This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I'm having email troubles; apologies if this comes thru twice! > Diana Calder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Donnie's hooves are fine - no problems with cracking or chipping. He's > never been shod but he has *always* had very tender feet. Gravel makes > him limp like crazy > [...] > my dad [...] thinks we should shoe Donnie for the summer. I *really* > do not want to. The shoe would have to have a pad to do any good at > all and since Donnie likes to paw, I'm sure he'll get junk up under it > and then we'll have trouble with *that*. When we lived in California, I kept my Fjords shod, year round, to cope with the gravel in our corrals and on our roads. In the summer, my gelding (Sleepy) needed pads to handle the rocky trails. My husband's gelding (Rom) probably could have gone shoeless in the winter, and was OK without pads in the summer, but Sleepy was just too flat-footed for that to work. Here in Oregon, we're essentially not using them, and they're barefoot. They do fine on their dirt pastures, but move "carefully" to get across the gravelled lanes near the barn. A good shoer will be able to put the pads on such that dirt, rocks, etc can't get under the pad. Methods vary---one shoer used dense foam rubber over the frog (it would squish to fill the space between the heels and the cracks around the frog); she had me squirt some strong iodine under the pad once a week, to keep thrush at bay. Another shoer filled the frog cracks with oakum and pine tar. Despite exposure to gravel, dirt, and mud, I never had problems with anything getting under the pads. OTOH, my donkey has never been shod. In her youth, she was ouchy on gravel roads, but her hooves have toughened up to the point that she can handle them just fine now. Granted, I don't ride her, but I do drive her. (And, in a sense, she is "ridden"---her own flab approximates the weight of a large child!) Marsha Jo Hannah Murphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
