Horse shoeing has for so very long been an accepted way of protecting our horses' hooves. Many many texts have been written about it over the years and many subsequent veterinary texts have used this information as a basis for treatment options for serious hoof problems.

Often the content of these texts was sourced from earlier texts, some even based in ideas that were developed in the 12^th Century! Any updates on horse shoeing that followed seem to be more about about the use of "devices" and drugs to prolong the "riding usefullness" of the equine than about the creation of actual healing.

Even today most Veterinarians and farriers are trained with information written well before the biggest breakthroughs in equine hoof research were discovered.  These have only happened in the last ten years and so they have not been included in the educational material offered to vets about horse's hooves.  Its not that your vet doesn't want to offer you a barefoot alternative, he probably just hasn't studied it and so is of course wary of offering treatments that are outside his training.  This might offend some vets but its time to jump into the 21st century as hoof care at the coal face has far outpaced the hoof care taught in the universities!

Much of the earlier research into horse shoeing has unknowingly been done using horses with pre-existing hoof deformation as the benchmark for a "normal" hoof.  Therefore the findings from it are very flawed. 

The horse as a species in general has then been blamed for having "bad feet" because up till now  our benchmark was so inaccurate. We have not understood the process of hoof deformation that distorts and changes the shape hoof capsule and squashes and compromises its contents. Hence our conclusions about what hoof rehabilitation methods are the best and the employment of corrective shoeing practices have also been badly flawed.

In the last ten years there has become available in-depth studies done using modern medical technologies into the true functions of the hoof at cellular level.  These have shown how hoof deformation impacts the health of the very structures that disipate concussion and protect the entire horse.  

They have also shown that once the hoof distorts and the many complex structures in the caudal hoof (back of the hoof) become squashed and dysfunctional that the horse then lives with chronic hoof pain.  Why don't they limp?  Because it happens in both front feet! Instead they adjust gaits and postures and they try to do toe first stride landings to protect their sore sore heels.

This information has largely come from the observations and trials done in the "real world" of barefoot trimming by those who have stepped outside the traditional role of the farrier.  Those who use natural methods based on returning the hoof to a physiologically correct state again. Their findings and the healing that has been witnessed by the owners of the horses they have treated has been staggering to say the least, and it has encouraged horse owners world wide to try a more natural way of horse keeping and to consider rehabilitation with natural methods for horses with hoof problems.  

As stewards for the equine I ask that any vet who treats horses in their practice and has wandered onto this site, explore the power of natural hoof care.  You will be amazed at the healing you will see.

It is not acceptable to continue ignore the huge weight of new information that shows us clearly that our domestic & performance horses up till now, have had a very poor quality of life due to our former choices for hoof protection. If they suffered no more than a distortion of the hoof capsule then it would be ok to continue to promote horse shoeing but.....they do not... they suffer chronic hoof pain every day of their lives and it worsens as the deformation increases. They also suffer a litany of secondary musculo-skeletal problems from living in unnatural postures and moving with unnatural stilted movement to protect their crippled feet.

We must fast track our knowledge of the hoof.  To ignore the huge weight of evidence as to the damage horse shoes cause domestic horses is an equine welfare issue of a magnitude never seen before.

Why do hooves suffer hoof deformation?

Because like all living structures they need certain things to maintain a healthy form.  When you lift them off the ground with steel and add unnatural stresses to them they distort and verge away from what evolution intended as their ideal form. Kept shod they never have access to the conditions necessary for them to have a chance at reforming naturally.  Sometimes we are so used to seeing shod horses we need to look at what other forms of "foot binding" did to see the true impacts of our choices.