Daniella Evenaar-Lewis, Ontario, Canada

I’ve been wanting to get my mare barefoot for the longest time, but missed the opportunity every winter. My mare has sensitive front feet and every time we took the shoes off, she went lame (and I didn’t have time for her to be sore and harden up), hooves kept on chipping right away and from pure agony we always ended up putting the shoes back on.

I listened to Carole’s (Herder) talk at the show and she kept saying how comfortable horses feel when you put the Simple boots on. How they immediately start licking and chewing. I was totally ready to believe her, but still, in the back of my mind there was a little voice saying “yeah right, I’ll believe it when I see it”. Well, did I see it last night!

My farriers took the shoes off yesterday, and because she has had front shoes on for two years in a row. Her frog is lower than her hoof wall, meaning she does land on her frog first and that is quite uncomfortable for her. I walked around on her in my sandring last night and she tip toed on her newly bare feet. Trotting was definitely sore. Then we went into the deeper sand/grass field and she was allright enough to work a bit. When I came home I washed her feet, put them in a plastic bag and tried a Simple boot on. I had measured from the buttress line to the toe and that indicated 5 inches. So she would need a size 3. She “clicked” right into a size 3, it fit nice and snug (a very little bit of play, but not able to rotate the boot whatsoever) and the second she put that foot on the ground, she lowered her head and started licking her lips and chewing. I was quite flabbergasted. I could almost hear her go “ooohhh, that feels soooooo gooooood”. I’m confident this time our barefoot adventure will have a happy ending. My farriers have agreed to come back every 4 weeks for the next little while to keep her feet from chipping too badly, and combined with the boots I am certain that I can get to a happy, healthy horse!