Recently, my sister thought she would try going barefoot. I thought
this would be great as we ride together and I could compare what seems to be
going on with our horses. We usually ride about 30 miles a week, mostly
mountains, a lot of mud, and a ll mile loop behind her house that I refer to as
the rockpile. We live in E. Tennessee. Sherry has been barefoot for
a couple of months now and her horses hooves look great. We got some books
for our blacksmith to study and he is practicing on all my pasture
potatos. Now here is the biggest problem I've noticed. Sherry has
taken 3 pretty bad falls in this period, 2 fording creeks and one going down a
steep hill with the ground just barely frozen. Her horses legs just fly
out from under her. On all these occasions there were at least 5 of us on
horses and on the fall in the mud, I noticed my mare sliping some with her
eventers and the horses with the heeled shoes slipped even less. On her
two falls crossing creeks, it was like her horse was walking on ice, none of
ours had any trouble crossing. I'm thinking of going to the heeled shoes
in the winter and using my eventers when the weather is drier. Any
thoughts? Linda Norton
