HOW WE REHABILITATE OUR RESCUED EQUINES

How we care for and rehabilitate our hooved friends:

In recent years there has been a lot of new information in the horse world about natural horse and hoof care, and at first glance it seems like absolutely amazing stuff. From our experience, and from what we've heard from others, it is amazing stuff. The best part is: it's all natural. It doesn't take a lot of drugs or pricey food or expensive horseshoeing to make our horses feel better. A lot of it is very contradictory to everything the equine world has been doing for the last couple hundred years: every time a horse has hoof problems the "treatment" has been to load them up with drugs to only kill the pain, and nail on an iron shoe to try to shape their feet into what we have thought they should be, instead of finding and treating the cause. While there have been some rare individuals throughout the history of horse domestication regarding natural hoof care, it wasn't until recent years, that more and more horse owners and professionals are taking notice and looking at studies done on wild horses and their natural lifestyle; all of our knowledge had always come from our domestic horses and what has been done over the past centuries. In recent years research has been conducted on our horses' wild cousin, the wild mustang. New knowledge has come to light about what it means for our horses to be truly "natural", and how their hooves and lifestyles play a role in being truly healthy.

To help rehabilitate our rescued horses, we focus on providing the three basic fundamental aspects of a horse's natural lifestyle- diet, exercise, and hoof care. A horse's natural diet is made of sparse dry grasses, not the rich sugar-laden legumes that domestic horses are traditionally given. One of the root causes of founder is too much sugar, so we feed a basic diet of dry grass hay- no extra sugars from alfalfa and horse treats that only cause problems for our known founder-prone equines. They are offered supplements with additional vitamins and minerals from natural sources, but only as free choice options. They know what they are lacking, and will eat accordingly. The second aspect we mimic is natural exercise- a horse naturally moves all day long, foraging as it moves. It's digestive system is not designed to handle large amounts of food all at once. Horses in the wild travel up to 20 miles a day or more- every single day foraging for food! We try to simulate this natural movement in our horses in the environment we have them in. We do this in a few ways, such as keeping them in a herd environment for natural horse interaction, and spreading their food out in small piles to encourage natural foraging behavior. We also will hand walk or ride them for additional exercise. The amount depends on the specific equine's needs- from once or twice a day to several times a day, to full-day trail rides in the more rehabilitated cases. The third aspect we mimic is the natural hoof care. Of course, in the wild, horses don't have anyone maintaining their hooves for them. They do it naturally themselves, by traveling 20 miles a day over all types of terrain- rocks, boulders, dirt, sand, hills, water, and more. Ideally, our domestic horses would travel that far over all kinds of terrain as well. Unfortunately that's not always possible, so we trim on a regular basis (every 1-6 weeks, depending on the horses' current needs, growth rate and hoof changes) to simulate the regular wear that they would receive if they could travel that much. Any longer between trims can lead to separation of the hoofwall due to the breaking down of the laminae which is the main structure we are trying to rebuild on our foundered horses. We are also working towards adding in more textured surfaces that our rescued horses can travel on, thereby encouraging further natural wear, promoting healing, and growing tough rock crushing hooves.

Here at Amanda's Foundered Friends, we try to learn as much as we can from as many of the natural hoof care pioneers as possible. We are always finding new information from a variety of sources: classes, clinics, workshops, books, television, the ever-present internet, and the horses themselves. There is a lot of great information out there, and we encourage everyone that loves their horses to research natural hoofcare. We have seen it help several horses ourselves, including top professional athletes, and heard from countless others the amazing ways natural hoof care and a natural equine lifestyle has helped equines all over the world.

We will be adding more information in the future to help answer any questions you may have. If you have specific questions you would like to hear our opinions on, please send us an email and we will respond as soon as we can.