Mud fever, what mud fever?!

I was talking to a friend about Angel, and telling her that he looks very much like her horse (very dark bay, almost black with a small white star), except that he has 3 white legs.

Her immediate comment was "So he'll get mud fever on all of those!" I replied that he seemed fine, in fact, and then it occurred to me that actually I've not had a problem with mud fever in any winter since the horses went barefoot.

Bear in mind that of the horses here, Felix, Ghost, Angel and Bailey have 3 white legs each and Charlie has 4 white legs. Hector only has 2, but also has the thinnest, most sensitive skin you could hope to find.

It rains all year round, and although they always have the barn to get dry in, there is a LOT of wet ground, both where they live and where we ride. It can't just be that they can get dry in the barn, either, because most shod horses here are stabled at night over the winter, as mine used to be, and we used to have a problem with mud fever even in Hampshire, which was much drier than here.

I realised during our first winter barefoot that mud fever was much less of a problem in barefoot horses than shod horses, and clients reported the same, but because I hardly ever come across it now, I'd forgotten what an absolute pain in the backside it used to be, from this time of year onwards :-)

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...