Granite Chief+/ Update: 7000+ Miles and Still Going!

by Karen Chaton
 

Chief has now been barefoot through three endurance ride seasons. He has managed to complete thousands of miles of rides in that time, and recently passed the 7,000 career mileage mark. In the 2007 ride season he completed 1,370 miles which will place him in the Top Ten Nationally with AERC.

I sure do like keeping all of my endurance horses barefoot. It sure has simplified things – no more shoeing schedule to worry about! It has also been so good for their overall health and well being. I use Easyboot Epics, Bares and regular Easyboots on Chief and my other horses. I boot all four of his feet for his endurance competitions. In the last year or so I started using the dome shaped Comfort Pads and found that to be a great combination especially on the really hard packed and rocky rides.

Keeping a high mileage endurance horse barefoot gets easier as time goes by. Chief handled the transition in 2005 rather well. He rarely gets chips anymore, and has good strong hoof wall that does not flare. The first year he was barefoot I would rasp and smooth the edges of his hoof wall before most of his rides. Now I rarely touch a rasp to his feet. He gets a trim every three or four weeks which usually consists of some minor rasping. Since he lives turned out 24x7 and is very active he is mostly self maintaining. Fortunately his feet grow and wear evenly which makes it super easy!

Over time I've gotten more conservative with how I ride. The reason for that is because I've come to rearrange my goals, and also have become a lot more aware about how each and every ride I do can affect the horse for the rest of their career. My goal now for each ride is to try and complete with a horse that finishes happy, healthy and sound but I also want to feel that I have done everything I can to extend his longevity and reduce the amount of wear and tear. Endurance riding is an extreme sport, and if you want to ride the same horse for a lot of miles, or a lot of years, trying to minimize wear and tear can do a lot to help them last.

While I have had really good success using Epics and Bares on Chief, I have started to use Easyfoam and regular Easyboots to glue Chief’s boots on for multiday endurance rides. This works out really well for us. I can put his boots on a day or two before the event starts, and then take them off again after we get home. During the entire week of the ride I don’t have to worry about his feet at all – I don’t even have to clean them out.

Just this year I started a brand new horse in endurance. He is a 12 year old Arabian gelding named Tigger. The first thing I did when I got him was pull his shoes. His feet were not in very good shape. They were trimmed way too small and squared off. Yet, when I fitted him with boots and pads he trotted off sound and has remained so ever since. I was careful the first few weeks to use boots when working him. That allowed him to stay comfortable while his feet grew out stronger and healthier. He has now completed 7 endurance rides with a 100% success rate – and we’ve already seen significant improvements in his hoof quality. He can now trot soundly barefoot over any type of terrain.

Everybody asks me why I don’t ride my horses in competition barefoot. The reason is because the one thing that I am not willing to do is risk having a horse come up footsore and THEN put boots on – my philosophy has always been to prevent a problem before it occurs. Once they are sore from something, whether it’s from too many miles on hard terrain or poor saddle fit or a girth that was too tight, it’s too late to undo it or fix it and then I know I failed my horse.

I believe that horseshoes are going to become less and less necessary as improvements continue with hoof boots. If my horses can compete in the long distance endurance events that they do successfully with boots and still live the rest of their lives completely barefoot then the majority of horse owners should be able to do the same with their own horses. Many horses may never be ridden often enough, or over terrain that even requires boots other than possibly during the transition period.

About the author: Karen Chaton lives in Gardnerville, Nevada and is an endurance rider with over 21,000 miles. Karen and her Spanish Arabian TBR Granite Chief+/ have won the AERC National Mileage Championship twice. Chief was also awarded the Arabian Horse Association Distance Horse of the Year Award and has received honors as an XP Gold Medal horse and the Wendell Robie XP Horse of the Year, also two times, while Karen was awarded the XP Horseman of the Year.