When most people think of soft soles what is the first thing they think of next? If you’re like most, you would say shoes. I need shoes on my horse because the horse is tender footed with soft soles. In some cases this will cover up the problem.  Yes I said cover up. Putting shoes on a soft sole horse is not a fix. Shoes are a cover up and some cases this works. Others are not so lucky.

    But let’s say you have a horse and it just doesn’t like getting shoes put on. Every time the hammer hints the head of a nail the horse just flinches, jerks or worst goes through the roof. As a farrier we don’t always have the privilege of getting to know a horse inside and out. Some people don’t tell farrier issues or problems. Some don’t care. Some think it’s another problem other then what the farrier is doing.  Some don’t stick with a farrier long enough for the farrier to do anything about anything.

    This horse could have training issues but more than likely if the horse has been being shod for a while now all training issues are resolved. More than likely, unless the horse just needs a little disciplined. You can try to discipline after trying to finesse. Being gentle and asking the horse to cooperate is the best first thing to do. Usually the horse will show you there is pain when the horse is finessed.

    After years of shoeing horses I’ve had one or two horses that were just a pain to do. I could never figure out why nothing seemed to work when it came to adjusting behavior. I did come to the conclusion that these horse where in pain and the nailing of the shoe was hurting them.  No feedback from owners of course and no one was going to pay for glue on shoes.  

    One day I got a call from a guy who had a horse he knew was tender footed. And he wanted shoes on the tender feet. I told him how to properly treat the tender feet of soft soles but he still wanted shoes. This horse was a handful to get shoes on. I guess the horse wasn’t always like this but they had the horse on claiming medication for their vet. This medication was used when the horse was shod. I’m not sure what the medication did to the horse but the horse seemed to be seeing “purple elephants” if you ask me. 

    After getting the horse to calm down I started to shoe the horse and noticed that I know this reaction. I hit the head of the nail and the horse flinches and jerks. I’ve come a crossed this before I thought to myself. I have no clue why I have never thought of this and there are defiantly no books on the subject that I have ever found. The whole thing does make sense.  

    If your horse is soft soled shoeing the horse with nails is painful. The soft soles need to be fixed before the horse will behave for shoeing.  You will still have to work on finessing the horse throughout the shoeing period to assure not to create bad impressions.  Hardening up the soles will stop the horse from being so difficult to shoe. Again shoeing the horse will not fix the problem. You can go to my website under soft soles and learn how to properly treat soft soles.

     I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please fill free to comment, tweet, facebook, etc. This information is for all. I only ask that you make sure that the author me Gene Fletcher is put on all the copies. Thank you and if you have suggestions on topics please fill free to contact me.