Ridecamp: [RC] barefoot/shoes

my farrier told me a great story, which I am only partly going to be
able to remember, but here goes:

back in "the old days" (let's say frontier america, I think that's about
right), there was some fellow who figured out how to catch wild horses &
train them & sell them--but the catching part is the only part that
concerns us in this tale.

what he would do, in the days before helicopter roundups, is set off
with his shod riding & packing horses (or mules) and JUST FOLLOW THE
WILD HORSES. he would keep going JUST A LITTLE FASTER than the wild
horses (barefoot, of course) preferred to travel.

and eventually, he would catch them. although they were perfectly
capable of galloping over the roughest stuff to evade him, it was the
constant steady just-a-little-too-fast pace that wore them down--or
rather, made their feet sore enough so they finally had to stop.

so (moral is)--if you can pick your own pace, and rest whenever you need
to, you can probably go barefoot & sound over all kinds of terrain, at
all kinds of speeds.

but if you are in a time-sensitive race, or need to keep going at speed
... well, then, shoes win.

(I love my farrier--he's a fount of information)

lisa
santa fe NM
(where my horses go barefoot, but we are all newbies yet, and I do
anticipate shoeing when we start to do actual rides ...)


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