An objection to legalizing hoofboots is that equine federations do not want to condone one vendor or type of boot to the exclusion of others. Certainly, the equine federations have come to name certain vendors’ bits as being acceptable. The vendor does not have to be named. The specs of a boot can be specified as being legal. There are some boots which are simple and light and would be suitable for dressage, and there are some which are clunky and large and would not be acceptable. However, there are all types of shoes which are used on dressage horses, and none are designated as acceptable or not.

Hoof boots made possible because of the advance of technology are better for some horses than are other forms of hoof protection. It would be progress in the advancement of equine husbandry to allow the use of hoofboots in dressage competition.

Throughout this blog, I used primarily only one foot to illustrate the problems that were affecting all four feet. But since I have over 4000 photos documenting his saga, I thought putting in only a few photos of one foot would be adequate. When I refer to foot, I mean feet. There are a few photos of the hind feet, just to show that this was not a uniquely front foot problem.

Horseshoes were put on Fabio, and finally removed for the last time on August 30, 2009. Since then, he has been left barefoot to rehab his feet. He is worked in Easyboot Gloves, which can be put on in less than 15 seconds, and removed in less than 5 seconds. Since the horseshoes were removed, the horse has remained sound. It took about 6 months, until February 2010, for the feet to look normal again, as they regrew wall which had been bruised and delaminated because of the glue and shoes. To date, December 2010, Fabio is sound in the hoofboots, and when ridden barefoot on good footing or grass. Now, he can even walk over the stone drive to his pasture without flinching. For 3 years he tried to avoid walking over the stones because they hurt his feet. Now, he does not mind walking over them.

What will follow is a series of photos showing the feet as they are developing after all the insults from the infection as a result of the nailed and/or glued on shoes. As I said at the beginning of this Series, I am not disparaging any method of hoof protection for horses. I am relating the problem of one horse in particular. As a veterinarian, I have seen the same foot problems in other horses in southeastern PA because of the environmental conditions. There are some horses in PA which I have seen with relatively good feet that can hold shoes. These horses are the performance horses that are not turned out to pasture. They usually have problems with colic or foundering however, and their frogs are usually full of thrush. They have other lameness problems as well, which owners usually attribute to the effects of training, or just because they are horses. At any rate, as I said before, if one horse demonstrates that it cannot tolerate shoes in a particular environment, then there are other horses that cannot tolerate shoes. One can go to the many websites, magazines, and blogs where other people show anecdotally or academically how their horses, which also were chronically lame in shoes, became healthy and could perform barefoot or in hoofboots. I listed a few of these sites at the beginning of this series, but there are many more, which anyone who is interested can find.
Anyone who cares about horses, should want to discover and implement the best methods for caring for them and preserving their health while they are serving us. It seems only logical that those people in charge of making rules for competitions in horse sport, should want to make legal a form of hoof protection that is good for the horse’s feet. Until that time, Fabio , and many horses like him, and their owners will continue to show off in their backyards, instead of being able to show off in competition. In this economy, especially, that is a waste of contributing to increasing the GNP, revenue, and jobs for the staff in horse federations.

October 14, 2009. Feet are recovering from the glue. The wall looks awful, but the shape of the feet is good. The good shape is due to all the sole support which has developed from the massive bars that are growing to take the place of the weakened hoof wall.

October 18, 2009. Unable to show, Fabio does piaffe in Hoofboots in the pillars.

See all that beautiful pasture and grass in the background? It is interesting to note that the PA pasture is a destroyer of hooves. The grass is too full of sugar, and the ground is too moist. Sugar makes fat horses which are prone to laminitis, and soft moist ground makes soft hooves which flatten, flare, and rot away easily.

In July 2009, Fabio was going well in the hoofboots, but another farrier suggested a solution for showing might be to glue on the composite shoes, use the hoof packing for sole and frog support, and then use casting material and glue to add support to the shoe and keep it on. No nails. The system had been tried on other horses and worked. After two shoeings with this method, Fabio gradually became stiffer and stiffer, and finally, he became acutely lame on the right front foot. Below are photos of the feet, 7 days after the shoes and glues on cast cuffs were removed.

September 6, 2009. Right front foot. This is 7 days after the composite shoes with glued on casted cuffs were removed on August 30, 2009. The dorsal wall of the distal toe peeled off from the glue. The underlying inner wall looks like petrified wood. The hoof is bruised midway down the hoof. The indent at the quarters is very prominent. The heels are totally run under. It is as if the feet had been bound to the shoes by the casts, or sort of a Japanese foot binding treatment. The entire foot was overly compressed by the shoe glued to the periphery, the hoof packing pressing on the sole from below, and the cast causing circumferential compression as well as dorso-plantar compression, pulling the foot downwards into the shoe. When the casts and shoes were removed, I was horrified, to say the least. All in trying to come up with a solution that would be legal for showing. No wonder, with feet that have been destroyed by man and manmade nailed and glued on hoof devices for 9 years, the horse was becoming stiffer and stiffer in the back. The pain in his feet must have been excruciating.

September 6, 2009. Right front foot. The bottom of the foot does not look so bad. The frog is big and seemingly healthy. The heels are crushed and curved forward, but they look like they have decontracted. The sole is thick. There does not appear to be much infection. There is, however, no hoof wall to bear weight. It has died and peeled off. As soon as the shoes were removed, the horse became more sound.

September 6, 2009. Left hind foot. The cast is still stuck to the foot because I was in such shock at seeing the dorsal wall peeling off that I could not remove anything else that was adherent to the tissue.
 

October 14, 2009. Right front foot. Because there was no wall to support the foot, heavy bars rapidly developed to take some of the weight. The heels are totally underrun. Mother Nature is working overtime to heal this foot, with the bars spreading out all over the sole of the foot.

November 18, 2009. Right front foot

The feet have been barefoot to rehab since August 30. It looks pretty good now. Of course, on August 30 I made the decision to never attempt to shoe Fabio with nails or glue ever again. At this point, he was sound and working in Easyboot Gloves. Life was good, finally.

November 18, 2009. Right front foot. The frog is remodeling and shedding. The heels are decontracting. The voluminous bars are wearing down. You can still see remnant of the heavy sole that grew around the frog as an extension of the bars. It was an attempt to support the foot since there was no wall. Gradually, the walls are growing out and looking healthy again.

 May 25, 2009. Right front foot. This is 2 ½ weeks after removal of the nailed on steel heartbar shoes. An abscess has burst out of the medial heel (slit on heel on right side of foot in photo) and the bruise on the lateral heel is an abscess which will burst out later. The foot is very contracted. The heels are so contracted, the insides of the foot can do nothing but become damaged, crushed, and later infected. You can see the white line disease between wall and sole. You can see crumbling wall. You can see huge bars which grew, but which have infection still in them. All this happened because a famous farrier thought this was a normal horse which could wear remedial heartbars and be able to be shown in dressage competition. The horse and I had been this route for years. The point is that not all horses can tolerate shoes.

 May 25, 2009. Right front foot 2 ½ weeks into recovering from the damage and infection created by the nailed on shoes. The black, white line disease infection is present at all nail holes, and the hoof wall is rotting away at ground level from the infection. This horse’s feet have been treated 2x daily for over 3 years with every sort of antibacterial and antifungal white line disease medication and thrush medication. His stall and his outside environment are as clean and pristine as one could ever find. Yet this horse gets infected feet from being shod.

The hoof looks pretty awful, but interestingly, at this point, the horse is standing fairly comfortably. His hoof pastern angle is fairly normal. He was sound to ride in hoofboots.

 May 19, 2009. This was the first time we tried the new Easyboot Gloves. Even though the horse’s feet were in as terrible condition as has been shown in the photos in previous posts since we started trying to put glued on shoes or nailed on shoes on him, the horse, Fabio, was sound to ride in these boots. What a wonderful modern invention for horses! I cannot see any reason anyone could object to such hoof protection in the dressage ring. These boots can be put on in 10 seconds or less, and removed in 3-5 seconds. Why should the horse not have the same luxury as human beings in being able to remove his shoes and give his bare feet relief after a day’s work?

 May 25, 2009. Right and left hind feet recovering from the damage done to them by the nailed on steel shoes. Remember, this white line disease occurred within 3 months, while the horse was wearing nailed on shoes. The white line disease is still present all the way up to the highest nail. It will take quite a while to get this infection out of the foot. Maybe 6 months now.

What a price for the horse to pay, simply because the owner wanted to show it, and to do so had to comply with archaic competition rules. I even tried to show Fabio at a schooling show in hoofboots. Before I entered the show, I called the show manager for permission. “Oh, no!” she said. “We follow the USEF and USDF rules, and we cannot allow hoofboots at our schooling show”. I will refrain from commenting on that.

 May 19, 2009. Right front foot. Even though the bottom of the feet looked like this coming out of the Heartbar shoes, with this rotten, ragged, thrush infected frog and whiteline disease, the horse was sound to ride in the hoofboots pictured above. Oh yes, and under the heartbar, when the shoe was on, the hoof was packed with the special Vettec copper sulfate impregnated acrylic packing so as to stop infection. This photo shows how well that worked.

Can anyone even imagine the expense I have gone through with this horse in 3 years, with medicating daily, grooming the pastures with pea gravel, special bedding for the stalls, every kind of shoe imaginable put on by the best farriers, rehabbing him every time the shoes destroyed his feet, trying known boots, eventually casts, inventing hoof wrapping devices, labor in working on his feet daily for 3 years, systemic antibiotics, etc. etc., only to end up with this? This is AWFUL!

 June 27, 2009. Even though we were at this time riding Fabio in Easyboot Gloves, we tried casting his feet, as casting is legal in dressage competition. Here is a cast 1 week after I put it on Fabio. It was in the pasture, neatly removed by the horse. It is broken all around the bottom, however. Now, could I get one of these casts off if I wanted to? Of course not. Will it stay on at a show? Of course not.

Evolution of Fabio’s foot going from bad to worse over a period of 4 months in glued on shoes, then in nailed on steel heartbar shoes. Front feet and back feet once again destroyed by nails. It is 2006 all over again. No farrier will believe that a horse can’t tolerate nailed on shoes. But every farrier I had work on Fabio was an excellent Farrier. My point is, there are some horses that do not tolerate nailed on shoes.

 January 29, 2009. Right front foot 3 weeks after being reset with the glued on shoe. He has now been about 6 weeks in shoes glued to bottom of foot. The bruising at the quarters is very prominent. He is still sound to ride. Heels are starting to crush and bend.

 March 15, 2009. Right front foot. Between Jan 29 and March, Fabio started to go lame again in the right front foot. So the farrier decided maybe a heart bar shoe would be better. This would give frog support and allow the contracting heels to spread. For some reason, the coronary band is being shoved upward at the quarter. The toe is long and whole dorsal line of hoof and pastern is broken forward. The heartbars are now nailed on. No glue. The farrier thought Fabio would tolerate nailed on shoes. Don’t all horses tolerate heartbar shoes? After the shoeing, he was initially sound and working.

 March 23, 2009. Right hind. Fabio became acutely lame in the right hind. Shoes were pulled. You can see the black infection has come back within the hoof wall below the nail holes. The same old problem all over again. He tolerated nailed on shoes in the back feet for 3 months, and then, lame, infection, and abscessing out the frog.

 May 13, 2009. Right front foot. Two months after being in nailed on steel heartbar shoes (he had been reset in April). The horse became acutely lame in front while being ridden in a clinic May 10, 2009. The shoes were pulled. The foot is one rotten mess of while line disease again. Black pus is coming out the nail holes. Black infection is in the walls of the hoof. He was abscessing out the frogs.

 May 13, 2009. Right front foot sole. Heart bar shoe and hoof packing were removed to reveal severe white line disease, white line even in bars. Abscessing out the toe at the black line. Bruising all over the sole. The frog is a scraggly black infected mess. No wonder the horse was lame. However, now the nailed on heart bar shoe has to be eliminated from the legal items for Fabio to wear so that he can show. Is anyone beginning to believe that this horse cannot tolerate glued on shoes, nailed on steel shoes, and glued and nailed on composite shoes?

 May 19, 2009. Right front foot. The frog is a black, infected, ragged, mess. It was very painful. Now the horse could not even be comfortable barefoot. Luckily, Easyboot gloves hoofboots came on the market, and were the perfect solution.

Even with a frog like this, Fabio was sound in the Easyboot gloves.

We had found the answer!! Except that the hoofboots are not allowed in dressage competition.

The next posts will show what happened to the horse’s feet over 6 more months of attempting to make glue on shoes or nail on shoes work for this horse. The farriers were excellent. The shoeing methods were common answers to other horses’ feet problems. Not so with Fabio. Watching his feet simply disintegrate with every attempt to provide him with hoof protection was heart wrenching.

December 12, 2008. Hind feet . Whereas the front feet were being shod with glued on shoes since Sept 2008, we decided to try regular nailed on steel shoes behind. Remember, though he was sound enough barefoot behind to be worked, when he was shown at a horse park barefoot, he put a stone through the sole of the right hind foot. Now the feet were healed, not abscessing anymore, and the farrier thought nailed on steel shoes would be just fine. Here, everything looks relatively fine.

December 31, 2008. Right front foot. This is 3 weeks after the aluminum shoes were glued to the sole. The heels are contracting even more than they were as shown in the photo in Part XII from Dec 12, 2008. The collateral cartilages are practically vertical. The coronet is much wider than the hoof wall. The inside of the foot looks like it is being sucked out. This simply looks painful. The horse seemed sound to train. Was this because, as Cole states below, that the nerves of the foot were so numbed by the compression that they effected an anesthesia of the foot?

Right front foot back in Feb. 21, 2007, when it was finally healed from the infection caused by the nailed and glued on composite shoe. Compare the relatively healthy bare foot to the foot on the right, a year and a half later, after trying various shoe combinations just so the horse could show in dressage competition.

December 31, 2008. Right front foot. This is the front of the foot which is shown from behind in the photo above this one. The photo is taken 3 weeks after the aluminum shoes were glued to the sole (not to the dorsal wall like the cuffed Sigafoos shoe). The hoof is taking on a weird hour glass shape. There is a description of what is happening to such feet in a little farrier’s manual from 1879, written by J.R. Cole, called The Horse’s Foot and How to Shoe it.

Since nailing steel shoes to horses’ feet has not materially changed over the past 1500 years, one can believe that any pathology one sees in horses’ feet today, has certainly been seen and described by other people before us. I will quote the description of this poor foot from Cole’s book in the box below.

Feet which show inner contraction: “The most mischievous results follow in contracted feet, when the lateral walls or sides of the foot are compressed, as seen in the drawings. The outside crusts (hoof wall), just below the coronet, contracts and spreads itself on the ground, until it has become like an inverted butter dish. Inner compression differs from that of outer contraction, in being midway between coronet and ground surface, instead of at the ground surface alone. Inner contraction is serious, inasmuch as the wings of the coffin bone, the lateral cartilages of the foot, and nerves coursing along each artery, suffer by compression. When the nerve of the foot is touched, the life of the foot is endangered; and when the nerve becomes destroyed, the foot itself becomes dead, not only changing the tough living crust without, to a lifeless, brittle mass, but also the bones within to a like condition. The cartilages will ossify for want of nutriment, and the joints will lose their action.

The compression of the lateral wall will also change the position of the bones within the foot. The heel of the coffin bone will in many cases become raised, and will incline to the perpendicular, but this results in simply pulling the toe of this bone away from the inside toe of the coffin box (Hoof). This disengages the sensible laminae at that point, and Nature starts a fungus growth of horn in the diseased laminae (Laminar wedge), to assist the weakened torn down sensible (dermal laminae). This partial and unnatural erection of the coffin bone at the heel, throws the weight of the horse on the outside heels of the hoof which, in inner contraction squelches the heels outwards, and permits an increase in the length of the toe, by this morbid fungus growth before mentioned.

Again, in proportion to the height or neglected growth of the ground surface of the foot, it will close in around the coronet. A horse having low heels, at grass, with a hoof kept elastic and supple, by the natural moisture of the ground, like the unshod colt, with liberty to run, will never have contracted feet; but if shod, and then stabled on wooden floors, the hoof becomes hard and brittle, and thrush sets in as a consequence, and if the smith gets a hack now and then at the bars and frog with his knife, contraction will ensue.

Shoeing is undoubtedly a necessary evil, but this kind of work of tearing down bars and leveling frogs of a contracted foot, is curing a disease ‘with a vengeance’ before a horse has it. The bars are the main impediment to contraction. The frog, of course, should be left untouched, but the toe should be rasped short, the heels lowered, and the quarters weakened, and the horse be turned out. It will take some skill, time, and care to effect cures in bad cases.” J.R. Cole.  

Why did Fabio’s foot contract like this when the shoes were glued to the bottom of the foot and the entire sole was covered with glue? I have been complaining that horses in southeastern PA, where it rains all the time, have too much moisture in their feet. The feet are so wet that they spread out and flatten. The soles are flat and the toes grow too long and the heels become under run. Cole states that contracted feet are a result of becoming too dry, not enough moisture. Does the glue which is spread over the whole bottom of the sole suck out moisture? Perhaps the glue prevents moisture from going into the foot through the frog and sole. Contrary to popular belief, the hoof wall and sole are not dead. Just because one can put a nail through them does not mean they are dead. The hoof is very alive. Cole even calls the hoof a “tough living crust”. The hoof is a transport membrane for moisture and chemicals into and out of the foot. Again, this is another long story for another time.

The horse is ready to show in dressage competition, free from pain. For the sake of the talented horses which need hoof protection which has been enabled by modern technology, ie, hoofboots, I beg the horse federations to approve the use of hoofboots in dressage.

November 4, 2008. Right front foot. On Sept 30, 2008, about 2 months after the horse’s composite shoes were removed, and after the feet had had a chance to grow out from the infection, we put the shoes which were glued on to the dorsal wall by a Sigafoos cuff. This is 5 weeks after the initial shoeing. The horse was sound to work during these 5 weeks. The toe was growing very long, and starting to flare about an inch below the coronary band.

December 9, 2008. Right front foot. This is about 5 weeks after the 2^nd reset with this cuffed glue on shoe. The horse had been sound for the previous 5 weeks. The toe, however, is really growing long, and the heels are becoming under-run. The flare of the dorsal wall, which starts about an inch below the coronary band, is becoming very horizontal. This is not good. The foot looks really weird.

December 12, 2008. Right front foot. About 2 days after the third reset with the Sigafoos cuff, the horse became lame.

The foot was really long and the toe was out of control long. On this day, the cuff was removed and the horse was shod with aluminum glue on shoes, glued to the sole of the foot. Here you can see extensive bruising of the wall at his favorite bruising spot, the quarter . This time the shoe had not been nailed on. Why the bruising? I do not know. Could the cuff have caused too much constriction on his very soft walled feet? Could his attempts at rolling over the excessively long toe have cause ripping of the (as we already know) weak dermal laminae of the foot? This foot is shown after the trim, but the heel is still under run too much.

December 12, 2008. Right front foot. The heels are really squashed together now. Remember in 2006, they were not contracted. The walls are much narrower than the coronary band. It looks like they are squashing the frog out the bottom of the foot. The lateral cartilages are all squashed upwards. This all occurred during the 3 months in the Sigafoos shoe, when the shoe elevated the frog quite far off the ground. There was no frog pressure or sole pressure, and so the foot, with an already weak internal structure, just fell down, taking the frog and sole with it, and in so doing, contracted from side to side.

Here, unfortunately, you can see that the heels of the hoof are glued to the heels of the shoe. In the other glue on shoes, including the Sigafoos shoe, the heels were not glued down. They were free to expand and contract (to a lesser degree in the cuffed shoe than in the other composite shoe). Now, the heels will not be able to expand at all. This tiny squashed foot looks like it would not be able to support ¼ of a 1500 lb horse. But, after this shoeing, the horse was sound for a while.

 Feb 15, 2008. Right front foot. The bars are growing wild in an attempt to build a support for the bottom of the foot. The frog is withering. Abscesses keep coming out of the frog and the whole foot is beginning to look rather contracted at the heel. The frog is atrophying.

Feb. 15, 2008. Right front foot. The heel is high, the toes are too long but dubbed off in an attempt to correct the flair. The bruising of the hoof has grown out. The horse is trying to build hoof wall and internal soft tissues. The indentation in the quarter is not so prominent as it was. We were at a point that we could not even try nailing on shoes again until all the infection was out of all the feet.

July 18, 2008. Right front foot. This is after we tried again in July to glue and nail on the composite shoes with the sole packing in order to be able to train and show the horse. The feet had been healing from the last attempt at gluing and nailing on shoes Sept, 2007. We thought that after 9 months, maybe the horse could tolerate nailing on shoes. Wrong!!!

This picture was taken a few days after the composite shoes were removed. The toe is getting even longer. It is flaring away from P3. The heels are becoming more underrun. The foot is beginning to look foundered.

You can see the black infection within the hoof wall below the infected nail holes. You can see bruising again in the quarter, below the coronary band. Every time we tried to nail a show onto this horse, the inflammation set up by the nails into the hoof tissue resulted in bleeding into the hoof wall. Remember, this had been going on prior to March 2006 as well, but the farriers always said that bruising is normal. Bruising is not normal. This particular horse only got bruising in his hoof wall when shoes were nailed and glued onto the foot. Working barefoot and in hoofboots with no screws and plates in them did not cause bruising.

August 12, 2008. Right front foot a month after the composite shoes were removed. The nail holes still have black infection in them, but they are growing out. The toe is long. Showing season is ending. How can I show the horse when I can’t nail a shoe on him? The casts I tried to use fell off at a show. What other alternatives are there?

A glued on Sigafoos shoe? No nails. So in September, we went to the experts on Sigafoos shoes. This is a viable alternative to many horses which cannot tolerate nailed on shoes. Many people swear by these shoes on their horses. We hoped these shoes would work on Fabio, even though it meant a whole day’s trip every 4 to 5 weeks to get them put on.

So, the next option was to glue them on, pack them with hoof packing support, and nail them on with just 2 nails on each side of the foot for a total of 4 nails. In horses with good hoof integrity, this glued and nailed on shoe may work. Apparently it works on some horses even in Pennsylvania. It is a shoe which is now accepted by the USEF. It was used by rather famous horse and rider on the US Olympic Dressage team, so it is now legal in dressage competition. Obviously it has its benefits. On Fabio, and in his lifestyle of daily turnout for 12 hours a day, it did not work. As a matter of fact, his feet got infected all over again from the nails. The feet started to abscess out through the frogs again. So by September, 2007, we were back at square one a year and a half after the original destroyed feet problem was discovered. However, we did not stop there. We removed the shoes, and allowed him to heal the feet barefoot again, and could not show, and reapplied the shoes, and tried again and again. We tried the shoes on and off for a year. Then in 2008, Casting the feet hit the market. We tried the wrap on casts. They were actually legal, because they did not come above the coronary band. A cast would stay on a foot of one of my horses for about 10 days. However, I had the bright idea of casting the horse right before a show. So at one point in the fall of 2008, I put on the casts and took Fabio to a show. In the warmup ring, a steward picked up a perfect hoof cast out of the arena and asked the competitors if they knew what the thing was. “Oh, it is my horse’s shoe”, I said. By the time I got into the arena, the other cast was off. I rode him barefoot through 2 classes. By the second class, he was barely able to move, he was so foot sore. So much for casts as hoof protection in some horses for any period of time over a day.

August 8, 2007. Right front foot. This is the glued and nailed on composite shoe, about 2 weeks after it was put on. The glue bond is breaking down, and the ominous black goop is coming out the nail holes and discoloring the wall around the nail holes. The foot is getting infected again after only 2 weeks of nails.

September 29, 2007. Here is the right front foot nearing the end of the second shoeing with the composite shoes. Now there are 4 nail holes on each side with black infection coming out of them, and bruising is appearing on the quarter between the two groups of nail holes, and at the coronary band.

October 8, 2007. Right hind foot. This is about a week after pulling the nailed and glued on shoes. The sole is nice, and has grown thick. The old injury from the stone through the sole on June 4, 2007 has moved lateral as the sole growth moved laterally. The frog, however, has an abscess hole in it in the sulcus. The infection that was able to get started through the nails penetrating the hoof wall, is now under the sole and abscessing out the frog again.

December 5, 2007. Two months after the glued and nailed on shoes were removed. The horse has remained barefoot, and the feet are healing again. The bruising is growing down the foot. There is still black infection at the area of the nail holes at ground level. In general, the feet don’t look bad, but it is interesting that the extensive bruising came again along with the shoeing.

By February, 2007, almost 1 year after the shoes were removed due to white line disease, subsolar abscesses, bruising of the walls, hemorrhage in the laminae, black pus coming out all the nail holes , the right front foot is shown as finally clear of infection. The foot is white. No bruising. There is still black discoloration within the wall at the ground level. The toes are way too long, but at least there is some foot and some wall. The horse continues to be worked in hoofwing boots. Actually, he was becoming sound enough to ride barefoot in arenas with good footing, and outside in the fields. He was still sensitive on stones.

February 21, 2007, Right front foot. No bruising. Still a significant indentation in quarter . Whole foot is too long, but I was glad there was foot, at all, so was fearful of taking too much off. The horse was sound.

February 21, 2007. Right front foot. The shape is pretty decent. The hoof looks a little narrower than the coronary band, especially on medial side. At this point, though, I thought things were improving.

June 4, 2007. The horse was finally sound to ride barefoot. So I took him to a show at a big and well known horse park. The footing in the arenas was fine. Getting to the arenas over the stone walks and drives was the tricky part. I showed the horse. When I got him back on the trailer I saw that he had put a stone through the sole on the lateral quarter of the right hind. On the left side of the foot you can see the triangular divot into the subsolar dermis. Now the foot was open to getting infected again, and it did, in spite of oral antibiotics, poultices, wraps, antibiotic ointments etc. I was not allowed to put hoofboots of any sort on Fabio’s feet to show him. Nailed on shoes were not an option as it had just taken me over a year to heal his feet from the damage nail on shoes had done to him. So I had to show him barefoot. And because he has weak, genetically poor quality hooves, in spite of everything I was doing daily to heal his feet, the soles were still so soft that a stone could go through them. You can see in the photo there are still no bars, and the sole is very cracked, but getting thicker.

July 11, 2007. This is a photo of the right front foot, now bruised again from wearing a rubber boot with a metal screw in it for only an hour. After the June 4 experience, I began to get more upset. I needed something to protect my horse’s hooves. Easyboot bares boots looked like a good option, that might eventually be approved for use in Dressage competition. They had a cleaner design than the Hoofwings. They also had a cuff, and some metal screws and plates on the dorsal wall of the hoof at the quarters. I tried them on Fabio for an hour. When I took them off, I saw bruising of the hoof wall right under the metal screws. How could that little bit of pressure on a horse’s wall cause it to bleed? Well, as I said from the beginning, some horses have terrible feet. Not all horses can tolerate steel shoes or nails in their feet, or glue, or even metal screws and washers in a rubber boot which is pressing against the hoof wall. This 17 hand dressage horse has feet like butter!! Back to the drawing boards

Part X will show more attempts at finding some sort of shoe to put on Fabio’s feet so that I could show him. In the meantime however, I was healing an abscessed right hind obtained while trying to show him barefoot, and two bruised front feet from trying a different type of boot on him.