Re: RC: Fwd: RC: Barefoot/verses steel

[Lynette Helgeson <helgeson@ndak.net>]

Hello hope,

Tuesday, September 25, 2001, 10:50:24 AM, you wrote:

hl> Hi Kat: Thanks for you analytical post on barefoot verses steel shoes. 
hl> Mankind has relentlessly experimented with hoof protection for the horses 
hl> that they ride. Vision the huge Armies on horseback from years gone by. 
hl> Mankind will keep looking for something better because there must be 
hl> something better. Bye Hope

There is something better, the natural hoof. Man can not improve on
what God has already perfected. It is man's interference with the
natural hoof that has made it less then perfect. I keep hearing people
compare with themselves running over rocks and how painful that is and
comparing it to horses running over rocks. Well, when I was a kid,
living on the farm, I never wore shoes. The bottoms of my feet were
well "conditioned" to being barefoot. I could run over rocks all day
long and not feel a thing because the bottoms of my feet were very
tough. I also know a lady who stills goes barefoot all the time, and
she can stand outside in the snow and it does not bother her. Before
the inventing of the shoe, mankind was barefoot. Then everyone started
wearing shoes, now people are tenderfooted and can't walk on rocks,
let alone run on them.

I have also read in several posts that horses do not naturally "in the wild"
travel 50 to 100 miles a day. But in Kat's post she claims that her
horses naturally travel 100 miles a day in her pasture.  So which is
it? My self I would believe Kat, in that horses travel that far in a
day, naturally, while they are grazing and going to water.


>>Realistically speaking, no matter how "conditioned" a horse's foot is for
>>rocks, hard ground,
>>gravel, etc., even a horse with the best feet in the world cannot compete
>>barefoot in endurance
>>more than 50 miles about once a month.

Maybe not your horses but it has been done.

-- 
Best regards,
 Lynette                            mailto:helgeson@ndak.net