Shoeing Predicament

[loser_n_proud7]

So. My boy pulled a shoe. The other is on firmly. Unfortunately, there are two major problems - the first of which is that my farrier is out on an overnight trail ride until Friday evening. The second is that I have scoured the fields and cannot for the life or me (or my mother) find the shoe, and my farrier does not make shoes. She is a barefoot

Comments

[bella_cheval]

If the other shoe is still on firmly, clean the shoeless hoof off well and wrap it in duct tape [just enough to make a "boot"].

[loser_n_proud7]

I'm not concerned about him chipping up or bruising his hoof - he's been barefoot quite a bit. I was hoping to get the other shoe off so he can be barefoot on both and I can resume riding. I have Boa boots for him, for riding barefoot, but don't want to ride him with one shoe and one Boa.

[offside_element]

For what it's worth (I am not a farrier), my personal opinion is that without a shoe puller (or you could make nippers work) I wouldn't try to pull the shoe. There is too much danger of not only pulling the shoe, but also pulling off part of the hoof wall if the nails are not taken care of properly or if the shoe is pulled incorrectly.

Would your farrier be opposed/offended if you called someone else? Can you borrow the tools from someone else? You can rasp away part of the hoof beneath the nail and use a chisel (or a wide flathead screwdriver) to bend the nails up (does the same job as a clinch cutter) so that the shoe pulls cleanly.

ETA: Just want to once again stress that I'm not a farrier and far from an expert in this, so do take my comment with a grain of salt. I have one farrier science class under my belt, and that's about it!

[loser_n_proud7]

That's why I said that if I didn't think that I could do it without harm, I would wait :) I try to be a knowledgeable and responsible horse owner.

And the chiser as a clinch cutter was my plan to try tomorrow morning. I found a video online (taking that one with a grain of salt too...), and it showed using a rasp to get rid of clinches (though I'd probably try to straighten them as the nails my guy has in are pretty big) and prying the shoe off GENTLY with the pointy end of the hammer, working like a pull-off.

I never thought I'd say it but I'm almost hoping that I loosened it enough tonight in my investigating that he'll throw it himself. Bad horse-ownership, but oh well.

[offside_element]

Oh I wasn't questioning you at all - sorry if it came off that way!

Yes, that's how we learned to take care of the nails - you rasp beneath the nail and use a chisel to bend the nail upward. You can also use the nippers after you rasp underneath (ETA: to clip off the excess nail) to make bending step easier, as I recall.

[loser_n_proud7]

didn't think you were questioning me, hence the :). No need to be sorry!

[wastedrock]

You can also buy shoes at Tractor Supply and she can cold shape them to fit your horse. or by "make" do you mean she is unable to shape them at all?
My horses farrier is a barefoot shoer, but still shapes shoes and will even hot fit them too.
Don't pull the other shoe would be my advice. Wrap it like you would an abscess and the other foot will be fine.

[loser_n_proud7]

She doesn't have any of the tools to fit a shoe... and my guy wears a 5 when he's in keg shoes, but he's in custom made shoes at the moment.

[suraineko]

You can just put your boa boot on the foot without a shoe and ride that way. I rode a little jumper schooling show that way a few years back when my horse pulled his shoe that morning, we just slapped a boot on the barefoot foot and went for it. It might be a fashion faux pas but it's better than ripping off half of his hoof wall so you can have a boot instead of a shoe on the other foot.

[is_it_tru]

Maybe this is stupid... by why couldn't he just have one shoe on a few days? It's not going to cripple him to be turned out or ridden a bit with one shoe. I've ridden horses with 3 out of 4 shoes on occassion and nothing adverse ever happened.

[loser_n_proud7]

Not a stupid question - I didn't want to leave the other shoe on if I could reasonably help it because my guy was just trimmed a week ago, and can comfortably go barefoot, so I didn't want to make my farrier come out simply to pull the shoe if I could do it myself. I also don't have a ring to ride in, and grass has been pretty slick (given all the rain we've been having in VT), so it wouldn't be good to have 2 different amounts of traction.