Horses can walk on roads barefoot, and most tolerate short trips over the pavement with no issues. Horses accustomed to barefoot riding tolerate pavement relatively well, but horses with tender feet or weak hoofs require shoes or hoof boots when Read more…
Standing on concrete or pavement for extended periods of time can cause foot, leg, and back problems in horses. Standing all day on a hard surface harms their feet and strains their muscles, just like it does for us. Does Read more…
Pawing in Water In natural waterways, horses paw to test the water’s depth and riverbed bottom for any hazards before they drop and roll. In the wild, rolling in water is a natural self-grooming and -cooling behavior. However, under saddle, Read more…
Horses, like other mammals, have only one heart. However, the frog in each hoof acts like a pump to push blood back up the leg with each step a horse takes. The frog also acts as a shock absorber. Is Read more…
The earliest horses were tiny woodland creatures, the size of a housecat or small dog. They had a springy back and (usually) four toes in the front and three toes in the back. Over millions of years, as the horse Read more…
In the gait known as the gallop, all four feet leave the ground-but not when the legs are outstretched, as you might expect. In reality, the horse is airborne when its hind legs swing near the front legs, as shown Read more…
On this date in 1892, Oscar E. Brown, Buffalo, NY., invented the horseshoe. This patent number is #481,271. Did a black person invent horseshoe? Oscar Brown was an African American inventor and a part of Western New York’s history. In Read more…
As a rule of thumb, horses will usually require resetting every six weeks or so in order to maintain optimum foot and hoof health, although this can vary between animals. Can horses go out with a missing shoe? Keep in Read more…
The name was derived from the belief that when a horse lost its shoe, the horse’s owner would stop at the inn to re-shoe his horse and thus when they came, the horse only had three shoes. The pub itself Read more…
Some horses will exhibit several common behaviours when suffering colic, whereas others will show no outward sign at all. The most common signs of colic include: Pawing at the ground. What does it mean when a horse stomps the ground? Read more…