The Soul of a Horse

by Joe Camp

  Here’s what I was led to believe a mere year and a half ago: Bare hooves banging against hard surfaces, be they concrete, asphalt, dirt, or rocks, will cause the hoof walls to crack, and shatter, and crumble. Therefore horses need metal shoes.

  At this point I didn’t know that such cracking, shattering, and crumbling doesn’t happen to the hooves of horses in the wild. Their hoof walls and soles are like steel. And there’s a reason for it. But nobody ever told me that. And nobody told me that a metal shoe is so unhealthy for the horse’s hoof that it can become the cause of cracking, shattering, and crumbling. I began this leap into the world of horses just like everyone else, because everyone else was who I was listening to.

  It was the relationship with Cash that made me keep digging, keep reading, and keep learning. Because I cared deeply for this horse who had chosen me, who had handed over to me so much of his livelihood, I was left with no choice but to do as right by him as I possibly could. And that meant I needed to gain knowledge.

  Still, it’s disturbing that once upon a not-so-distant time, I firmly believed that horses must be shod. That’s the way it was. Horses wore shoes. It never occurred to me to find out why horses in the wild, or in the past, got by without nails and shoes. And that’s worrisome. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent and curious individual. Why would I accept something so odd without even asking a question?

  Scary.

  But common, I’ve found, among so many horse owners.

  I was a novice blithely following whoever would speak up.

  In his seminars on leadership, Andy Andrews tells folks that the first step in becoming a leader is to be a person of action. When everyone else is shrugging their shoulders, do something. Say something.

  Hey, where do y’all want to go eat tonight?

  Gee, I don’t know. Where would you like to eat?

  Makes no difference to me. How about you, John?

  Oh, I’m good with anything. Bill, you decide.

  Oh, I don’t care. Really.

  “Just make a decision! Be a person of action! Name a place, any place,” screams Andy, “and suddenly you’re a leader!”

  Let’s go to McDonald’s!

  Hey, good idea.

  Fine with me. How about you, Bill?

  Yeah. McDonald’s. That’s good.

  Take action. Step out. Speak up. And they will follow.

  Do it two or three times and they’ll be looking to you whenever a decision needs to be made.

  Never mind whether or not you make good decisions. Or healthy ones. Or even whether you make any sense. Just taking action puts you at the front of the line. And, unfortunately, that’s how so much misinformation gets spread. Somebody somewhere has the chutzpah to say something. That person might or might not have knowledge on the subject. He might or might not have ulterior motives. But he spoke out when no one else would. When no one else wanted to take the time to think about it, or research it. And now, voilà, he’s the expert.

  That’s the way it was with our horses and shoes. Everybody said do it and I didn’t question the advice. They had to know more than I did, right? After all, they had been at it for years. Some of them for decades. Who was I to question?

  Then I stumbled upon an article in a horse magazine. The first couple of paragraphs went something like this:

  Did you know that a horse’s hoof is supposed to flex with every step taken? And that simple act of flexing is just about the most important thing a horse can do for good health and long life? The flexing provides shock absorption for the joints, tendons and ligaments in the leg and shoulder, acts as a circulatory pump for blood in the hoof mechanism, and helps the heart get that blood flowing back up the leg.

  Without flexing, the hoof mechanism will not have good circulation and will not be healthy. And the heart will have to work harder to get the blood back up the legs. Without flexing, there will be no shock absorption.

  And with a metal shoe nailed to the hoof, no flexing can occur.

  Kerwhap!

  Slapped right in the face with a piece of indisputable logic.

  Of all things!

  Logic!

  Truth!

  How insensitive to my inertia.

  The article went on to explore the results of a study of more than a thousand wild mustang hooves. All barefoot hooves, of course. All very much alike, healthy and hard as steel, without regard for the type of home terrain or climate.

  I was immediately off to websites, gathering books, soaking up more information and knowledge.

  Pete Ramey, a world-renowned natural hoof specialist in Georgia using the “wild horse trim,” says he has never worked on a horse that he has not taken barefoot successfully.

  Eddie Drabek, a specialist in Houston also using the wild horse model, helped take the entire Houston Mounted Patrol barefoot, and they are all doing terrifically, with lower vet bills than ever before, even though they work every day on concrete and asphalt. When they were wearing metal shoes, the horses were often ice-skating on the asphalt, and horses would go down with their riders. But not one has fallen since the barefoot program began.

  Drabek has also taken winning performance horses barefoot in reining, jumping, racing, cutting, and dressage, making for happier, healthier winners. He says, “Every single horse brought to me that the owners swore had feet that grew abnormally, had bad genetics, could never be barefoot, had brittle hooves, had cracks that would never go away, and so on and so forth—I’ve heard it all—has been taken barefoot successfully with the proper balanced trim and has beautiful feet to show for it. And I’m talking hundreds of horses.”

  Ramey, Drabek, and natural-hoof specialists Jaime Jackson, James Welz, and Marci Lambert have all taken on one or more horses that a vet or a farrier has said must be put down because of lameness in the feet, and in every one of those cases, the horse, after going barefoot with the wild horse trim, completely recovered and became perfectly healthy. Some healed quickly, some took as long as a year, but recover they did. Case history after case history.

  So why do people believe their horses cannot exist without shoes?

  Because, as Dr. Strasser, Ramey, Drabek, Welz, and Lambert all confirm, when a shoe falls off a horse that has been shod for years and years, the hoof and hoof wall are usually no longer strong and healthy. The hoof has been made unhealthy by lack of circulation because it has not been able to flex and thus circulate the blood properly throughout the hoof mechanism. And the continuing process of hammering nails into the hoof wall makes it weaker, and provides places (the nail holes) for chips and cracks to occur. Also, some hooves, if they’re in really bad shape, will be tender for a while after going barefoot. And the unknowing owner concludes that the tenderness means the horse needs shoes.

  Not so.

  The hoof will completely heal and remodel itself, growing a strong new horn and a hard calloused sole. This is a logical and normal process (see the Resources section at the back of the book, especially Pete Ramey’s and Jaime Jackson’s books and videos). It takes approximately eight months for a horse to grow a new hoof, from his hairline to the ground. If properly trimmed to mimic the way wild horses’ hooves trim themselves during daily wear, a worst-case scenario for a horse to acquire a completely new, rock-solid, healthy foot, then, is approximately eight months. Many horses are much quicker. As you read earlier, Cash was good to go from the first day his shoes came off. And a happy horse indeed. Four of our six never had a tender moment after going barefoot. One took four months to remodel, and one took almost seven months. And well worth the time.

  But wait! When my horse’s shoe falls off, he starts limping almost immediately. And when the shoe is nailed back on, suddenly he’s fine. Doesn’t hurt anymore. Proof that the shoe is better for him than barefoot.

  Have you ever crossed your legs for so long that your foot goes to sleep? We all have, and we all know what’s happening. The leg-cross has cut off the circulation to the foot, and with no circulation, the n
erve endings lose their sensitivity and fail to work. The second you uncross, or stand up, the circulation returns, as do the nerve endings.

  Ooh! Ouch!

  The same thing happens to a horse when a metal shoe is nailed on. The inability of the hoof to flex removes its ability to pump blood, virtually eliminating circulation in the hoof mechanism. Without proper circulation, the nerve endings quit transmitting, and the horse no longer feels the “ouch.” When the shoe falls off, the circulation returns and suddenly he can feel again.

  Whoa, what’s that about?

  As mentioned earlier, Scribbles took a good six to seven months to regain a healthy hoof with no ouch. And today he’s a happy camper, on asphalt or concrete, on the trail, in the arena. His hooves are beautifully concaved, keeping the coffin bone up where it belongs. They are beveled at the edges, just like a wild horse’s hoof. And they’re as hard as stone.

  The sacrifice? The downside?

  A few months’ time to let him grow the hoof nature always intended for him to have. Good boy, Scribbles.

  How much trimming is needed, and how often, depends upon the horse’s lifestyle. Remember, the objective is to replicate the hoof that the horse would have if he were living in the wild, moving twelve to fifteen miles a day with the herd. If he’s living in a box stall and not moving around much, there will be a lot more trimming, probably more often, than if he were living in a natural pasture like ours and moving around all day wearing down his own hooves. But the objective can be reached in either case.

  Pete Ramey, the hoof specialist mentioned earlier who teaches hoof care all over the world, believes we have only just begun to discover the true potential of the wild horse model. After a trip to wild horse country for research, he said, “The country was solid rock; mostly baseball-sized porous volcanic rock that you could literally use as a rasp to work a hoof if you wanted to. Horse tracks were fairly rare, because there was so little dirt between the rocks. There were a few muddy areas from the recent snowmelt, but they were littered with rocks as well. The horses made no attempt to find these softer spots to walk on.”

  Pete and his wife, Ivy, observed, videotaped, and photographed at least sixty horses. All of them, from the foals to the aged, moved effortlessly and efficiently across the unbelievably harsh terrain. According to Pete, the horses were doing extended trots across an obstacle course that would shame the best show-ring work of any dressage horse, with their tails high in the air and their heads cocked over their shoulders watching the intruding couple.

  “I have never known a horse I would attempt to ride in this terrain,” Pete says. “Ivy and I had to literally watch our every step when we were walking. The movement of the horses was not affected by the slippery dusting of snow on the rocks. In fact, they got around much better than the mule deer and the pronghorns. The entire time we were there we did not see a limp, or even a ‘give’ to any rock, or a single lame horse, and not one chip or split in any of their hooves. It was an unbelievable sight.”

  The world has been shocked and amazed by the ability of Pete and others to forge rock-crushing bare hooves, boost equine performance, and treat “incurable” hoof disease. “I don’t want to diminish these facts,” Pete says, “but I now realize that we haven’t even scratched the tip of the iceberg.”

  There’s an old expression: No hoof, no horse. And the reams of research I’ve pored over truly made that point. So much of what can go wrong with a horse begins or is controlled by the health of the hoof. When that hoof is healthy, flexing, and taking stress off the heart, it can add years to a horse’s life.

  And he’ll be happier.

  Not only because he feels better, but because he can actually feel the surface he’s walking on, which makes him more comfortable and more secure in his footing. It’s the way nature intended. Would you run on the beach with boots on? Or do you want to feel the sand between your toes? Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.

  The president of the American Farrier’s Association, in a speech to his constituency reported in the organization’s publication, said that 90 percent of all the domestic horses on this planet have some degree of lameness. Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, director of the Science and Conservation Center in Billings, Montana, has studied wild horses most of his adult life and says that lameness in the wild is extremely rare and virtually every case he’s seen is related to arthritic shoulder joints, not hoof problems.

  Off came our horses’ shoes.

  Once onto wild horse model, I was in the soup, so to speak. I began to question all sorts of other things. Like blankets, leg wraps, barns, stalls, feed, the horse’s nature—and what I found was like a jigsaw puzzle. Start goofing around with one piece and it affects the whole picture. And the picture I was beginning to see more and more clearly was that we humans have completely manipulated horse care and training to suit ourselves, not the horse. Under what kind of leadership did we ever get to this place in time? Why has all this information not been front and center? I posed these questions to Dr. Matt, our vet, and began to think I was speaking to a politician up for election.

  “Well, it’s not always so black and white” was his answer to a question about going barefoot. “I like to see horses barefoot whenever they can be.”

  “Why not always?”

  “Well, some horses have issues that others don’t have.”

  “Like what, owners?”

  The smile that wiggled across his lips betrayed his words.

  “Well, some people feel their horses need shoes if they’re going to be jumping, or, say, doing endurance riding.”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think some horses have issues other horses don’t have.”

  I was getting nowhere, and he had to keep moving. Another client to see. I knew from my own research and experience that he was an excellent vet. A caring vet who owned horses himself and loved horses. He had good communication with them. So I couldn’t figure out why he was avoiding my questions. Was I wrong? Were there circumstances I hadn’t yet stumbled upon in my digging that would refute the entire wild horse model? Was he simply not well informed on the work of this ever-growing band of natural trimmers?

  I called the next day and asked if I could take him to lunch.

  And told him why.

  “I need to hear answers from you,” I said. “I want to know what you really believe. I’ll promise to never repeat what you say, if that’s what you want, but I need to know that I’m not crazy. Everything I’ve been studying says that most of us are doing virtually nothing right in the way we care for our horses.” What he told me the next day chilled my blood and made me very sad. And I’m afraid it’s only a microcosm of the way too much of our world works today.

  A farrier is a person who makes a living putting metal shoes onto horses’ natural feet by nailing into the horse’s hoof wall. He used to be called a blacksmith. One organization reports that there are probably 100,000 farriers on the planet. The farrier’s livelihood and self-esteem are generated by how well he appears to do his job. How well the shoe fits. How well it seems to solve some problem with the horse’s foot, like an imbalance. Or an ouch. He decides whether the hoof needs a pad, or some packing, or wedges, or a special type of shoe. Often the farrier does no hoof trimming. His assistant does that. The farrier shapes the metal shoes and nails them on. A natural trimmer wrote about how difficult it was to stop shoeing and just be a trimmer using the wild horse model. He said it was an ego thing because his assistant usually did the trimming, and now he was more or less doing his assistant’s work himself. He also called it a “male” thing, because he really liked the molding and shaping of steel and hammering nails. I spoke with a couple farriers about switching to the concept of trimming barefoot horses with the wild horse trim.

  “It’s bullshit,” said one. “A horse needs shoes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve bred the good foot right outta them.”

  “Have you ever tri
ed it? The wild horse trim, I mean.”

  “Nope. Don’t ever plan to.”

  “I know of several natural trimmers who have never been unsuccessful taking a horse barefoot.”

  “Anybody can take a horse barefoot. Just pull the shoes.”

  “I mean successful in that the horse never needed shoes afterward. Had a healthy, happy foot. On the trail. On the road. In the ring. Wherever.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, which pretty much ended the conversation.

  Not exactly my kind of logic.

  There are a lot of horses in our community, and therefore a lot of farriers.

  Dr. Matt told me how things are out in the field. He gets to see a client and treat a horse, usually, only when there’s something wrong. An illness or an injury. In other words, rarely. A farrier usually sees a client every six to eight weeks, maybe eight to twelve times a year. So most horse owners know their farrier much better than they know their vet. If it’s a long-term relationship with the farrier, it would stand to reason that he is trusted. One bad word from the farrier about a particular vet, or a good word about some other vet, will be heard. And a farrier is not likely to recommend a vet who he knows is going to come in behind him and tell the owner to pull all the shoes off his horses.

  Even with existing clients with whom he has had good relationships, Dr. Matt has lost patients because he recommended that shoes come off.

  The owner calls the farrier about pulling the shoes.

  The farrier explains that “most vets don’t know much about feet because they don’t work with feet. And, well, you should really think about it before pulling the shoes.” Those words were actually spoken to me by a farrier.

  In the above example, either the vet or the farrier is usually going to wind up losing a client because the last thing owners want are folks who disagree about the treatment of their horses. Especially if the owner doesn’t have a clue about which one is right.

  The very sad thing about all this is that all the equine vets in the country should be educating themselves on the magical things that can be accomplished with the barefoot wild horse model. And they should be talking to clients about it. But the truth is that it would be difficult indeed for a vet to make it in a community in which he has alienated all the farriers.