YQA - Barefoot Horses on Equitrekking
Find out which destinations you've watched on Equitrekking where the horses go au naturel.
A few of you have written to us to ask which segments of Equitrekking feature barefoot horses-- horses who are not wearing shoes.
We've ridden horses with a few equestrians who keep their horses in the barefoot lifestyle, subscribing to the belief that nature will wear down a horse's hooves naturally and that not putting on horse shoes can leave horses with healthier hooves and avoid other problems. Barefoot horse owners trim their horse's hooves in a specific way.
The few places that we've ridden where this is practiced have had horses with healthy hooves. Two places that stand out are Uruguay and Texas Hill Country.
A few of you saw horses in Equitrekking's Texas TV show wearing a strange sort of boot and wanted to know what that was. Those horses were fitted with a special hoof boot. They did not have horse shoes on and thus this boot, usually of plastic or rubber that covers the hooves, can serve as an alternative to, and occasionally in addition to, horseshoes.
In Uruguay, Alicia Morales doesn't shoe her horses at all. You can see from the below photo that she has some nice grasslands, with some rocky soil to contend with in the hilly area surrounding her estancia.
Her horses have gone barefoot since birth and their feet have adjusted to the environment. It helps that Alicia's husband is a veterinarian.
