Have you seen this?
http://www.earthlings.com/earthlings/video-full.php
Its beautiful, and painful at the same time....and worth the watch.
Hope this finds you well my friend.
Nikki
Horseshoes & Stables
Posted By Harry on September 11, 2010
I’ve been meaning to write a post about horseshoes and stables for sometime now. Unfortunately I tend to rant about them only to the converted, and keep quiet when in the company of those who practice the horrors of such. To keep the peace so to speak. Particularly amongst friends. But this is my blog and, in the words of Vegina, “… I spend my days tempering my perspective in the hopes that I can be even-handed, avoid alienating readers … Hence, this blog. I don’t care if I alienate you.”
Well, not quite. I do care if I alienate you. Not because I worry about how you will feel about me. But because I care about how you feel about animals. This blog is not about me, it’s about tempting you into a gentler life, and that life has to start with how we treat the voiceless. So if I alienate you this blog fails in its raison d’etre. I do not want only those who agree with me to read this blog. I want those of you who don’t agree to feel you can visit anytime and, perhaps, one day feel uneasy when you ask a farrier to bang a set of metal shoes onto your beloved horse. And despite feeling uneasy I want you to return and read some more. All of us are on a journey, and mine feels like it’s just begun; this blog shares that journey to a gentler life and requests your company. (That said, I may fail in my quest to be gentle when talking about horseshoes and stables. Like an ex-smoker picketing outside the local tobacconist …)
Billy-Phar
Horseshoes and stables represent so much of how we wrong animals. Horseshoes are all about us. Selfish us. We nail these bits of metal onto horses’ hooves because of what we want to do with them. There’s not an iota of thought for the horse in any of this. Stables on the other hand can be either about us, or about horses, or both. We stable horses because we foolishly believe that horses want to be locked up in a house at night like we do, warm and cosy by the fire. But such ignorance is not defensible for long. Or we stable horses so that they’re always there for us. No need to catch them. No muddy coats that require cleaning before we thrust a saddle on them. They’re always there for us to use.
The evils of horseshoes
Humans first domesticated horses around 4000 to 3500BC in the Eurasian Steppes. Horseshoes were first used sometime in the 5th century AD and became widespread by the 14th and 15th centuries. As captivity led to greater and greater restriction of horses’ movement (wild horses generally travel 30 miles plus per day) horses’ hooves no longer underwent the constant stresses required to keep them healthy and they grew weaker; horses with weak hooves could no longer do for humans what they were in captivity for in the first place. A solution for humans, not for horses, was found in a U-shaped piece of metal.
Billy's (and Avondale's) last horseshoe
Today, with the resurgence of the “barefoot movement”, anyone with the most basic of literacy skills is able to educate themselves about the evils of horse-shoes. The information is everywhere, harder to avoid than to partake in the education. Horseshoes prevent the basic physiology of the hoof and in so doing destroy the horse. Horseshoes
- rigidly fix the living hoof in 2 dimensions, forcing the joints above to compensate leading to early arthritis
- prevent conditioning of the “softer” inner parts of the hoof, which when properly conditioned protect the deeper sensitive structures
- prevent hooves from flexing in all directions according to the terrain they encounter
- provide a rigid barrier between the horse and the ground it walks on, preventing the horse from sensing the earth through its feet
- prevent natural wear and stress-induced growth and modelling of hooves, necessary to condition them to the environment the horse lives in
- prevent the natural expansion and contraction of hooves as they hit the ground and lift again, and in so doing prevent “4 of the 5 hearts” of the horse from pumping blood adequately around the body (the horse’s true heart has to work much harder)
- create a disconnect between a horse’s diet and lifestyle, and its health (hooves are a barometer of a horse’s overall well-being – difficult to read if they’re masked by shoes)
But if none of this convinces you then ask yourself the following questions: Why do you shoe your horse? If it’s to protect the hooves when you go out riding, do you ride 24 hours a day 7 days week? No, then why not use flexible, removable boots that will complement a horse’s function and physiology? And take them off when you’re done? As you do with your own shoes. Or try wearing rigid, metal, high-heel shoes for 24 hours. How will your feet feel not being able to expand during the heat of the day? And your ankles, knees, hips, back? Need a chiropractor? And finally: How come horses in the wild, on very rough terrain, thrive without the interference of farriers and rigid metal shoes?
The tragedies of stables
I’m not sure when humans first began to “house” horses in stables but I’ll hazard a guess it wasn’t to keep them warm and cosy – those anthropomorphic thoughts (which once swirled around my brain) would have come later. Fighting a war on horse-back was so much easier if you didn’t have to scour the countryside for your steers each time you heard the distant trumpeting of opposition forces. By far the worst thing that stables do is to deny a horse the liberty of movement – something they would otherwise choose to do around 20 hours out of every 24. Stabling horses also
- leads to boredom and the creation of vices for which the horse is always blamed – cribbing, weaving, circling, wall-kicking, biting, pawing
- results in a chronically abnormal posture in which the head is always held high (above the height of the door) instead of down on the ground with a long, relaxed, extended neck (grazing). Sinuses cannot drain properly and respiratory diseases are commonplace. And the abnormal posture results in a cascade of negative effects from the head to the tail and down to the hooves.
- finds horses standing for hours on end in their own excrement and urine, worsening both hoof and respiratory problems
- prevents natural herd behaviour such as horses grooming each other (and only one horse truly knows how to find the G-spot of another!)
- causes abnormal gut function. Stabled horses tend to be fed 2-3 meals a day (4 if they’re “lucky”) which results in bursts of gut activity rather than the sustained activity that slow grazing throughout the day and night effects
Harley - natural horse posture
Looking after any animal demands of us that we find out what is best for them, not for us. It demands that we educate ourselves as to their every requirement, and that we do our best to provide each and every one, or at the very least come pretty close to doing so. Not to do so should find us questioning why, should make us feel uncomfortable and then, if Thomas Edison is right that “Discontent is the first necessity of progress”, that discontent may urge us forward. Towards a gentler life.
*I do not believe in “never” and “always”. There are certainly times when sick or injured horses need stabling, and possibly times when a shoe may be required. But these times are few.
Thanks for sharing all that information! My knowledge of shoes stopped at the involuntary shudders from the thought of nailing things into their hooves/feet.
It’s hard not to shudder at the thought, or sight, of metal being nailed onto hooves. I shuddered every time I called a farrier – but that’s how I was told you looked after horses. Fortunately (long-term, not short-term) about 3 months after Harley entered our lives he was spiked and lame for 3 months. Sue convinced me that whatever the ‘experts’ said, it couldn’t be right. And that’s when my education about barefoot trimming, and about just how bad horseshoes really are, began.
One of the biggest problems is their continued support by vets as a solution to sore feet. Bang on a shoe and immediately no pain. A poor short-term fix that is used long-term, with more and more aggressive ‘corrective’ shoeing techniques until one hears, ‘Well, we got a few more years out of him.’ But what the poor horse needed was a long-term fix and time to heal, be that 6 months, 2 years or a lifetime of never being ridden again. Who’s sore, the horse or the rider? So whose care should take priority?
Thank you very much for the very informative post. Eventually it would be a real asset if some sort of compendium was created regarding the myriad ways that human animals have gone about interfering with and perverting the natural behaviors and qualities of our fellow sentient beings.
I agree. I think though that the compendium is already out there – scattered in Google-world and in the multiple texts that have been penned. Bringing it all together, especially when including things that we do to animals for our pleasure or business in a non-eating/ non-hunting way (sports, circuses, zoos, aquariums, horse and greyhound racing etc), would ensure it’s a rather large compendium! Who’s up for the challenge?
Ah, NOW I know, Harry, why you feature Pete Ramey among your Gentle Sites. I should’ve figured it out before now.
I agree with your every word. Like you, I didn’t used to know better.
Then, at the local mounted police stables, I began to hear the officers talk about transitioning the horses to the shoeless, natural hoof.
From there, I began to read up on natural hooves, starting with Ramey’s website. At a clinic I co-hosted, I met another barefoot trimmer who had learned the trade under Ramey.
Then I learned about a clinician whose page-turner book, Finding the Magic, and website talk about barefoot and bitless and proper saddles (or no saddles): http://www.sumereltraining.com/book.htm.
And, finally, I heard about, bought, read, and loved Joe Camp’s book, The Soul of a Horse: see http://www.thesoulofahorse.com and http://thesoulofahorse.com/blog.
Joe shares your sentiments on stables, Harry, as do I. A good place to store the hay — and keep a patient warm and dry ’til he’s ready to return to the great outdoors again.