| On August 6th I put
Pony W'air shoes on Sampson.
I got this horse about 8 weeks before these first pictures were
taken. I didn't take any pictures of his feet when I got
him, but they were pretty bad. Both front feet had a lot
of extra toe that was flaring out in front. Because of how
long his toes were, his front feet were at much lower angles
than they should have been. His left front foot was at 43º
and the right was at 47º. The left foot also had a
crack in it. His sole is very flat and comes clear down to
the ground surface. Because I could only take so much off
of the sole I was initially only able to get the left foot up to
45º.
On the day that I put the Pony W'air shoes on Sampson I was
able to get both feet at 47º.
These shoes were a pretty good fit and putting them on was a
snap. It was just like using regular metal shoes, but I
didn't have to shape them. I wonder if they felt funny to
him because he was walking a little tentatively when I first put
them on. These shoes do have a rolled toe so that could be
the only difference he noticed.
He wasn't standing as square as I would have liked, but here
are pictures from the day that I put them on:
On August 27th I took Sampson on a CMO ride. With some
unfortunate backtracking, we rode about 18 miles. The
terrain was mostly dirt with some rocky areas. The shoes
show more wear than I expected for just one ride and the outside
back nail on his left front foot came loose. I am unsure
if this was caused by a bad clinch or by him catching his front
foot with his hind. I replaced the nail and will wait to
see if it gets pulled loose on the next ride.
It didn't occur to me when I took the picture that I hadn't
cleaned his hoof. Oops.
On September 22nd I pulled off the Pony W'air shoes and put on
Epona shoes. This next picture shows the wear that the
Pony W'air shoes had after about 40 miles of trail riding over
mixed terrain and 5 miles of pavement riding. They can
probably be put back on, but I will wait until Sampson has had
the other two shoe types on before doing so. The average final
thickness when these shoes were pulled off after about 80 miles
of mixed terrain that included about 11 miles of pavement was 0.535".
Below is what the Epona shoes looked like when they were put on.
On September 24th we went on a ride that was fairly rocky and the
shoes showed some wear from that. The right front shoe was
missing the thin black piece of rubber that can be seen on the
sole surface at the heal of the shoe. The rest of the
black rubber was their, but that strip had broken out.
Both shoes were missing nails. The left front was missing
the back 2 outer nails and the back 1 inner nail. The
right front was missing the back 1 outer nail.
Additionally, on the right foot the blue inner piece (sole side
of the shoe) was separated from the rest of the shoe at the
heal.
It appears that the nails were pulled loose by him stepping on
the heel of the shoes with his hind feet. The following
picture shows one of the marks.
*Note: The manufacturer says it looks like this shoe is
too big for the hoof.
Given the number of nails that were pulled out in just this one
ride, I decided that I needed to do something about the excess
heel on the shoes. I used some old nippers to trim it off
back to the marks that had been made by his hind feet and then
rasped it somewhat smooth. The following picture show the
result.
Here is what the Eponashoes looked like after they were pulled
off on November 6th. They had been worn for about 100
miles on mixed terrain. A fair number of those miles were
on pavement which could be part of why they show so much wear.
Yesterday (March 13, 2006) I put Ground Control shoes on
Sampson. This time I tried using the MX60 nails to see if
it would be easier to clinch them down and it was. I don't
think I would go out and buy different nails just to put a few
sets of these shoes on, but since I already have them I will
probably use them next time also.
This next picture helps to demonstrate one thing I like about
the Ground Control shoes. As you can see in the picture
Sampson has a large chunk out of the inside of the left front
hoof. Since these shoes don't have nail holes and just
have a channel where you can position the nails wherever you
want I was still able to put 3 nails in this side of the hoof.
With any other shoes I would have probably only been able to get
2 nails in this side.
Sampson is getting great traction with these shoes in the same
places (hard dirt roads) that Visa is slipping with the Pony
W'air shoes.
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