Submitted by Leah Cain, Team Easyboot 2016 Member
I love riding a horse with Glue-On boots! I have had a lot of success with them. My horses travel freely and are confident over varied terrain in them. In the past, I have only used them for 100 mile endurance competitions and multi-day rides. I like using them so much that I hate to have to pull them off after a couple weeks to keep the hoof healthy. I was thinking that if I had access to the sole of the hoof in order to keep it dry, clean it out and apply iodine, I could keep the boots on longer. After speaking with Kevin Waters and Christoph Schork, and reading Christoph’s blog about cutting out a big hole in the bottom and some of the benefits, I decided to try it myself.
I took clean, unused glue on boots and cut a hole in the bottom using a 2 1/8 hole cutter (the one that you would use to cut a hole in a door for the door knob.) I secured the boots to a piece of wood to hold them still. Also, make sure you are using clean gloves on your hands to ensure that you do not get the boots dirty. Once the boots have the proper holes, you are ready to glue on boots as normal except you do not need Sikaflex in the bottom of the boot. I did also use the EasyShoe Bond for this application simply because I realized that I didn’t have any tips for the Adhere.
I kept the boots on for 8 weeks. In that time, I did many miles of conditioning and one 50 mile endurance competition. We experienced lots of mud, gravel roads, sand and just about everything in between. Surprisingly, we never picked up a rock.
The last two photos are the boots and hoof after eight weeks. I definitely have found my new favorite way to use Glue-On boots!
