I could not show the gap with my pinky and take photo at the same time, had to use a bit of dried weed as a pinky stand-in.

Submitted by Kicki Westman, Team Easyboot 2011 Member

The other day my eyes fell on my friends thoroughbred-mix Coca-Cola´s boots. She wore Easyboot Gloves Size 0 in front that seemed a bit off. “Those boots are too big for her,” I said. My friend replied that she knew but was not able to get a smaller pair on no matter how hard she tried. Weird, I thought. The boots were obviously oversized with huge gaps in front, I could quite easily push my pinky between the hoof wall and the boot, but they were not loose and they did not twist.

I sat there, looking, thinking and scratching my head for a while, then I saw that she wore the same size Gloves on her hind hoofs as well and they didn’t seem so big? More scratching my head, looking at the boots, taking them off and on again, twisting and pounding. Then I saw that the shell where bulging at the back sides. Eureka! The boots are not too big at all, they are in fact too small. Her hooves are a tiny bit too wide for the toe to be able to reach all the way to front and fill up the boot, that’s how the big gaps appear! I ran after a pair of my 0.5 with Power Straps and they did the trick.

Snug

Size 0.5 to the left and Size 0 to the right.

Look at the difference in the silhouette. Smaller size boot on the hoof away from camera. And here, with both sizes on, we see that also the gaiter is bulging on the smaller boot in comparison with the larger size. My camera could not capture the bulging in the shell that i first discovered.

So, sometimes it takes a while and a bit of head-scratching, but the most important thing is – to finally get there. And we did learn the lesson: too small can look too big.

Kicki Westman