Started out as a traditional farrier, got disillusioned with the habitual problems which occur in the farriery environment. Reoccurring type problems, best farrier's he knew were still experimenting with different things to help horses and to me that didn't make any sense. For how long the system has been around and done so well, we shouldn't be experimenting anymore we should have the answers because these problems are reoccurring. That was my first big question mark in my farriery period. I then made a very radical change in my career where I dropped all my traditional showing and went to something highly unconventional and still shoeing worked with that for 10 years I guess. You have all come to here to listen to the barefoot side of things but there is a massive crossover. You have also clipped my wings tonight quite severely because my passion is anatomy and I am actually associated with the UK National History of Practioners.
There are some small groups such as the Equine Podiatrist; Dangerella (probably spelt that wrong lol). I think we kinda come together with a common belief that we also dropped together as a training body and as a research body. Sadly we get no research funding. It has drawn in different people from all walks of life so we can take different aspects of it and put it all together and that is a real plus. Touching briefly it can be as bizarre as peoples emotions effecting the health of the horse which effects the feet, from the Parelli side of things there are links going across the border left right and centre here.

Barefoot is not just about talking the shoes off but also about performance in your horse. Some horses are doing 150 mile endurance rides shoeless which is a major indication of what potential there is. **Mark then asks if anyone has there horses unshod and a few say yes, then Mark asks if anyone trims there own horses and there a few chuckles with the saying "Oh no I don't do that" Mags however singularly raises her hand as being the only one in the room that does trimming. Incidentally Mags qualified in October as an Equine Podiatrist.** Mark then carries on talking about how many horses are shod 24/7 all year round and the horse then has difficulties going shoeless.
Tonight is going to be more about Laminitis, Dietary Control and Management. The biggest obstacle in having a horse going barefoot is poor health. The horse is designed to eat a high fibre diet, it is great having your horses out 24/7 but if they are out on grass (especially Rye grass) the horses stomach becomes overloaded with sugar primarily as grass is amazingly volatile. People say my horse is on a starvation paddock, but the grass is green not brown and there is an abundance of sugar in the short roots.

Paddock Paradise.
You put a horse in a great big filed and you think .fabulous it has loads of room. Think about it from the horses perspective, the horse can run flat out but eventually it is going to come to a fence no matter how big you make this area. Horse's in the wild travel between 20 - 30 miles a day but our horses will always come to a fence and that is containment. If you set the field into a circle then the horse will not actually come to a stop and so has somewhere to go. Going back to the grass you can provide Hay or Haylage as a source of fibre. Hay is usually soaked primarily to reduce the sugar content. The horse gut is very dependant on bacteria to break down its food. With grass if you ball it in your hand it will become impacted where as hay will spring back. This means the bacteria has difficulty in breaking down the grass and so it becomes acidic and challenges the health of the gut bacteria. The more you can do in, increasing movement, fibre and decreasing sugar the healthier the horse becomes and stronger and healthier the horse's hooves become.

**Mark asks if anyone feeds Baileys, Spillers etc.. "You won't dare admit to it now" he says and everyone laughs.

The laminitis trust is diabolical as they put their stamp to feeds that are dire to horses as these feeds are cram full of molasses."If you see the laminitis mark on a feed you assume it is going to be alright for your horse" says one person, "Absolutely" Says Mark. You need to start scrutinizing the ingredients, I am very pro Simple System feeds simply because you know they haven't any junk in them and have plenty of fibre. The problem with changing to Simple Systems is because it hasn't got the sugar content. It's like Mince Pies or a bowl of Bran Flakes. The changeover to another feed needs to be gradual. Also this thing about starvation, the horse needs to eat. The horse produces bile and if it doesn't have enough fibre to soak this up "Hey Presto" you can kick off another laminitic attack simply because the horse has too much acid in its gut and not enough fibre. Don't starve your horse just feed it appropriately. If you look at a horses hoof and it has ripples these are collateral grooves, these are grooves that run either side of the frog and all the way around to the apex of the frog. Collateral groove depth is massively significant for us because the deeper the groove becomes the further up inside the hoof capsule the pedal bone sitting, the further up it is the thicker the sole the more robust the adhesion, everything is working better. The horse is designed to eat and move on so a good thing to do is set up some electric fencing in a field in a circle and place hay in small clumps all around the field to encourage the horse to keep moving. All we are doing is getting into a rhythm of what the horse is meant to do anyway.

Trinity Consultants do a wide range of various bits and bobs but the one I find myself reaching for the most is a liver tonic called L94. If you have a horse that is really struggling.. suffering this L94 is amazing for getting liver function stimulated and detox's the horse. You can take a sick horse put it on L94 for 10 days and it will become much sounder if it's a dietary issue that's causing the problem. The website for Trinity Consultants is

The L94 is like a sledgehammer assistant to detox but you can't keep putting the body through something as strong as L94 all of the time so another company "Silver Lining Herbs" has a variety of herbs that supports different area's of the body. They do have one that is a combination of herbs which is called a "Training Mix" This is designed to help the digestion, it's designed to help the Liver and Kidney. If you have your horse just on grass you need to include something like this if you expect your horse to perform to its full capacity.

Wormers. With barefoot horses feeding Chemical Wormers is asking for problems. As, though they do kill the worms they also kill the gut bacteria needed to break down food. The horse needs time to rebuild the bacteria and in that time you have a major toxic reaction and the symptom will be a laminitic attack and your horse will suffer. This also relates to shod horses but a barefoot horse will pick up problems quicker because with the subtleties of movement, the pedal bone is very dynamic in the hoof capsule and it is very sensitive. With shoes the horse does not have as much feel as with barefoot the horse has contact with the full surface of its foot.
Moira asks "Why is it sometimes recommended to put shoes on a laminitic horse" Some horse will go better with a shoe on but from a health prospective its actually probably a lot worse because when you put a ring of steel around the foot .. even if it's a bar shoe, you still have a ring of steel with everything ready to drop down through the middle of that, so what your actually doing is overloading your laminea. The sole and frog are also made to bear weight as well as the outer wall and your basically making them redundant.

Bentanite Clay .. Natural wormer - horse digests it, shreds the worms insides but does not effect the horseDietonised Earth.
Worm Counts. much better then only worm if required.

Management and diet are important as it doesn't matter how I trim the foot I can't fix it. You can't trim or shoe a foot back to health it has to come from inside. Mags asks "Do you put all growth rings down to laminitis"? Mark. "Yes, I do" Mags "so a shoot of grass, diet, wormers, grooves in the hoof wall, can all be a factor of laminitis" Mark "yes" Good natural supplements are Seaweed, Nettles, Rosehip, Dandelion. A good field is one that has a lot of natural herbs in it not one that is purely grass as a horse will take the herbs it needs as and when.

It's incredibly important to keep our foals as busy as possible, the reason being the hoof requires stimulation in order to function; it has to be challenged, to do things. The biggest problem we have is youngsters just stagnating, not doing enough. Arteries. feeding the back of the hoof, sensitive frog, deep digital cushion.. I'm sticking my neck out because the way the Digital Cushion behaves is like a padded material okay.. In the majority of our domestic horses it's like something that has come out of a tin of ambrosia custard. A lot of text books will tell you it's like a fatty, spongy consistency, well it shouldn't be. Many text books have been written on a defunct structure. (Mark then shows us images of hooves on the screen and explains various ailments of the hoof). The back of the foot is almost the most crucial for us in terms of support for the whole hoof. So we want to know how thick are this and how strong does it feel because these are all indications for us on how well it is potentially going to perform in terms of going barefoot and the kind of work we are going to ask from it. The Cushion should feel like a toned stomach, (everyone laughs and makes comments) the more squashy it is, the worse it is. The lateral cartridges are playing a massive role in terms of return blood supply and more often or not we are seeing the lateral cartridges shut down and not fulfilling their job. The structure of the hoof is important to try and get an idea as it will determine what we recommend in terms of exercise for the horse. The last thing you want to do is force a horse to move if it is hurting. You need to have an idea of how much it is hurting or not and the understanding of what is happening internally is absolutely crucial to that. The back of the foot in perspective of the blood supply is crucial. It needs to be healthy and functioning as it's the same deal, any contraction in the foot is basically like pressing back on your finger nail. The more we can get the back of the foot to develop usually the better we are for it.

(Mark shows images of the lateral cartridges)

We are looking at actual groove depth; we are looking to see how high up inside the hoof capsule the pedal bone is sitting and the deeper the groove the higher the pedal bone is. It is very important we make these kinds of assessments before we even start to treat the foot or what we are going to do with it. The more we can get the horse moving the better so if you're in a situation where your horse is tentative several things are going to be happening. It's not going to be confident to take a stride so you're not going to have full free function. The typical scenario will be, if we have a weakness at the back of the foot you will see the horse taking a stride landing with the toe first coming back onto its digital cushion like it is creeping along. What we are looking for the extension of the very positive of the back further the foot landing then moving forwards. For a horse landing toe first we have to think in terms of how to trim the foot because the chances are we cannot physically engage the back of the foot because it is not ready to be engaged because the structure hasn't formed properly. It may be a case that we will have to leave the heels abnormally high as a compensatory aspect while we actually get the horse moving and that is where the trim comes in and the assessing of the horse.

The question is asked."Should then the horse always be trotted up first before anything is done"?

Mark replies, "It depends on the relationship with the clients to be honest and when I first meet a horse, yes I will do but on subsequent visits I may not bother. I'll ask how the horse is going and if all is okay then I won't have the horse trotted up. It is a common thing for people to say to me "Will my horse go barefoot" you have actually got to ask the question to the horse, be prepared to listen to the horse and take the feedback. Some people phone asking how I treat feet, I do what is necessary. I don't do any of the angle stuff, fixed angles... No!!! I do what is right for the individual horse. It is definitely not evasive, we're not trying to draw blood and definitely not make a horse lamer than when we started. If a horse does happen to get worse then we have to look at the reason why and that is another thing when you come to trim laminitic's it is very difficult because you can almost just sneeze on them and they will get worse. That is another thing that if a horses isn't healthy it may be best not to trim it at all and get the health issues under control. Mark is then asked "Has there been a situation where you thought the best thing to do is put the shoes back on"? Mark replies " Yes, Some horses have had leg bone measured and found to have a difference of 1½ inches caused by things like muscle wastage and then hoof needs to be raised and that is one reason why shoes will need to be put back on". Mark then goes on to talk about horse boots.

There are lots of different boots on the market, Mark shows us an "Easy Boot Ethic" The Easy Boot Ethic you have got two little plastic guards inside either side. These cover little metal teeth which in the original design were to grip into the outer wall and you can imagine the mess that created. We now have to take the guards off and the teeth and make sure they are not going to cause damage. The Easy Boot Grip, everything is done for you and these are probably one of the best on the market. Some boots need rounding off at the front otherwise what you will see is more knee action as the horse can't roll the toe. The advantage of the boot is that it gives complete sole impact and there is a degree of flexibility which is important to the horse. As the hoof comes down it will go through a series of phases of stride through the landing, compression, preparation for brake over then physical brake over.

Dawn Moreton says "I have often had a farrier and I find they do not talk as passionately about what they do compared to a barefoot trimmer, I feel like you could talk to us for at least 5 days. I could always make a spare bed up" Mark Replies in a joking voice "it depends on what the food is like" At this everyone laughs. Mmm. not such a bad idea though. Costs. If I have to start travelling ridiculous amounts then I have to start thinking. The price for a basic trim is £40 and I know you will get farrier's out there who will charge £10 - £15 and that's fine, I am not trying to take that business away. Trimming can be between 3 - 6 weeks depending on the horse and the treatment. In the summer they need doing more often as the more movement they have the more they grow. It is definitely seasonal. Mark then went on to talk about abscessing but this is where I stop. I'm shattered lol. It has taken 5 hours to transfer the Dictaphone to text and hopefully you can remember what was said. If you weren't there then you should have come along lol .. I haven't taken every word of the discussion as that would have taken donkeys. so I hope what I have taken is helpful to you.

So to finish off I'd just like to say a big thank you to Mark Johnson for the very informative and interesting talk and to Dawn Moreton for hosting the evening.