How much stress is being exerted on your horse’s hooves? Why should you be concerned? Hoof care professional Gail Snyder leads us to a better understanding of peripheral loading. Reprinted with permission from Natural Horse Magazine, Gail gives us an in-depth look at this concept. Even if you didn’t get an “A” in physics this well written article is sure to demystify this common but often misunderstood term.

Natural Horse Magazine graciously gave us permission to make the article available to our readers. Simply click on the links below to download a PDF version of the articles. Note: this function requires Adobe Reader to be installed on your computer. If you don't have it yet, you can download Adobe Reader by clicking on http://get.adobe.com/reader/

Here is the link to download the article: http://www.easycareinc.com/app_system/lib/content/home/education/articles/Hoof-Loading-NHM.pdf

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

Traditions, they say, die hard in the West. Contrary to popular belief, back in the 1800's men weren't the only ones shooting whiskey and packing a Peacemaker. Women were often going toe to toe with the best of cowboys. These women broke tradition and blazed their own trail. They knew no boundaries.

In that same spirit, Kimberly Knight of Date Creek Ranch, Wickenburg, AZ is not afraid to buck tradition. Date Creek is the continuation of over 130 years of family ranching and is now in the capable hands of Kimberly and her husband Stephen. 

This past December Kimberly was interviewed by EasyCare dealer of the month and natural hoof care practitioner Amanda Beno Marsh for Western Horsemen Magazine's monthly feature Women of the West.

As Kimberly reveals in the  interview, Date Creek Ranch embraces innovation and recognizes what it takes to survive in the ranching business today. Proactive and environmentally conscious, the ranch embodies a true spirit of a new West. 

This same forward thinking carries over to the ranch's horse keeping practices. Kimberly, with the help of Amanda Marsh of Mountain Top Hoof Trimming Services have had success keeping the ranch horses barefoot, happy and sound in some very tough country.                                                                                                                                                 

Kimberly, has tried several styles of hoof boots but found the Old Mac's G2  with 12 mm Comfort Pads to be the hoof protection that suits her horses best and can handle the extremely rocky terrain on the ranch. Now with the new Easyboot Glove Back Country she is excited about giving this new boot the ultimate rock test. 

Rocks and more rocks.

The spirit of the West is one of individuals who never settled for the status quo. I challenge you to get a little western and to not be more comfortable with your old problems than with a new solution. Folks from all over the country and around the world just like Kimberly Knight are bucking the tradition of shoeing and choosing a barefoot lifestyle for their horses. Perhaps there's a little bit Western in all of us.

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

  

Interested in becoming an EasyCare practitioner dealer or need more information on our Fill Your Truck program? Contact me, Debbie Schwiebert at dschwiebert@easycareinc.com for all the details. Join our ever growing team of hoof care professionals who have increased their success with EasyCare hoof boots and Fill Your Truck.

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

This horse had blown an abscesses out its heel bulb. Then managed to hit himself on the already sore bulb. Needles to say this horse was very sore to any pressure. Add to the mix the client had a camping trip planned. Instead of canceling the trip, the client and hoof care practitioner worked around the situation. 

A hole was cut around the injury site and then the Glove Gaiter lined with mole skin to cushion as well as lift it off the area. The injury was then wrapped with a steri pad and vet wrap before applying the Easyboot Glove. The hole was then covered with duct tape to keep out any debris. The horse was able to make the trip comfortably protected.

Thank you Leslie Carrig of High Desert Hoof Care for sending this nice example of a very unique hoof boot adaptation.

Sometimes a little booting beyond the box is all it takes. Do you have a boot modification that has worked well for you? 

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

Mentor: someone whose hindsight can become your foresight.

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

Have you ever needed trimming or booting advice? Perhaps you want to document a particular horse's transition or present a case study? If so knowing how to take good hoof photos is essential. The "true picture" is easily skewed if care is not taken. I review quite a few hoof and booted hoof photos throughout my work week and they can be generally summed up as, The good, The bad and The ugly!   

Whether you are a natural hoof care practitioner or a barefoot horse owner or owner/trimmer, a digital camera is an important tool. Hooves are constantly changing and photo documentation can prove to be quite useful. Not only are photos a great tool when seeking advice but they are an excellent way to reflect on your work and progress. They can reveal subtleties that may have been overlooked, serve as a reminder of how far a horse has truly progressed as well as help refocus overall perspective.
 
Hoof form, hoof boot selection and hoof boot fit go hand in hand. If you request booting assistance from EasyCare, an EasyCare associate may ask for photos of your horse's hooves with the boots on and off. The following has been provided by the Pacific Hoof Care practitioners organization and is the perfect way to allow us to best assist you. We may need additional information and not all views shown below, but if you follow these pictorial examples as requested chances are we can access your situation and make accurate recommendations quickly and easily.

Below is an excerpt from the PHCP's training program with details on taking the perfect hoof photos. 

 To get started you will need:

• A digital point and shoot camera with an LCD screen and memory card
  • Best settings will be Auto or Portrait mode
  • No flash – it washes out the subject
  • If you choose to use Macro setting (denoted with a small flower), know that  you will need to be within inches of your subject and there is a very small/shallow depth of field, therefore you may end up with blurry pictures.

• A clean and level surface that is free from clutter (your tools, hoofjack, shavings/straw, etc)
  • Rubber mats
  • Barn aisle
  • Cement/pavement

• Natural Light with no shadows
  • Best in an even shaded area
  • Avoid bright sun, deep shade or partial sun shade (mottled).
  • If you do end up with poor light and have to use a flash, position yourself further away from the hoof and use the zoom lens with flash to minimize flash was.

• A clean hoof
  • Use a stiff brush to clean ALL mud, dirt, debris from the wall, sole, frog, collateral grooves and heels. Once all the prep work is done, it’s time to take the pictures. Stand the horse on the level ground with “a leg at each corner”.  Horse should be loading each hoof equally. Watch out for the stretched out stance and also resting/cocked hind hooves.

Photos provided by the Pacific Hoof Care Practitioners. www.pacifichoofcare.org 

We've all heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words. What are your hoof photos saying?

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

Here at EasyCare, we have some top notch individuals working along side us as dealers. The following article was written by Jason McClure out of Hutchinson, Kansas. For eight years, Jason shod horses for just about every discipline imaginable. These days however, Jason focuses primarily on barefoot trimming and this EasyCare dealer couldn't be happier with his career decision. Jason's passion for the barefoot horse is contagious. He admits he has received quite a bit of razzing over this change in direction but Jason is not to be swayed. Jason says he has been amazed at what he has been able to accomplish without shoes and how now he is able to help horses like the one in this article and so many others like never before.

Article by Jason McClure:

In November 2009, I gave a presentation for the Purina Equine Health Awareness Clinic. After my presentation, I was approached by a lady named Dianne who informed me that she had a horse with asymmetry issues. I was very excited to work on her horse because I had just returned from a trip to California where I had been working with my business partner, Steve Karshner. While I was there, the main focus was rehabilitating horses suffering from the effects of asymmetry.

I learned a lot of new information and was positive I could help her horse. She commented that they had diagnosed him with navicular and had been working with her veterinarian and farrier for years with no significant success. Dianne was ready to give up on this horse until she heard me talk about asymmetry at the clinic. I really liked Dianne from the start; she sincerely cares about her horses, and she was eager to do whatever was prescribed to reverse this unusual and misunderstood condition.

All hoof care professionals know we can’t fix every lameness issue on our own; it has to be a team effort among the horse owner, trimmer and veterinarian. When I saw Chex for the first time it was without a doubt the worst asymmetry case I had ever seen. He walked out of the barn head-bobbing lame, his left front foot was almost straight up and down and the right front foot was horribly underslung.

Chex’s shoulders were extremely uneven, and his left knee was an inch and a half higher than his right knee. Imagine having one leg longer than the other; you would most likely have pain all the way up through your neck and every muscle and joint in your body would hurt.
It’s extremely important for the horse’s body to be aligned. We have to get the horse’s body adjusted first before its feet start to come into balance. You must level and balance the knees, and the shoulders, so the horse is baring weight evenly on both front feet. They have to move correctly with a heel first landing in order to build heel on its low leg, as well as to keep the high heel down and de-contracting. Dianne mentioned that she rode with one stirrup longer than the other. This is typical of the condition.

Chex’s frame was uneven; his shoulders were out of alignment and over-muscled on one side. As a result, the saddle would never fit him properly. His former farrier had shod him in a 2 degree wedge shoe with a pad on the right front and a keg shoe on the left.

His instincts were correct as he was trying to level the knees. But in order to bring this horse into balance you must build heel on the low underslung foot, and that can never be done with a shoe, believe me I tried for years.

I launched Chex’s rehab by pulling off all the shoes and doing my trim. Because I planned on putting Chex straight into a pair of Easyboot RXs, I was able to be aggressive on the first trim and bring his knees nearly level. Next, I fitted Chex in a pair of RXs with dome pads, and when Dianne lead him away from me he took two head-bobbing steps then trotted off like nothing had ever been wrong.

It’s important to get a horse moving properly with little or no pain in order for feet to restructure themselves, and I don’t believe I could make those kind of changes without using the boots as part of the therapy. We made big gains on that first trim, so I set Dianne up on a four week schedule and we stuck to it. I showed Dianne how to stretch him and explained to her how to exercise him daily in the round pen. Dianne was faithful with her responsibilities, and we had her riding Chex in four weeks. She called me about six months into the rehab and told me that Chex was presenting lameness again. At that point, I knew we were on the right track. I know that sounds funny, but I explained to her that when a horse or even a person is lame for a long period of time the muscles must acclimate to moving correctly again.

At this point we had all the pain out of his feet and he was moving the way he should. However his shoulder muscles were sore and not accustomed to a full range of motion. I told her to keep stretching his legs and shoulders before she rode him. Also, Dianne was to keep him trotting in straight lines to re-muscle his shoulders evenly. She stayed faithful to the rehab and did everything I advised her to do. It’s been ten months and Chex is doing great. In September, Dianne entered Chex in a western pleasure class for the first time in years. They won third place and he showed no sign of lameness. Dianne was so excited that I was the first person she called to tell about her success. One thing I can say for sure is that with proper hoof care and with a client who is willing to do his or her part of the rehab, an asymmetrical horse can be brought back to perform at the top of their game.

There is no better feeling than restoring a horse to soundness that everyone said was “done” and to hear the owner say, “You gave me my horse back,” and to see the horse and owner back working as a team, performing sound and pain free.

Jason McClure resides in Hutchinson, Kansas and specializes in trimming and shoeing and the competitive reining horse and the rehabbing of navicular and foundered horses. Check out Jason’s website www.jasonmcclure.net for more info on the Asymmetric horse and for future clinic dates close to you.

Jason relied on the comfort provided by the Easyboot Rx therapy hoof boot to keep this horse moving and moving correctly. Utilizing the Rx was a key element for this horse's journey back to soundness. If you use the Rx in your practice tell us your story and help encourage others who may be going through a similar rehab situation. Your story could make all the difference in a horses life.


Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

Cheryl Henderson, founder of ABC Hoof Care and the Oregon School of Natural Hoof Care, is proud to present her new book, The HoofPrint Trim. This 80-page barefoot hoof trimming manual presents the ABC HoofPrint Trim method which insures balance heel-to-toe and side-to-side, even for the beginning barefoot trimmer. The "how tos" are well defined in simple to understand language with fantastic illustrations and photos.

Case studies on foundered horses were the impetus for developing the HoofPrint Trim. Cheryl feels her book presents a usable and easy trimming protocol that safeguards the hoof from harm.

Cheryl hopes her experience, as set forth within the book, will be of great assistance to each reader in correcting the unbalanced capsule and to understanding the importance of trimming.

Her achievements are far too many to list here. She is an EasyCare dealer and an active in the trenches barefoot trimmer. Cheryl's trimming schools and clinics are well attended throughout the year in the U.S. and around the world. Congratulations Cheryl on your new endeavor!

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

The Easyboot Trail continues to impress natural hoof care practitioners. Sally Hugg of Oroville, CA, dropped me this quick note and shared some nice shots of her rescue horse, Easy.

Easy is a racetrack rescue with bone loss in both front coffin bones due to years of pounding on the track. His feet have come a long way in the year since he was rescued, but they need protection. I needed a hoof boot that was breathable and would stay on during his pasture romps with our other horses. Easy is 1,300 lbs of pure race horse power and those guys really play hard, so it had to stay on and not rub.

The first time I turned Easy out in his Trails I held my breath and watched as he flew around the pasture. Running and bucking uphill and downhill, not a single mishap and the boots stayed on. They have continued to perform flawlessly.

I am impressed with how lightweight and simple this boot is to use and they look so nice on my big chestnut horse. The Trail is a winner!"

Thank you Sally for your feedback. Sally Hugg is a natural hoof care practitioner, founder of California Trace mineral supplement and founding member and mentor of the Pacific Hoof Care Practitioners. Sally also gives clinics around the country educating horse owners on equine nutrition.

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.

It's finally here! The world's easiest hoof boot; the Easyboot Trail became available through EasyCare at the end of April and the response has been nothing short of amazing. Feedback from our last full segment survey found riders still requesting a boot that is easy to apply. Say no more! Garrett Ford, President and CEO of EasyCare was quick to respond with the perfect answer.

The Easyboot Trail has many great attributes but one of its key features is the boot's ease of use. This hoof boot can be applied by virtually everyone. If you can lift a horses hoof you can apply this boot. The fastening system assures a nice fit for a broad range of hoof sizes and shapes allowing for variances throughout the trim cycle. The boot opens up completely to easily slip on and off. The double hook and loop attachment protects the entire hoof wall and keeps the boot firmly in place. Built around the Old Mac's G2 model, the Easyboot Trail can be used with the Old Mac's G2 accessories. Pastern wraps, gaiters, 6mm and 12mm comfort pads as well as the inserts all work with this boot.

The Easyboot Trail is the prefect boot for light trail riders who enjoy up to 25 miles of riding per week. It is also an ideal boot if you have hand strength issues or find it difficult to get under a horse to apply most other hoof boot styles. If you fit any of the this criteria, then you will want to take a good look at these boots.

EasyCare dealer and natural hoof care practitioner, Linda Cowles has this to say about the new Easyboot Trail:

"I just got back from selling my first pair of the Easy Care Trail boots and wanted to post a report. The mare I fit is an older Arab mare who needs occasional protection for easy trail rides. The 0 Glove was too narrow in the heel area, and the size 1 Glove just barely fit her heel immediately after a trim, but was almost 1/3 inch too long in the toe. We were going to wait for the Wide Glove, but when these Trail boots arrived, I decided to see if they would fit. We discussed other booting options out on the market but she wanted something less expensive as she doesn’t ride this mare a lot and we both suspect she’ll be fine on most trails barefoot. The size 3 Trail fit her perfectly. She’s three weeks into a trim and they fit as we’d want them to; snug but not so tight that they’ll be a problem on the next few weeks. The mare walked out great and the owner liked them too. The owner loves the Easyboot Gloves and uses them on her younger gelding but was very pleased with how easy the Trails are to get on and off as well as with the price. So we have another good booting option!"

Linda Cowles
Santa Rosa, CA
WWW.HealthyHoof.Com    

Debbie Schwiebert

Vet Dealer & Hoof Care Practitioner Accounts

I manage the hoof care practitioner and veterinarian dealer accounts at EasyCare. An integral part of my job is to stay current in all areas of barefoot hoof care, which enables me to serve this vital group of EasyCare dealers at the next level.