my short answer is that my farrier did a pretty
aggressive taking back the toe on my 5 year old, who was tripping. He did
tell me that it might take up to 2 weeks for her to get used to them.....but it
was not THAT much of an adjustment problem since he has trimmed her since
age 6 mos......so she has always been trimmed with toes back correctly,
etc. In other words, she was not going from a really long toe into
these....
She was not sore the first shoeing.....and my
dressage trainer and I agreed that she was moving better from the
beginning.
The biggest difference I have seen is that she
isn't tripping at all, like she was before.
Oddly enough, my farrier said setting back the shoe
more over the point of the coffin bone would tend to protect it from
bruising.....however, realize this horse is being ridden over rocks, and not in
a dressage arena!!!
I wrote a pretty long post about this just last
week, will dig it up......
My daughters Arab also was in these for a year or
so....until we got a handle on hoof angles and he could return to a
standard shoe. She was never sore in the
natural balance and also movved better without tripping.
There are TON of other factors as to why
those horses might be moving funny and getting sore.....the key also is not
lettin the
heel of the horse get too high.......like the horse
is in stilts.....balance trim, etc.....
Hope I'm
not opening a can of worms with this one...
I am looking for some
feedback about natural balance shoes. I am working for a dressage
trainer right now whose horses are shod in these, and has since had a lot of
soundness problems that look familiar to me. In the past I've seen
endurance horses with natural balance shoes exhibit this pattern: horse looks
great for several weeks, moving well using his hind end, etc., then begins to
have sore feet, suspensories, and hocks (presumably from compensating for
front end soreness).
My memory sucks and I can't recall all the
details, since the endurance horses were not mine. From what I remember,
they were getting a lot of concussion to the coffin bone because of the shoe
being set so far back, and changing the breakover point was causing the sore
suspensories.
This trainer that I'm working for now seems to think all
this lameness will pass, that the horse is having to adjust to the new method
of shoeing, but it's been a couple of months. Can someone explain to me
the details of how these shoes are supposed to work, or the reason they don't
work? I'd love to be able to provide this trainer with some info, and
satisfy my own curiosity!
:)
