Re: Barefoot and hoof growth

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> The horse's body uses toxins in the system to produce horn material (hoof
> and sole).

Toxins?  Since when are amino acids, minerals, lipids and water toxic?

Unless you have some serious citations to back up this claim, I'd have to
say IMO you're way off base here.

> comment.  But, I've seen some posts from people stating this and it makes
> sense from the perspective that the horse doesn't have as much toxicity in
> the system to shed through sweat, so they can simply sweat just enough to
> cool the system, but not in the excessive amounts required by a horse who
> needs to shed excessive toxins from his system.

Ever seen whole-body scintigraphy done on a horse that shows heat patterns?
No difference in cooling patterns or maximum temps reached during exercise
based on whether or not they were barefoot.  The feet are **not** a route of
elimination of much of anything in the body---heat, toxins or anything
else--the pathway simply does not exist.  For that matter, alot of
pathologies in the foot originate because toxins in the body (ie endotoxin
release in the GI tract) cause inflammation in the foot that the foot is
totally unable to deal with (shod or unshod) and the resulting inflammation
causes laminar separation, rotation, etc.

Also, based on these theories of toxin consumption, since horn tissue and
hair are made of the same keratin protein, then horses that are really hairy
should have lower heart rates too, right?  And since the hair should absorb
more toxins in growing that hair, then they shouldn't have to sweat as
much---but all my horses sweat more when they're hairy, not less.  Does that
just mean my blankets are too tight?

I appreciate your enthusiasm and you're more than welcome to an opinion, but
this doesn't even begin to make sense from a physiological point of view
(except that an unshod foot does probably get better blood flow).


  In an endurance horse I would expect that
> the blood testing that is done at some of the larger rides (Pride project)
> would be drastically different for a barefoot horse.


Since I have all that data sitting here on my desk, and I'm the one that
does the statistical analysis, I can tell you right now, it's not.


 I would really be
> interested in getting in on this type study.  From everything I've learned
> about the hoof, from this last year, and how the horse's body works
> together and what those dang shoes do to prevent the system as a whole
> from working properly, I'm thinking that barefoot endurance horses can
> overcome some limitations that shod horses cannot.  Anyone interested in
> funding the blood research?  <g>
>
> Karen


Anybody that wants to fund endurance research, by all means, send 'em on.  I
have the data right here waiting to be analyzed.  They wanna pay for the
additional work, I'm more than happy to run the correlations.  But they
better have a realistic physiological theory first.  Sorry, I haven't seen
one so far.

Susan G