On 6/18/07, Virginia Tupper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 6/17/07, Janice McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Also, gaited horses--- they can gait wonderfully because they have > > sore feet. did you know that?? > > Sheesh! I didn't know that! > V >
a horse can have "road founder" where perscussive footfall on a hard surface tears the laminae and the horse founders. Some terrible disreputable gaited horse people will deliberately induce this as a sort of "invisible" soring method which makes the horse want to pick up its feet high and out of soreness will alter a pacey gait to square and smooth. As the USDA began to crack down on soring violtaion in the walking horse show industry, the sorers became more ingenius at new ways to cause soreness not so readily detected. like pressure shoeing, where they cut a golf ball in half, tape it ti the frog, nail a leather pad over it, then a big heavy shoe, so each step prodices agonizing pain and the horse lifts feet higher and higher trying to get away from the agony and soreness. These are things we need to never forget, how some people just want to win, so they can make more money selling and trading and breeding horses, and they don't give one heck about a suffering animal.... Like Judy says, if you have to do something to make a horse gait then it isnt naturally gaited is it?? Janice-- yipie tie yie yo
