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RE: [RC] hot shoeing - Lauren E. ReitzIf your farrier is incompetent enough to "over do it" then you have larger problems and should be running in the opposite direction! It really isn't that hard to see whether a shoe is black hot or red hot and take note of how much smoke rolls off. There are plenty of horrible farriers out there. They don't have to be licensed and they can be slick-tongued devils. You can take an 8 week or less crash course and call yourself a farrier but it doesn't mean you know a darned thing about shoeing horses. You can work for years without the correct knowledge and be just as bad. If your farrier can't properly hot fit a shoe, he/she probably isn't trimming the hoof or fitting the shoe or doing any other number of things correctly either. Take it as a sign and find a new shoer! The advantages to hot shoeing have been outlined. If you have a horse that looses shoes frequently, hot shoeing can help. It is not the only answer, but burning in the clips and ensuring a PERFECT fit down to flattening the very last rasp groove in the hoof WILL help keep a shoe on a bad foot. No matter how good you are at cold shoeing you just won't get as tight a fit as you will hot fitting a shoe. Your eyeballs and the mechanical tolerances you can achieve with a rasp even in the most expert of hands will not make that cold shoe a perfect match, but hot fitting can. Sure you can cold shoe the majority of horses with no problems, but for those few that have poor feet and a penchant for loose shoes, hot fitting can make a difference. For the rest, well I don't know about you but I like the best for my horses and hot fitting gives the best fit. You DO NOT burn the hoof shorter, you DO NOT use hot fitting as a substitute for good flat rasping and shaping of the hoof, you DO NOT burn any living tissue or cause pain. There may be some smoke and smell, but it should not be billowing off in clouds You hot fit to perfectly mate the well fitted shoe with the properly trimmed hoof to ensure perfect even surface pressure and burn in the clips if necessary. Saying that others hot fit because they can charge more or compensate for poor trimming is blasphemous. I'd question the shoer who said such a thing and wonder if they even had the skill or knowledge to hot fit themselves or if they were just saying so to conceal their ignorance. Lauren Reitz ... Also, I have found that even among shoers who think that "hot fitting" (which this practice is referred to by some people who do it) has sufficient benefits that it should be practiced regularly, they all agree that it must be done carefully, that it is possible to "over do" it, and the consequences of such can be decidedly unpleasant. So, if somebody were to ask my opinion as to whether it ought to be done, I would say that the risks outweigh any possible rewards and you would do better to find a shoer that doesn't. ... kat Orange County, Calif. ... =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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