About Cooter the Horse...
An off the track thoroughbred, likely shod since the age of 2. Originally he was named Shudawudacuda, then Cuda, then Denmore, and finally my nickname for him Cooter. He was a prankster coot, hence the Duke's of Hazard namesake. I have had him (aka: he's had me) for the last 10 years.

He was de-shod in late Nov 07; hoof trimming photos start in May 08. Managed rotational grazing is offered seasonally. Outside 24/7 with access to a managed grazing area, a rocky sandy area, a rocky dirt area, with some "unmanaged" grazing, and a shed with a wood floor & shavings. Soil in the grazing fields varied from poor to decent - poor would be: too acidic and/or too little organic matter. Due to worn teeth, all hay had been replaced with a processed forage, hay pellets and dengie. The rest of his feeding is processed grains.



Why We Chose Barefoot.....
"Chose" is a an over zealous word to describe the events that lead up too going barefoot in Nov 07. Being a person pathologically interested in doing what makes most sense for the horse, I acquired many resources on nutrition and shoeing long before I had a horse. Jamie Jackson's book was one of those resources.

So, life goes along, horseless, until one day..... in a land not so far away, a really good horse dumps his rider..... (both horse & I agree it was for really good reason...). The decision to own the horse went something like this:

me: "I am NOT getting a thoroughbred."

horse: "Why not? I'm cute...."

me: "Thoroughbreds are flighty and have bad feet"

horse: "I'm harmless, that's just Uncle Louie giving the family a bad name. I'm not even slightly mischievous.... besides, I know you liked that ride we had the other day....."

me: "That was just one day.... and that mischievous comment is a blatant lie.... and you know you don't have an Uncle Louie."

horse: "yeah, but that is why you can't resist me, I have personality..... I already know you don't like boring.... AND I'm cute!"

The horse didn't have any known problems with his feet other than a club foot in the RF and paddling, neither of which caused any issues. So, I became his owner/slave. I got a great farrier, and armed with way too much information, I immediately talked to my farrier about going barefoot. I got the expected "thin soles and shelly walls" response. He didn't say no, he just said, "What I would expect is... a lot of time not ride-able and in pain. Then, we would be back to shoes, with not much foot left to shoe." The horse had no issues, other than shoeing encroached on time he'd rather be chatting up the red head next door. And since he was happily confident in his ability to make up for lost time on the chestnut, I let it go....

Years go by. We move, which meant I changing farriers. I was thrilled to find a young guy with a lot of experience with thoroughbred feet, worked hot shoe and had been from my original area (which is kinda known as a "silicon valley" of farriers).

Things started off less successful than I was used to - the horse's environment was wetter affecting his feet. And as time went on, shoeings became painful misery. The horse was getting more belligerent with each shoeing. I asked about barefoot. At first, the answer was basically "I don't think so.", then, as shoeings got worse, it was "...maybe in the winter-only".

It got to the point where the farrier was discussing (and nearly insisting on) nerve blocks for shoeing and other methods to just allow him to put on a shoe. I considered them all and opted for none. The irony of nerve blocking a horse to apply something to "help" was not lost on me. Options seemed few. Due to my health, I didn't trust my judgement or my ability to find another farrier.

Then the day of "choosing" came. It was a dark and stormy night....... well actually it was a cloudy, winter day. It was a shoeing day.

We pulled all the old shoes on a gravel surface which we didn't usually use. And horse was beside himself with pain just standing on the gravel. If he could have, he would have jumped out of his skin to get away from the pain. I walked him in a grass area while the shoes were worked. An oppressive feeling "the end of the road" was some where near by tortured me as I walked him in the grass. I was preoccupied with concern for every one's safety. I knew the horse was at his limit. I felt expecting more was so wrong to ask of him.

Feeling I had no viable alternatives, in a mournful silence, I walked myself and the horse obediently back to the gravel for shoeing. The farrier started with a front foot first. The farrier mentioned a small spot looked odd. He starting pressing on it. The horse pulled back on on his haunches hard with every touch to this "spot". The farrier seem oblivious to his pain. I cringed as the farrier pulled his hoof knife out.......

I had many sleepless nights over how this farrier seemed oblivious to the horse's pain. He seemed to take no cues from it. His attitude never seemed to change from, "Horse, if you would just put up with the pain until I get the shoes on, then you won't feel the pain anymore." For comparison, this horse has stood obediently (albeit concerned), without cross-ties, with no one near by, at an entrance to a ring with cabin fevered running colts around behind him. He is not a mannerless horse.

"Just leave the spot alone." I said.... the words seemed to fall involuntarily out of my mouth and hang there. My words were ignored. "Just leave the spot alone, its causing him a lot of pain and he's only going to get more agitated and dangerous." The farrier gave me a lot of reasons for why he was doing what he was doing, but none of it worked for me. The farrier started putting on the shoe. After three strikes with the hammer, abandoned the effort because the horse made his hoof a moving target and was throwing the farrier around - remember this is a front foot, not a back foot.

The farrier "looked" at the spot again and the horse pulled away hard, half way to sitting his butt on the ground, forcing the farrier to completely re-adjust. Again, the farrier "looked" at the spot. This time, the horse nailed the farrier with his closed and clinched teeth in the middle of his back. His expression exuding "HEY! I said that really, really hurts!!!!! Which probably means that's not the right answer, Hot Shot!!!!!!" The horse seemed so shocked that he hadn't been listened to after all the warnings he gave.

"That's it, this isn't worth it, he's going barefoot." I said and I walked away with the horse. The farrier pleaded with me to allow him to put shoes on saying, sincerely, he wanted the horse to die of doing something stupid 5 years from now, not because of his feet. The farrier was truly concerned from a stewardship perspective and was very stressed how things went.

I walked away that day scared, feeling doomed and very, very alone. I had no plan. I dreaded a long haul I wasn't equal to. I was mortified by a short haul I didn't want (AND had just caused). I wondered why hadn't I done it sooner. I wondered why had I done it all. I was perplexed by what I had just done. And I wondered why and how I could take such a drastic step... with no plan or preparation at all. I had no idea if I had done, the long over due, right thing, or I had just signed his death warrant. I was lost in my own brain.

It was a painful day, surrounded in doubt and fear. Oddly, it was also a day I got reacquainted with an incredibly potent analgesic: hope. And the surreal thing was, it wasn't even my hope.

See, being an experienced horseman, I believed, like the farrier, the horse was a 85% goner and I was pondering if I should dig a hole now, since digging in January around here usually requires heavy explosives. My horse, on the other hand, despite his pain on gravel, seemed to be "walking on air" as if to say, "Yeah! We showed him! .......I trained MY human to look out for me. ....What do you got!!!!!".

I observed him with pity and disgust. I could barely look at him peripherally. The horse seemed to trust, whatever I decided to do next, he'd probably be good with. And if he wasn't, he seemed to trusted he could just tell me. He just seemed to believe "whatever is ahead is better than what I just left behind".

I thought the horse was a naive idiot. But we are talking about a very thoroughbreddy thoroughbred - not a blind trust kind of horse. And such apparent trust, from such a soul, commands the attention.

Very aware of "reality", I actually pitied him for believing things were better. I was disgusted by the amount of cold, hard, work ahead of me, which would likely not pan out.

I started to envy his hope. This left me in an excruciating state. Looking for relief, I found myself curiously studying his ouchy, "just won the race and about to get all the babes" antics. Entranced by the analgesic properties of his "happy place", I was softly lured into the idea of borrowing his hope. "It IS entirely possible he IS the only one correct here, it wouldn't be the first time." I barely needed to remind myself, "being non-verbal doesn't mean your wrong, it just means your non-verbal". His hope, as borrowed as it was, made a night and day difference for me. And I know with out borrowing his hope, I would have been barely salvageable in many ways.

It is strange to think, but we may both have walked away that day proud of the other. I know it sounds stupid to some. But I was proud of the horse. I felt he had absolutely been taken beyond what should have been expected of him, and remained compliant and respectful, even when being actively attacked. I'll never know for sure, but I felt like the horse was proud of himself for trusting, to the ends, his human would "get it" before anything permanently bad happened. And he may have even been proud of me for "getting it".

I am ashamed I didn't trust myself sooner. Many shoeings I would say to myself, "If he acted half this bad under saddle, I would immediately change to something easier and investigate..... Why am I not doing it now? What makes this situation different?" The answer was mostly just fear. There were legitimate reasons regarding my health, but the real issue, if I am honest, was fear.

For a while, few days, if any, were "walking on air" days for the horse. Reappearance of his "just won the race antics" were hard won. My mistakes cause much pain - I was fumbling to learn. I was often slow to do things to help. I was sometimes slow to listen to him, for fear of doing the wrong thing.

In the beginning, I was frequently seconds away from phoning the farrier to request another attempt at shoes. There were a few weeks when he wasn't moving around at all and was clearly depressed and if my vet had advised, I probably would have put him down..... But no such advice came.

I am humbled that despite my mistakes which cause him pain, I never lost his trust. I trimmed this horse completely untethered. If I was doing something wrong I would get leg shakes or he would be come awkward to work on. If I did something really wrong, he could just trot off - and he did sometimes. And sometimes the thick human got the message.

My advice: study Pete Ramey and other who promote trimming to the living sole. And ABOVE ALL listen to your horse!!!! They are the ultimate experts on their own feet.

After writing on how we got to barefoot, I realized I should add a link to this book.
www.jeromegroopman.com/anatomy-of-hope.html If you are in a tough situation, this is a grounding read. The author is a cancer doctor who relates a few stories on the role of hope in human healing. Anatomy of Hope, by Jerome Groopman.




About the Trimming...
I started learning to trim Nov 07. Trimming from Nov 07 to 11 May 08 consisted of a "top down" trimming only - managing wall flare (at times very aggressively) and wall length was adjusted only enough to maintain growth perpendicular to the ground. The bars, frog & sole were left untouched. After 11 May 08, I started with Strasser techniques - I thought I had to chose a technique path, I was wrong, and I chose wrong. Following Pete Ramey's explanations, and listening to my horse's opinion helped guide me out of my mistakes.




About the Pictures...
No effort was made to square up the horse for pictures. In the beginning, deciding which views to take pictures of was still evolving, so I don't have all the picture views for the first few weeks. I use a Canon "Power Shot" SD870 IS in "foliage" mode. (And I am very happy with the camera.)




About the tools I use...
I settled on a wire brush for cleaning (wear eye protection - those wire tines come out at a high rate of speed!), a rasp for top-down trimming and chamfering bearing surfaces (hoof wall edges), a hoof knife for cleaning up the frog, and occasionally a dremel for bad white line issues. If I ever pulled out the dremel it was to remove wall weakened by white line and my goal was to remove it from the bearing surface and leave a smooth, unhookable edge. I finish the bearing edges with sandpaper.

I would strongly recommend equi-casts, with packing material, for all 4 feet to start a barefoot transition. Pete Ramey recommends the same.




About using Power Tools...
If you are not a regular power tool user, get comfortable using any chosen power tool on wood blocks. And when I say comfortable, I mean use the tool at awkward angles, such as simulating working on hoof, while feeding the dog and dodging an aerial assault of golf ball sized mosquitoes. Think about and plan for cord management, simulate working on the horse with out actually powering the tool... We can all imagine, how combining cords with horses can get you in trouble. I am comfortable with a range of power tools and I probably spent 45 minutes playing with a block of wood, and days sweating how I was going to handle to cord.

Safety glasses are a must, and make sure they fit perfectly even when you are sweating, because a careless moment adjusting your glasses can result in instant injury to horse or trimmer. I use leather (not cloth) gardening gloves to help protect my hands from the tool, fortunately the gloves have not had anything to protect from, so far.