Rick, I think you might have misread Kat’s statement.
What I “read” was that sometimes neither owners nor vets can pick
up on a bilaterally lame horse since both hooves are lame, there is not an unsore
hoof to transfer weight to (limp) therefore no limping and the lameness goes
undetected until the horse is just not willing to move, at which point it has
to be trailered out and sometimes that’s extremely difficult or just not
possible.
I can understand why she’d want horses shod or booted
in that case. I once ended up having to lead my horse 7 miles in the Sierras to
get to a spot where he could be trailered out. He had fallen and pulled a
muscle in his inner thigh. If he’d been sore on 2 or all 4, I wouldn’t
have been able to get him out so easily..well, it wasn’t really easy at
all, no water, thick dust, steep up and down, sliding shale rock to navigate,
and vicious biting insects.
Kathy
Kat wrote:
In my experience few riders and very few vets at endurance rides can
tell when a horse is footsore on all four (or even just two fronts or
two hinds) until the horse is in absolutely excruciating agony from its
