Lessons from Nelipot Cottage

For humans or for horses. Paddy is the horse that started us on our barefoot journey, and the accelerated learning that ensued: feeding horses naturally, the prevalence and effects of gastric ulcers in horses, natural husbandry, paddock paradise, track systems…and ultimately all these factors were drivers that led us to the purchase of our beautiful forest cottage.

Traditionally horses wear metal shoes, unless they really don’t need them. I remember ponies at riding school with no shoes, and later my German sister’s Arab horse regularly doing miles through the forest with no shoes. In fact there were quite a few horses in my sister’s village with no shoes at all doing lots of work and looking very well. But I live in Britain, and I always wanted to go eventing, and eventers need studs to go cross country, and so we needed shoes.

Paddy was cheap to buy and came with a reputation. Part of the reputation was that he hated the farrier. We cold shod him for a bit with a bucket of feed to keep him occupied but when I started eventing him, he “needed” studs, hot shoeing was required and the problem gradually escalated. We got sacked by one farrier, then the farrier cum horse whisperer started asking for him to be sedated until one day the shoes came off but the horse whisperer couldn’t get them back on. We had two events looming so I got the vet out, we formally sedated him, shod him  for the last two events of the season and I tried to make a sensible plan. Call out and sedation put the cost of shoes to £100 a pair. His feet were weak, crumbly, looked terrible, barely held nails and we were on a 5 week shoeing cycle. I started to ask myself if we needed shoes? Did I really need to event? Could he find another job? Did I need to sell him?

We had a climbing friend who was married to a barefoot trimmer, Sarah then from Performance Barefoot, later known as Forageplus.

https://forageplus.co.uk/

A vaguely remembered conversation got me thinking about barefoot horses in Germany, managing without shoes, hacking and jumping and galloping. I started reading, started asking lots of questions, re-examined what I knew about shoes and horses, spoke to Sarah at length, changed his diet, started buying white powdered magnesium oxide by the kilo and six weeks later we pulled his shoes off. He was 12 years old.

He was obviously lame on stones, as you would be if we took your shoes off and sent you out running,  but we were surrounded by super smooth tarmac- suddenly, with no shoes, all the steep, narrow, country roads felt much safer. We had Little Budworth Common with a sand track to canter on, so Paddy never missed any work. He tottered down the gravel drive, zoomed down the smooth tarmac and pulled like a train around the common. After about 2 months he zoomed down the gravel drive too, then down the hard core. Paddy is not a ploddy horse! We started jumping barefoot and he actually felt better: he adjusted his balance automatically and stopped rushing his fences. Grip just didn’t seem to be an issue. His feet got stronger and stronger. He had a couple of amazing seasons eventing; he has never been the most consistent horse but we got to the Riding Club National Championships for Horse Trials, Hunter Trials and moved up to BE100, the third level of affiliated competition. He was a cross country machine on his good days.

In retrospect it is so obvious: the hate of the farrier was pain from thin soles, poor hoof quality due to poor nutrition (although it was a reputable feed brand, just not the right food for a sensitive horse), and from repetitive hot shoeing. From having the worst feet in Cheshire he now has the best, toughest, most functional feet you could wish for.

This January my 20 year old barefoot machine went charging around the hills above Colwyn Bay with the Flint and Denbigh. We had a great day, he galloped up the hills, trotted up the steep lanes, jumped most things and kept right up with the thrusters. Best of all he had fun.

When I bought Paddy, I was on a great livery yard with a crowd of really good friends and we all bought new horses around the same time. Paddy is the only one of our horses from those times still in work, although he does now choose his days. The rest of the cohort is dead or retired now, most have been PTS. Commonest problem/ cause of euthanasia; forelimb lameness due to arthritis.

So for him barefoot was the answer.

However the reason the old boy got dragged up the hill that day was because Cal, my good horse, is not quite such a barefoot legend. He bruised his soles on Boxing Day racing around Rivington Pike on really stoney paths with the Holcombe Harriers. Paddy would have been OK up there but for Cal it was all a bit too much and he was still ouchy. And for my poor husband Gary, who sorted out the invite, did a lot of the prep and got us to Wales, his horse was also a bit footsore from Boxing Day and so he turned around early and had to wait in the lorry for the happy crew to return. Pretty galling.

Why are Cal and Con not rock crunching barefoot horses? I’m not sure yet, we are still working that one out. Cal I’m sure has an underlying metabolic condition. He tested borderline high for Cushings, has had severe RAO this summer and always looks a bit fat. When I work him enough (20-30 miles a week) his feet are tolerable. We are not doing that this winter. Con is just getting fit; he arrived quite obese after two years of being nanny to a yard full of youngsters. His wind and muscle tone are improving, I think his  under performing barefoot hooves are probably acting as a protecting limiting factor while the rest of his physiology tones up. Very frustrating for a relatively newly horse obsessed husband who loves the idea of hunting!