I've had Tissy barefoot for about 9 months now and she's doing really well. She had great feet anyway, proper little rock crunchers, so I guess she was an ideal candidate for the barefoot life. Tissy can only be ridden a couple of times a week because I just can't keep enough weight on her if she's in any proper training, due to the arthritis in her jaw she struggles to get enough calories down her, even if it's sloppy. So the maximum distance I've done with boots is 30km but usually Tissy does 5-20km at a time once or twice a week, on grass barefoot and tracks with her boots, which means I haven't really had the opportunity to have a horse in full endurance training barefoot/booted.
I know there are some really successful barefoot endurance ponies, but you don't see many of them at FEI, is that because tradition dictates shoes or is it because the barefoot ponies don't make it to that level, I don't know. In reality I know very little about being barefoot and my comfort zone is shoeing my horses.Estrid doesn't have the best feet yet, a bit flaky, a bit wonky, a bit cracky. But they are getting so much better. She's got a bit fat over the last few weeks and she really needs to start getting more exercise in, but her feet kept getting chipped by the gravel on the roads around the yard so I couldn't take her out, it was time for her to get some boots and quite literally start boot camp!
We got the lovely https://thehoofbootshop.co.uk/ out again, it's just so much better for my peace of mind for someone else to try several types of boot and sizes, and select the right one, rather than me trying to figure it out. We went with the Flex Hoof Boots, which I was really glad about as I'd got on with them so well with Tissy and I found them so easy to use. This time we got some snazzy blue gaiters to easily tell them apart from Tissy's (although they have the sizes clearly written on them anyway).
For now I'm keeping Estrid barefoot, I guess time will tell when or whether we need to shoe. If I'm honest I'd be wary of having a horse barefoot above 40km, but that's because I have no experience of it, all I know is shoeing and coming out of that comfort zone will be an experience I'm looking forward to learning more about.
Thanks for watching,
Beth