A question of balance

Here's a brain-teaser for the hoof anoraks out there :-)

What do these three hooves, which belong to 3 different horses, have in common?

If no-one gets the right answer, I will tell you tomorrow ;-)

Hunting on Exmoor

Charlie and the Exmoor ponies

Opening meet

Amazingly, we stayed almost dry on Saturday at the opening meet :-) Sam had my very point-and-squirt camera, but grabbed these, including the one I posted yesterday of Felix making his own views on hunting clear :-) The one immediately above is of Andy on Bailey, she was so happy to be hunting!

Felix says, "Keep hunting" ;-)

Thank goodness for the track!

What a shocking week its been, weather-wise. Started last Sunday - literally as November dawned the temperature dropped from about 15 to about 6, the gales started and along with that came torrential rain and hail.

The horses have had access to the barn and the track but have not been on the fields at all, till yesterday, when I chucked Jacko, Ghost, Felix and Charlie out as we had sunny spells for the first time all week.

Interestingly, and very sensibly, they have spent very little time on the track - going for a stomp round to stretch their legs and hightailing it back to the barn as the showers come in - which are sharp, and actually quite unpleasant when they also contain hailstones...

Thank goodness for the track, and barn, as they would otherwise either be turned out regardless on wet fields or shut in - as it is they can choose whether they want to be in and out, and can at least mooch round on well-drained, if not dry, ground outside.

A much nicer day today - wind has dropped and its dry, for now...Not a good forecast for the weekend, but we are due a bit of a respite, I think :-)

"Barefoot horses can't do roadwork!"

This was prompted by an email from a client; she was talking to her friend - whose horses "can't" go barefoot ;-) - and the friend said that my client's barefoot horse couldn't do roadwork. The friend was, obviously, speaking from her extensive experience...(!)

Its still a persistent myth, whereas the truth is that horses hooves benefit from roadwork, as long as they are healthy, as it provides great stimulus to the frog and digital cushion and actually promotes hoof growth.

The big worry for owners is usually "Will my horses' feet wear away?!?!!" Often they will be told that roadwork is the reason shoes were invented - and that without shoes their horses won't cope.

However, during Ride Bare, our long distance trek from North Wales to Exmoor, our horses were covering 18-23 miles per day and the vast majority of that was on stony tracks or roads. Normally, we do less roadwork than this, although several miles per day is commonplace for the horses here.

The reality is that a healthy horse's hoof will grow more than fast enough to cope with this level of wear. Its probably true that if your horse was regularly covering MORE than 25 miles PER DAY on roads then his hooves might not be able to cope - but then again, probably the rest of his body wouldn't either ;-)