Doped up hippies
27 October 2005 22:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glenatronLast night we played an acoustic set in Kingston- I used my new bass live for the first time and, for an acoustic set, we pretty much rocked. I'm now somewhat hyped about the weekend. Saturday is going to be excellent and there are a lot of people I'm really looking forward to seeing. If you are coming down and I have a ticket for you it might be wise to drop me an email during Friday so that we can sort out times and places to meet up with me or Lou and generally plan the evening out. It should be very fun. On Tuesday I had a terrible "I'm getting a cold" feeling but I seem to be ok, which is a great relief.
Horseshoes are funny things- they have been in use, on some horses at least- often they seem to have been restricted to draft animals or those belonging to the upper classes, for a very long time indeed and yet in the vast majority of cases they are not only superfluous, they are very likely to be damaging. If you imagine putting on a Doc Martin made of solid steel and then having it welded tightly closed around your foot some of the problems related to them become apparent. For example, your foot is unable to move at all and it's likely to lose circulation, every time you take a step the solid sole of the boot will send a shock up your leg (in my imagination these are like the iron boots from Occarina of Time) which, because it is so tightly held in place, your foot cannot cushion at all and you are likely to have real problems in slippery conditions. These are all problems associated with horseshoes, but they are much worse for horses because they are animals that stand up pretty much constantly. The flex of their feet as they walk acts like a pump, aiding the circulatory system and soaking up the impact of the foot striking the ground - barefoot horses walk very quietly, the "clip clop" of horses on the road is the sound of a huge amount of repeated concussion and the energy that makes that noise is all going up through the joints of the horse's leg. In slippery conditions the foot of a barefoot horse can act as a suction cup giving it a lot more grip and in the snow you are much less likely to get chunks of ice stuck in the foot because the better circulation means it is warmer and the snow doesn't stick so well. There are some valid reasons to use them- if your horse is doing 20 or more miles of road work every day (which is not common these days but was when shoes started being used across the board) you may find the hoof can't regenerate fast enough to restore that level of wear but most of the arguments in favour of shoeing are ultimately, like most arguments in favour of stabling your horse, anthropomorphic.
The outcome of all of this is that today we took off Othello's shoes. He was kept barefoot for many years and only had shoes fitted relatively recently to try and help the lameness issues that were part of the reason we got him. We have a specialist Barefoot Trimmer, who works to try to create a foot shape that mimics those of wild horses and by sheer good luck she is the best equine footcare specialist in the country, one of the top few in the world. Othello doesn't like having his feet handled- he is getting better but it will take some time to get him at ease with the kind of amount of handling that getting shoes pulled off requires - so we went for the wussy option and filled him with sedatives. He was then very quiet and Charlie, our trimmer, managed to get his shoes off and get his feet slightly into shape. He will be a bit sore for a couple of days because his soles will have thinned from not being in contact with the ground much, but over the next few weeks his feet should toughen up and with Charlie's help we will have another very happy, sound, barefoot horse- Joe has been cheerfully unshod for years.
Although Lou is still suffering from her headache, she has seen a chiropractor who may have found a possible cause (one that makes you go "oh yes, that is quite obvious, why have none of the other 'experts' we have given money to spotted that") and so we can hope she is finally on a road that could lead to recovery. She is at least on a road of some sort.
Horseshoes are funny things- they have been in use, on some horses at least- often they seem to have been restricted to draft animals or those belonging to the upper classes, for a very long time indeed and yet in the vast majority of cases they are not only superfluous, they are very likely to be damaging. If you imagine putting on a Doc Martin made of solid steel and then having it welded tightly closed around your foot some of the problems related to them become apparent. For example, your foot is unable to move at all and it's likely to lose circulation, every time you take a step the solid sole of the boot will send a shock up your leg (in my imagination these are like the iron boots from Occarina of Time) which, because it is so tightly held in place, your foot cannot cushion at all and you are likely to have real problems in slippery conditions. These are all problems associated with horseshoes, but they are much worse for horses because they are animals that stand up pretty much constantly. The flex of their feet as they walk acts like a pump, aiding the circulatory system and soaking up the impact of the foot striking the ground - barefoot horses walk very quietly, the "clip clop" of horses on the road is the sound of a huge amount of repeated concussion and the energy that makes that noise is all going up through the joints of the horse's leg. In slippery conditions the foot of a barefoot horse can act as a suction cup giving it a lot more grip and in the snow you are much less likely to get chunks of ice stuck in the foot because the better circulation means it is warmer and the snow doesn't stick so well. There are some valid reasons to use them- if your horse is doing 20 or more miles of road work every day (which is not common these days but was when shoes started being used across the board) you may find the hoof can't regenerate fast enough to restore that level of wear but most of the arguments in favour of shoeing are ultimately, like most arguments in favour of stabling your horse, anthropomorphic.
The outcome of all of this is that today we took off Othello's shoes. He was kept barefoot for many years and only had shoes fitted relatively recently to try and help the lameness issues that were part of the reason we got him. We have a specialist Barefoot Trimmer, who works to try to create a foot shape that mimics those of wild horses and by sheer good luck she is the best equine footcare specialist in the country, one of the top few in the world. Othello doesn't like having his feet handled- he is getting better but it will take some time to get him at ease with the kind of amount of handling that getting shoes pulled off requires - so we went for the wussy option and filled him with sedatives. He was then very quiet and Charlie, our trimmer, managed to get his shoes off and get his feet slightly into shape. He will be a bit sore for a couple of days because his soles will have thinned from not being in contact with the ground much, but over the next few weeks his feet should toughen up and with Charlie's help we will have another very happy, sound, barefoot horse- Joe has been cheerfully unshod for years.
Although Lou is still suffering from her headache, she has seen a chiropractor who may have found a possible cause (one that makes you go "oh yes, that is quite obvious, why have none of the other 'experts' we have given money to spotted that") and so we can hope she is finally on a road that could lead to recovery. She is at least on a road of some sort.
