Welcome to High Desert Hoof Care

My name is Leslie Carrig and I’m a natural hoof care practitioner serving the Carson Valley in northern Nevada. I’ve been involved with horses for most of my life and am always striving to find the best way to care for them. My journey led me to study the hoof, natural hoof care, lifestyle and diet.

Once I came to understand how the hoof was meant to function and how a horse was designed to live, I could understand why so many of our horses have lameness issues. Shoes are no longer the “necessary evil”. Hoof boots have changed that. With consistent natural trimming and attention to diet and lifestyle, any hoof will improve from its current condition to a healthier one. Hoof boots make it possible to continue riding, and in most cases, improve the movement of your horse.

If you think barefoot could be for you and your horse, please feel free to contact me with any questions or to schedule a consultation. I carry and fit the EasyCare  www.easycareinc.com and Renegade http://www.renegadehoofboots.com/ hoof boots. My favorite performance boot is the “Glove”. With it’s low profile, flexibility, and half sizes, I can fit most horses. It has great traction and with no cables or moving parts, the days, when I spent a lot of time doing repairs, are gone. I also carry a wide variety of other boots to suite every need. Old Mac G2′s continue to be my favorite rehab boot. Indestructible, easy to apply, and they allow me to get very creative with padding systems. These boots with the pads can help a very sore horse feel immediate relief.

The natural hoof care approach

The horse’s hoof is an amazing structure. It is strong enough to support a horse through all it’s movement, over all kinds of terrain, yet is fluid enough to change with the seasons, environment, and changes in the body above it.

The natural hoof care approach is a simple one. It involves, diet, lifestyle and regular trimming.

There are many unknowns when it comes to what our horses need in their diet. What we do know is that they were designed to eat small amounts of low carb forage throughout the day. If we think about wild horses, they move all day long, taking a bite here and there as they go. Feeding large meals of high concentrate food twice a day is very stressful to the horse. He stands all day starving, only to gorge on more than his body can handle.

Along with our horse’s diet we must strive to bring him a more natural lifestyle. Wild horses move 15 to 25 miles a day. This would be hard to attain in domestication, but we can usually improve the situation for our horses with a little thought. Jaime Jackson’s “Paddock Paradise” is just the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that’s often needed.

If you have a reasonable diet and enough movement in your horses life, regularly scheduled natural trims are the easy part.

How is a natural trim different?

The hoof wall is not designed to be the main weight-bearing part of a hoof. Perhaps when a horse is standing on a hard flat surface it appears this way, but add movement and terrain, that has any give at all, and you will see that every part of the hoof bears weight.

When a horse is allowed to go barefoot, it’s true form emerges: the walls wear to a height just above the sole, and a bevel or rounded edge is worn at the breakover on the hoof wall. If the horse gets enough movement this will happen most of the way around the wall. If not, I will take the walls down and continue that bevel. When I do a natural trim, I “read” the hoof to determine what it needs at that particular time, and trim accordingly. Remember that the hoof is very adaptable and once shoes are removed and/or a more natural environment with regular trims is established, the hoof will undergo changes as it evolves into a healthier hoof.

Movement is such an important ingredient for a healthy hoof, and now hoof boots have made it possible for most horses to be barefoot. With boots and pads you don’t need to miss a day of riding. Some horses may transition to barefoot riding, if all the other ingredients are correct (i.e. diet and lifestyle). Most horses will need hoof boots when under saddle on terrain that is tougher than what they live on. With a little practice it becomes second nature to put them on. Taking your horse barefoot is the best thing you can do for it, but it does take some commitment. While barefoot is for all horses, it may not be for all owners.

To read a more detailed account of the hoof’s anatomy and learn how it is designed to work, check out my articles on the Hoof Talk page.