Hey everyone, it’s Krista with SaddleBox and for today’s video I’m going to be helping you decide whether or not your horse needs horseshoes.
Okay, so this is a conversation that you’re going to want to have with your vet and farrier. You’re going to need to take into consideration how much you work your horse, what you do with your horse, the condition of your horse’s feet, and the condition of where you live in. So if you work your horse quite often and they live in rocky conditions, like we live in hill country, so if horses have any tenderness, any soreness, it’s going to show here.
So typically shoes can help that. Sometimes, there’s an underlying issue, which is why it’s very important to talk to your vet as well. But typically, if they’re a little bit tender on their feet, you can just throw some shoes on them and they’re fine. If you do a special event like jumping, barrel racing, roping, especially reining, your horse might need special shoes.
So Paisley here and I do a little bit of riding and she wears what’s called sliders on her back feet, and basically those help her to slide better in the dirt, like if you’ve seen reiners and ropers, they want their horses to slide and really do those stops like that. So those shoes really help. I know for barrel racers, we put rims all around so they have more of a grip and they can stay upright better.
Now with that being said, obviously a lot of horses can run barefoot or perform barefoot. I’ve had plenty of horses that do just fine barefoot out here or run barrels barefoot or do all kinds of things barefoot and they do just fine. Again, it’s going to be something you want to discuss with your farrier and vet to make sure they are adequate and they have good feet for it.
But if you notice your horses have a lot of cracks in their feet or they just don’t wear as well as the other horses, it might be a good idea to put some shoes on them, or to get what’s called a scoop boot and they can wear that when you’re kind of in between farrier visits and you need them to come out they can typically wear that without having to have shoes on.
And obviously your farrier or vet can recommend things without you even having to observe some of these things in your horses, but shoes or no shoes, shoes can go a long way, no shoes can go a long way. Again, I know plenty of performance horses who are barefoot, great for the owner because it’s a lot less money that you have to be spending on them. But again, some horses need shoes, some certain events need shoes.
Okay guys, that’s it for this one and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye y’all.