ok so my farrier is a natural balance shoer and does a great job n my opinion, if I had any complaint I may say the toes are a little short BUT my mare is always sound and moves great.
Friends horse (same shoer) has come up with slight wind puffs (work is getting harder, more collection). Different farrier says all dressage horses, when they start collection, need trailers on the back feet.
Thoughts? If this is true then surely bare foot horses should have more issues?
shudder Bad farrier who thinks dressage horses doing collection need trailers on their back feet. We’re not doing sliding stops!!!
Natural shoeing is definitely the way to go, when possible.
BTW, I’ve never worked with, nor had, upper level horses with wind puffs. I’ve only had those on OTTBs.
LOL well the horse is a draft/arab cross definitely not a TB.
I’m trying to research it and honestly what I’m seeing from top farriers (such a the Dutch Olympic team farrier) is, if you can, leave them barefoot. Which leads me to believe that they don’t need trailers.
That said, I’ve heard from vets, top trainers and other farriers that they do need the extra support behind when they begin ‘sitting’ for collection.
sigh its enough to make my head explode sometimes!
there was this article in dressage today a few years ago. if the Peters are riding their horses barefoot without issue… i’m thinking that farrier is off base.
http://dressagetoday.com/article/barefoot-dressage-with-shannon-peters-12540
I think I know your farrier, LOL. I disagree with trailers too.
As always depends on the horse but i too agree as natural as possible is best. Ive found that even going up the levels ive not had to shoe…trim less more often to maintain good hoof hoof yes but not actually shoe.
That’s a ridiculous statement. I can’t imagine the issues trailers would cause. Shoes are needed when regular feet can’t do the job. Every horse I’ve had I’ve kept barefoot, and sound. My GP mare was barefoot, all of my mares are barefoot now, from 2nd to PSG level, and NO issues with collection in bare feet.
Keep your farrier. Stay far away from your friend’s farrier.
I thought trailers were designed to slow them down or change the path of the foot? I do not understand the logic in that for dressage.
Before I knew any better, I had a farrier try trailers on my gelding a long time ago because he was pulling shoes. He would trip and fall on his face going down the slightest of inclines. I got a new farrier 
I thought trailers except in very special cases went out with high button shoes. They seldom do hocks any favors.
I’ve contemplated using trailers behind on my upper level horse with my vet and farrier. He twists his left hock quite a bit in the stance phase of the stride. My vet said he’s seen trailers help with upper level jumpers in the push/take off phase… However, I’ve found that just hind shoes help enough.
I was told by a 4-star judge that horses working collection need hind shoes for the support. I don’t disagree that they help my horse, but I only put them on for the summer when we might be showing. They did help a lot with the slipping behind on the footing at Lamplight, IL. And he gets a bit mincy on trail rides on gravel, so the hind shoes help with that as well.
[QUOTE=JackSprats Mom;8704214]
ok so my farrier is a natural balance shoer and does a great job n my opinion, if I had any complaint I may say the toes are a little short BUT my mare is always sound and moves great.
Friends horse (same shoer) has come up with slight wind puffs (work is getting harder, more collection). Different farrier says all dressage horses, when they start collection, need trailers on the back feet.
Thoughts? If this is true then surely bare foot horses should have more issues?[/QUOTE]
Barefoot trim does pull the toe back more than we are often used to seeing on horses that are shod, or horses that have a “pasture trim” from a conventional farrier. Now the farriers who do shoes say often on this forum that a good trim is a good trim, and that a good trim for a shoe should look just like a good barefoot trim, and I don’t disagree. But if you go and look at horses in shoes, this clearly isn’t happening in many cases. And, to be honest, it isn’t happening for some barefoot horses either, if you follow the threads on hoof trim and lameness on the Horse Care forum. Some of those threads are a real eye-opener, and very informative, on what can go wrong and how to fix it.
Horses in shoes are often trimmed in a way that allows the toe and the heels to run forward over time, which, among other things, can make a horse more susceptible to founder if it has an attack of laminitis. Shoes in the short term can compensate for discomfort caused by problems in the trim, whereas a barefoot farrier has to be very careful to trim correctly.
So yes, compared to other horses you see, your barefoot horse will have a very short toe. But this is a good thing, particularly if it is combined with the heels being well back, that is the hoof wall curving around to end at the back of the frog heel bulbs.
As far as the windpuffs, I would suggest getting a full diagnosis from a vet who knows hoof angles and is good on lameness. I realize that windpuffs are not technically lameness, but they do point to stress on the joints.
My barefoot mare is prone to them, because she pronates at the back. Her hips are very wide, so her legs slant in so that her feet land comparatively base-narrow, and she lands on the outside of her feet. This creates hoof-capsule distortion, so that the outer half of the foot spreads more than the inner half.
I had our good lameness vet, who is also trained as a farrier, check her a couple of weeks ago. He confirmed what my regular farrier thought, which is that the puffs are caused by her landing like this. Then he gave us a nice tight trim, a bit more aggressive than what my regular farrier had been doing. And the puffs have substantially decreased since then.
Obviously, this is unlikely to be the exact problem your friend’s horse is facing. But having a vet/farrier look at her way of going, watch her move, look at her wear patterns, think about her breakover, is all useful. Maybe you need to have your farrier look at her horse. Without seeing photos of the feet, it’s hard to know how good a trim job she is getting, to start with.
I had never heard that dressage horses in general need special shoeing to do collected work. I wonder if this is an idea more prevalent in places that have a big Western performance population, and the farriers get the idea from using the trailers on reining horses? But sliding stops are much rougher on a horse than correct collected work. I think even the reining trainers know this, and after the horse has learned the stop, they don’t practice it every day, but save it for performance. But correct collected work is good for the horse, and incorporating some of it into every workout is a plus. Maybe not canter pirouettes every day but certainly starting to “put the horse together” makes the horse stronger and more balanced. In most collected work, even in canter pirouettes, the horse is still keeping more weight on the forehand than a Western horse doing a spin or a sliding stop.
One factor is that many lower level horses don’t move into correct collected work, but end up rolled over/swan neck on the forehand more or less forever, and this absolutely breaks down the SI and the hocks over time. But shoeing won’t fix that.
I am going to make a guess that the draft/Arab mare in question is not doing pirouettes or levades quite just yet and the collection she is being asked to do, f done correctly, is the well within the parameters of what is healthy gymnastics, rather than high stress. That said, both drafts and Arabs can have problems with collection, depending on their build, particularly Arabs with flat croups who tend to find it hard to get their legs under them. The draft/Arab cross might have big, floaty movement at the trot, and have “dressage gaits,” but find it hard to proceed up to the higher levels.
As far as shoes, I can think of only one reason to have shoes on a horse that is travelling around showing. That is, that you might have to ride on different kinds of footing at different venues. I expect that at high end venues, the footing is going to be pretty universally excellent, but if you were going to schooling shows at small barns, or hacking between rings even at high-end venues, you might end up on something your horse finds uncomfortable.
Other than that, if your horse goes well on different kinds of footings, and barefoot is working for you in your day to day life, I can’t see what advantage shoes would give you.
The Steffan Peters article is interesting! And there is no mention in there of using trailers on hind shoes. I would think that if this were anything like standard practice in dressage, that would be mentioned somewhere.
Typically if the horse’s leg moves a lot in the stance phase, it means the hoof isn’t as well balanced as it should be side to side. Measuring the depth of the groove toward the heel on each side will typically show it’s not even on both sides for these horses.
For my gelding, it’s not collection which requires shoes. It’s power - when he pushes off harder on his hoof it causes issues (abscesses on his left hind, which is his stronger hind leg) so he now has shoes.
Trailers? That’s just silly. Shoeing is a very individual thing, and certainly not all horses in any discipline require the same shoe. When my older gelding was still in work he used to get a little curved extension on the outside branch of his hind shoes, sort of a mini-trailer. It did seem to help.
Speaking of Natural Balance, is your horse in a NB shoe? My farrier also happens to be an NB/ELPO farrier but doesn’t use many of those original NB shoes any more. This shoe design is known for promoting choppy movement and a lot of the NB farriers are learning and listening to their clients and using more traditionally shaped front pattern shoes, especially for dressage hores.
I didn’t realize how the NB shoes were affecting my horses movement until he was shod in a different shoe. It was an eye-opener.
[QUOTE=crimsonsky;8704283]
there was this article in dressage today a few years ago. if the Peters are riding their horses barefoot without issue… i’m thinking that farrier is off base.
http://dressagetoday.com/article/barefoot-dressage-with-shannon-peters-12540[/QUOTE]
Which horses are Shannon and Steffen competing barefoot? I’m not aware of any.
There’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” solution for trimming & shoeing.
I would never have a farrier that strongly subscribed to one way (natural balance, barefoot, or anything else).
Each horse must be evaluated at each shoeing to determine what is appropriate. Sometimes shoeing needs to change as work load increases, but not always.
Some horses can go barefoot, many cannot.
Find a farrier who looks at each horse as an individual and develops a shoeing (or not) plan based on its needs.
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