"All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident"  Arthur Schopenhauer

The Process 

What can you expect from this process?  It's very difficult to say without seeing your horse because there are so many variables involved that trying to make a statement that applies to every horse and situation is impossible.  But I can cover some of what you might expect.  There are basically two situations and every horse will fall into one of these or somewhere in between them.

First, if your horse is young, never been shod, has had close to a physiologically correct trim then you can expect that he will continue to have 'good feet' and be sound for years to come.  However, many people who seek out this trim do so because they have a horse in trouble in one way or another.  Their horse has foundered or been diagnosed with navicular or had an injury that isn't healing or the farrier can't keep the shoes on anymore because the hoof quality is so poor.  This leads us to the second condition whose extreme position is a horse about to be 'put down' due to an incurable lameness problem.   These are cases that require rehabilitation and this is a process that can take from six months to three years, depending on many things.  The transition to barefoot for these horses can, indeed, be a very difficult process:  Sometimes more for the owner than the horse. 

In trying to determine what the rehabilitation process will look like, I will be considering the age of your horse and his health or metabolic condition.   How he is used and kept and what his nutritional program is.  Does he have shoes on now and at what age did he begin being shod and how many months of the year has he been shod and how many weeks did he go between resets and what kind of trim did he get from the farrier and how high were his heels left and how good was the shoeing job and how much movement does he get and how much exposure to water.  

This is far from exhaustive but the idea is to get a sense of your horse's health, how much damage might have been done to his feet and his ability to go through this transformation to barefoot . 

 My job will be to trim his hooves towards proper, physiologically correct, hoof form, which is a form that allows hoof mechanism; allows for maximum circulation and even weight displacement.  This is what I can do that will allow and aid healing in your horses hooves. 

DEPENDING ON HOW MUCH DAMAGE THERE IS IN YOUR HORSE'S HOOVES what you can expect from this healing is soreness, lameness and abscessing for from 6 months to three years.  The more damage there is, the more of that you can expect.  The less your horse is given optimum movement, has his hooves properly hydrated and the poorer the quality of the trim or if done less often than it needs to be done, the longer this process will take.  One day your horse will seem fine and the next day he won’t want to walk.  And it can go like this through the whole period of rehabilitation.  Sugar, one of my case studies, has been trotting and cantering but is extremely sore right now due to a new round of abscessing.  This is simply part of the process and is, admittedly,  not a course for the faint of heart or the impatient.  Your horse is going to need you to be tough and patient.  He’ll need you to walk him when he doesn’t want to and looks like he’ll fall over for sure if he has to take one step.  I’ve seen  horses foundered in all four feet lay down to eat.  Some times it takes a lead rope on their butt to get them up and moving but move they must for this is what aids in circulation, in metabolism, in delivery of nutrients they need to heal the damage in their feet if they are ever to be sound.  (Always keep this in mind as their caretaker if you have a horse with extreme damage in their hooves:  In the wild they would move or die.  With you, you will be their mover or you can give them up to euthanasia.  As the owner, its always your choice).  They didn’t get into this fix in a month or two and it will take time to get them out of it.  You might expect me to say, here, that if you don’t feel you have the patience or toughness for this then go ahead and put shoes on your horse or get a barefoot trimmer who thinks things can be done slowly.  Would that I could but all you do with shoes is cover the pain with numbness and continue with the same hoof form that created his lameness and therefore continue to damage his feet and by going slower you impede the healing process and risk, again, making your horse even lamer.

 Again, your job will be to ensure your horse gets sufficient movement.  That may mean hand walking him for 20 minutes twice a day on a flat, smooth, non-concussive surface.  Or, perhaps, to ride your horse at a walk, or perhaps to trot with long and low work and avoid any tight turns that will overstress the laminar connection.  My point is that your horse is in rehabilitation and you need to be willing to do whatever it takes to give him the time to heal his way back to soundness.  There are no silver bullets, no magic potions or secret elixirs that will allow you to avoid the work, the time, the courage it will take to see this through.  There are those who want quick and easy 'fixes'  and I have to tell them to look elsewhere.  I know they won't find them but at least they'll be following their own set of ideas.

 Your horse will need to have his hooves exposed to water everyday by standing in a trough or bucket or hoof boot to a point over the coronet band for 10 to 15 minutes twice a day.  Proper hydration is critical for healthy feet and even more so to reshape the hoof.

There are many things you will need to consider and some of these come under equine care and so are dealt with there.  But the three things to think about here are that you must make sure your horse gets trimmed as often as he needs to, make sure he gets sufficient movement and make sure his hooves are properly hydrated.  A proper trimming schedule can go from every other day to once a month.  This goes from a horse with chronic founder to a maintenance trim.  Movement for your horse can mean being hand walked for 20 minutes twice a day to walking up to 15 miles a day.  Proper hydration requires a minimum of twenty minutes a day with water up over the coronet band.

Rehabilitation of the horse generates a tremendous amount of controversy.  There are those who cannot tolerate seeing a horse in pain.  This lack of emotional toughness (think 'tough love') leads them to either drug the horse into numbness or to seek those remedies where the horse shows little outwards signs of pain.  This is really unfortunate.  I myself have never been through a rehabilitation cycle from something like a broken back after an automobile accident but I've been lead to believe it can be very unpleasant and painful.  I don't think anyone would recommend you live in a brace for the rest of your life rather than go through the pain and discomfort of rehab.  But when horse owners do that, well meaning as they may be, they give up the long range health of their horse.

So, I’ll say it again:  Depending on how bad your horses feet are, be prepared to give up riding or using him for from six months to two years.  Be prepared to hand walk him even when he can barely put one foot in front of the other due to pain.  Be prepared to take a lot of flack from friends and neighbors who see you walking that horse.  Be prepared to do whatever it takes to have him stand in water over his coronet band and soak those hooves for 20 to 30 minutes a day.

If you can do that for your horse, your horse can heal his hooves and give you years of soundness to enjoy.

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Last modified: 06/05/06