Apollo is an 11-year-old Anglo-Arabian horse that has just recently had his shoes pulled. I’m going to write a series of posts documenting the process of transitioning to barefoot successfully. I will be going to go over the process as we progress to creating a horse that will be comfortable going barefoot on any type of terrain.
Currently, Apollo is still a little sensitive so we will be using Renegade and Vipers to help us during the transition process. Apollo has fairly decent feet (but not great) though somewhat flat. The hooves themselves are easily getting chipped right now. I’m going to be incorporate known successful barefoot transitioning techniques.
These changes will include:
- Increasing workload
- Improved nutrition targeting overall healthy hooves
- Management to include daily manure removal
- Trims and hoof maintenance as needed
- Proper sizing, fitting and adjusting of hoof boots
It will take a while to see the results that I hope to achieve. I hope that I can show the process and share what I have learned along the way with my other horses. Two of my other horses have many thousands of endurance miles while being managed barefoot.
My next post will show how I sized and fitted Apollo for boots. I have ridden him on one 9+ mile ride using the classic Renegade, and another time 8+ miles using a boot that has a Viper bottom with a Renegade Classic captivator. On both of these rides, the boots worked perfectly. I will explain these various options that are available and why one type of captivator may work better for different shaped heel bulbs. This post::Renegade Classic and Viper Heel Captivator Comparison explains the difference.
Here are the first photos I took of Apollo’s hooves soon after I got him last month.
