, its a healing art". Now, its easy to take a quote like this out of context (particularly if you don't know what the original context was!) but the quote did seem to be implying somehow that shoes "heal" horses.

I'll freely admit that putting a set of shoes on a horse can dramatically improve the performance which an unhealthy hoof is capable of - this effect is, presumably, why most UK horses are shod - but I don't think they can "heal" a hoof (in the literal sense of "restoring it to health").

Shoes definitely have their place, and Sarah and I talked in "Feet first" about the fact that shoes will be the most practical option for many owners, but, certainly in the UK, farriers are under no illusions about whether its healthier for a hoof to be shod or not. You might think this is just barefoot bias on my part ;-) but listen to these quotes, from Martin Deacon, and David Gill, two well-known British farriers:

"Shoeing alters the natural function of the hoof wall...Metal shoes decrease the hoof's natural shock absorption."

"It is the combined complexity of the hoof and the almost naive crudeness of driving nails into what is effectively a thick piece of skin, which means that the chances of something going wrong are ever present. "

To be fair, both these farriers go on to write in depth about the use of shoes to affect limb and foot balance, and its maybe these changes to foot placement and limb loading that the US farrier views as beneficial. I wonder if his horses agree with him?

"Navicular" horses

Last week was a week full of "navicular" horses*. I get a lot of emails anyway about navicular, but last week I had 3 emails in 3 days from people in 3 different parts of the country, each of whose horses have been diagnosed with "navicular" and each of whose vets have told them that the horses will not recover and will only ever be "pasture ornaments".

I perfectly understand that the rehab we do here, and barefoot as a whole, is still at the fringes of what vets are comfortable with - and I also understand that they are worried that any barefoot practitioner may lack proper training, or even turn out to be another Strasser....

Of course, we are trying to alleviate those worries by being involved in transparent research, like "Project Dexter", and working on vet referral rather than in isolation when horses come here, but still a lot of vets are wary of natural hoofcare.

BUT I would have a lot more sympathy if their own conventional treatments for "navicular" didn't have such terribly low success rates. The figure usually quoted is that less than 50% of horses resume their same level of work after treatment, and I've been told by one researcher that 50% is actually an over-optimistic number and that 25% is more realistic. In the Dyson study (referred to on the Rockley Farm website), 95% of horses with damage to the DDFT and navicular bone failed to return to work.

Most vets are obviously seeing the same fairly disastrous failures of treatments in their everyday practices - typically the emails I receive from owners say that their vets have recommended they should cut their losses and put the horse down, or try remedial shoeing (at considerable expense) which may allow them to use the horse for light hacking but that the horse will never recover fully.

Coincidentally, this is exactly what was predicted for all of the horses who have been rehabbed here, and of whom all but one have in fact, after rehab, returned to the same level of work or higher.

Of course, as well as being only marginally successful, many of the standard conventional treatments for "navicular" are unresearched and unproven (if anyone can point me in the direction of an objective, controlled study which showed any real long term benefits for wedges or bar shoes then I would LOVE to see it).

You can understand vets clutching at experimental straws if there is no alternative, but thats just not the case any more.

No-one is saying that hoof rehab barefoot is easy, or a miracle cure, and OF COURSE its more than just taking the shoes off, but when its done properly, with correct attention to diet, environment and exercise, its a heck of a lot more successful in returning navicular horses to full work than anything else out there.

To be fair, I should make it clear that I haven't seen the 3 horses I heard about last week, and maybe they are coincidentally 3 horses whose hooves would not improve at all with correct rehab...but I doubt it - especially as they were all young horses...

Its the lack of horse welfare that makes me really cross - there is no earthly reason why so many 6-10 yr old horses should be euthanased for want of basic hoof rehabilitation - or even better, basic hoofcare to start with.

In stark contrast, last week also saw Angel, the latest "navicular" horse to successfully rehab here, have a great week, starting hunting. Yet he too had been written off 6 months ago, and arrived here barely sound on 2 bute per day, with a gloomy prognosis from his sceptical vet.

* Yes, I know its a grossly misused term, but since its still being bandied about so frequently, I'm going to use it here too - saves me differentiating about deep digital flexor tendonitis, caudal hoof pain etc and is so much quicker to type ;-)

Great photos!

We had a photographer down here a week or so ago who took some stunning pics of the moor, hounds and horses.

The photos are at http://www.irene4photos.co.uk/page21.htm and my favourites are 5442 (Edward and Charlie), 5467 (me and Hector, Andy and Bailey and E and C) and 5498 (the boys, perfectly synchronised!). There are some of another day here http://www.irene4photos.co.uk/page22.htm with nice ones of Edward and Hector (5673, though Hector's eyes appear to be popping out of their sockets!), Tony and his cup of tea (5740) and 3 of us pootling down the hill (5757).

Double-decker dogs!

This is what the Vizslas think of Monday morning... :-)

Boys' day out!

I put my camera in my pocket on Saturday, for the first time in ages, and grabbed some nice shots of the boys, Andy and Jacko, and Edward and Charlie, with Peter and Melbrook in shot for good measure! It was the wildest and windiest day we've had on Exmoor for a while, so not great for photos, but the boys seemed to enjoy themselves anyway :-)

Mileage - week ending 4th October

An average sort of week, with Angel's first day out meaning that mileage for him and Charlie was fairly low, but successful nonetheless.

Felix: 20.5 miles

Charlie: 21.5 miles

Jacko: 15 miles

Angel: 6.5

Truly Angelic!

Angel had a big day today, his first proper day out hunting - although it was only ever going to be a short day of a couple of hours, as thats more than enough for a first-timer :-)

Edward and Charlie kindly agreed to come along and be our nanny, so at 6.30 this morning in the dark we loaded up and trundled out onto Exmoor.

First success of the day - despite barely being able to see where he was going, he loaded beautifully and eagerly, so we even left bang on time!

At the meet, we pootled off out of everyone's way, but it was a perfect morning - only half a dozen other horses out, all of whom were old pros and 100% reliable, and a nice quiet start, just walking and trotting over the moor.

Edward and Charlie stuck themselves in front, and all Angel and I had to do was follow in their footsteps and not trip over any tussocks, ditches or pointy rocks :-)

Of course its early days for Angel, but he behaved absolutely beautifully, watching where his feet were going, and concentrating on the ground, but also watching Tony and the hounds and taking it all in.

A couple of times the field went on and we stayed behind with Charlie to do gates, and although he fidgeted a bit when he saw everyone else cantering off, he didn't lose his manners. The ground wasn't bad at all, by Exmoor standards, but there was enough for a horse born and bred in the Netherlands to think about - a couple of river crossings, the odd wet bit and some steep, stony tracks to contend with.

By 9 o'clock we were heading home, satisfied with a job well done, and with Angel having lots to reflect on. He loaded even more perfectly on the way home, and tucked into his haylage in a very contemplative mood. Lets hope he has started as he means to go on :-)

PS: Just had to add - there is apparently something on the Horse and Hound forum at the moment about navicular, and after suggesting they take the horse barefoot, the reply was the classic quote:

My horse would never cope because he has paper thin soles and low lying pedal bones. Truth be told, in the wild he'd have not lasted two minutes, but he's a TB and they don't run wild, they're breed for domestic use. If you take his shoes off he's crippled and it's not something diet or environment would fix. Yes maybe if I left him for six months they would harden up but my vet and I believe it's not humane.

Isn't it ironic? This person has even been given the link for our research project, but obviously wants an easy option or a magic pill.

Thank goodness Angel's owner didn't have that attitude - and you can imagine where Dexter would be now, if his owner had decided that there was no way of changing HIS thin soles and poor hooves...

Unstoppable Dexter!

Kelly has put up more great action photos of Dexter so have a look at - Dex really is unstoppable!

I wish our own little orange ex-navicular pony was half as well behaved :-)