Q:
I have a 13 yr old TB that has lousy feet but have good maintenance program
and great farrier.
Problem is the horse
takes his owns hind shoes off. He rests one foot sideways and on top of
the other foot. When he goes to move he steps down on the foot on the
bottom and removes the shoe. He either catches the edge of the shoe or
get the clinches of the nails and the jerks the foot on the bottom out without
taking the upper foot off. Dumb horse!
Is there a "bell
boot" or protective boot designed for the hind foot? Ordinary bell
boots hand at an angle and do not cover the part of the foot on the side where
he is grabbing.
If I put oversized
bell boots on him they irritate the back of the foot when walking.
A: Now, there is a question I haven't seen before!
Unfortunately I do not have any
magical formula to fix the problem, though. I actually have a horse that
frequently rests one hind foot on the other like that but he has never
gotten a shoe off by doing it.
A couple thoughts...
It is hard to imagine how the horse
could get his shoe off by stepping on the clinches. In fact, if the clinches
are "fine" (as opposed to coarse), I wouldn't think he should even
be able to damage the clinches by stepping down on them. Perhaps your
farrier has started using coarse clinches in an effort to keep the
shoes on when your horse steps on one. Coarse clinches never help keep a
shoe on. If the horse steps on it hard enough to take it off, it is going.
Coarse clinches merely make it more likely to take a large chunk of hoof
with it. After your horse is freshly shod next time, run your hand over the
clinches. You should barely be able to feel them. If they feel and appear
fairly large and bulky you could tactfully ask your farrier if he thought
that the clinches would be less prone to being damaged if he could make them
more fine.
Good farriers will nearly always
shoe a horse with "room for expansion". In other words, starting
from zero at the last or heel nail hole of the shoe, there will be
about 1/16 inch of the shoe extending laterally from the outline of the wall
at the heel. Some horses should not be shod with the heels wider than the
wall of the hoof, however, These include horses that tend to pull
shoes. If your farrier is leaving expansion room, you should suggest to him
that he try not doing so, to see if it will cure the problem. The heels of
the shoes can also be slightly rounded with the rasp to make it more likely
that the foot that steps down on it will simply slide off rather than pull
the shoe loose.
Don't know if this will help or
not, but I can only hope that it will. Please let me know what you do and
how it works.
Sincerely,
Mary Bayard
American Blacksmith
Murphys, California