Comfort=soundness

Its always interesting to watch the rehab horses as they mooch round the track with our horses.   Our guys go where they please - they aren't bothered about which surfaces they are moving over, and if its quicker to go over shillet to get somewhere they will do so very happily.  

It makes no difference to their movement whether they are on deep pea gravel or flint - they still land correctly and have long, even strides. 

By contrast the rehabs will avoid the tougher surfaces, at least in the early days, and find routes to places that allow them to stay on comfortable ground.  

As long as they do that, they are sound, but if we forced them to go over hard, stony ground they would shorten up, become unlevel and land badly.  

For me, it proves how essential it is for a horse to be comfortable in order for it to move soundly, and how rehab is all about expanding that comfort zone until it extends not just to good surfaces but to tough ones as well. 

Miles and miles, up and down...

Following on from the discovery that we average about 25 miles a day out hunting, even on a relatively quiet day, I took the head cam out again yesterday for the last big day of the season -there are actually 2 more days to go, probably, but the last Friday is traditionally a day for visitors and has a holiday atmosphere :-)

I've posted this clip, which I hope gives a feel for the sort of terrain we cover.  The giveaway is the sound - you can hear better than see what the ground is like underfoot!

Jacko, the grey horse, Charlie (the bright bay who is plaited up in the footage of the first day) and of course the horse I was riding, Felix, are all barefoot, and Charlie and Felix have been out twice a week for most of this season.  

Of course we have some lovely gallops over old pasture, but we also spend a fair amount of time on flinty tracks, and on any day you will have roadwork and deep ground thrown in as well. 

You'll see that there aren't any jumps, but the ground we cover can be challenging, partly because we have steep gradients, partly because the horses have to be clever over wet ground, and partly because we have long days.  

Yesterday, for instance, we started at 11am and didn't get back to the trailers till just after 6pm.  

Despite that, the horses are full of beans even after a long day - a large proportion of the footage was shot after 5pm yesterday, and the horses were still keen to gallop, and more importantly they are all in very good form this morning. 

"Paddock paradise" myth

Subtitle: You CAN have high perfomance bare hooves with just a field and stable!

There seems to be a rather pervasive urban myth about at the moment, an assumption that in order to have really high performance hooves you need to have a track system/paddock paradise and loads of pea gravel 

I've heard it on the UKNHCP forum, and its also a common belief among owners who send their horses here for rehab - they seem to think that unless they have tracks laid out their horses' feet will fall apart once they go home...!  

I thought it was worthwhile setting out the reality 

You need pea gravel 

 

Nope. Its a comfortable (because conformable!) surface, particularly for horses with very compromised feet, which is why I have some at Rockley.  

I have it for the rehab horses, because they have to be able to move happily and most have long term lameness when they arrive.  

Pea gravel also helps stimulate the whole hoof, and if horses are here for rehab we need them to improve and grow better feet as fast as possible because we normally only have 8-12 weeks to turn them around.  

If you have a lame horse with weak frogs, contracted heels or a thin sole then pea gravel is a big help, but horses with healthy feet don't need it.  

You need a track system 

Nope. Hooves are healthiest when they do lots of work, so a track is a good way of getting more movement, but if you ride your horse regularly on different surfaces, that will do the job for you.  

If you have an insulin resistant horse or really lethally rich grass, then a grass-free track can be a big help in spring and summer, but its not a necessity for most horses.  

For most horses, you can get very healthy hooves if you limit grass intake in spring and summer by keeping them in during the day with hay or haylage and give them enough exercise by regular ridden work.  

Most of my owners don't have tracks or pea gravel. Generally, they keep their horses in during the day and out at night in spring and summer to limit grass intake or they may make an electric tape track round their field .  

My own horses here have rock-crunching hooves but they don't need the track to keep them that way - good job really, as the rehab horses get first choice of the pea gravel and tracks!  

The most important things for my own horses are: 

• being off the grass during the day (in a box, field shelter or barn, they don't mind); 
• having a mineral rich, low sugar diet; and
• doing miles of work.
  

None of this is particularly expensive, and its certainly not rocket science, but its not always the easiest option, I agree :-)

90% of lameness is in the foot...

I was reading a paper last night by a friend who is a professional event rider.  It was a very interesting read, about the correct development of the horse's back, but she included, in passing, the old comment that 90% of lameness is in the foot - something we have all read in one veterinary or farriery textbook or another. 

It got me thinking.  

In the years when I had shod horses, I would have agreed that 90% of lameness was in the foot - Ghost was a good example, as when he went lame all those years ago it nerve-blocked to caudal hoof pain.

However, in the years that our horses have been barefoot and working hard, we have had lameness occasionally, but it has always been an accident - such as Bailey getting kicked last week - or a strain injury, like a pulled muscle or tendon.   Its rarely in the foot. 

In fact the only lameness I can think of when it HAS been in the foot are abscesses - and again those have happened very rarely (despite 2 years of interminably wet weather!), and seem to occur no more frequently in barefoot horses than in shod horses, at least up here.    

Of course, there are horses that arrive here for rehab - those ARE lame, and its consistently in the foot.  But guess what...that type of lameness ALWAYS (to date!) improves once they have been here for a few weeks...and often they come completely sound.

So maybe the saying should be...90% of all lameness is in the foot IF your horse is shod...

...but what about the barefoot horses with bad feet (and you do see them - poorly trimmed or lacking work and with correspondingly weak hooves)...and the well shod horses who have no problems?

I think personally that the saying should really be:

90% of lameness is in the foot UNLESS your horse has perfect foot balance.  

Can be shod, can be barefoot - of course, its much easier to balance a foot without a shoe, because with enough correct work, the horse will do it for you... :-)