It is no secret that todays horses are "specialized" for specific events. It even seems to be many core beliefs that bloolines outside of the specialized specific circle are useless. For instance, reputable reiners refuse to go outside of specific bloodlines when considering prospects. So in reality, there are many instances when a horse who is conformationally superior and might make the better reining horse is overlooked and never given a chance because he isn't by a sire such as Hollywood Dunnit. Who might I add came out of nowhere. It's not just reining that has taken this rode. Unfortunately it is a popular trend in every avenue of the horse world. Reiners have their "Spook" babies, barrel racers have their Dash Ta Fames, pleasure riders have the Zippo horses. What few seem to realize is that these horses had to come from somewhere. They all go back to those few foundation sires. In limiting the gene pool by only breeding certain bloodlines, breeders are bringing their own demise. The smaller the gene pool, the higher the probability of getting the "recessive" traits that you weren't looking to get. People are defining horses simply by their papers and not giving them a chance. I am not saying bloodlines are not important, but I believe conformation is more important and it is getting overlooked. As a result, horses are getting smaller and smaller legs and feet and running into many more problems. They aren't being bred to hold up anymore. This is just one of the reasons todays horses have brilliant, but very short careers. Personally, I would much rather I had a horse be competitive for 10 years or more in comparison to 2 years. Maybe that's just me. I have a loud bay overo who is mostly old halter horse breeding with a little bit of cow breeding. He is beautifull and muscular, but not only that, he is extremely agile and fast which is probably why he makes such an outstanding barrel horse. Being his size with his large feet and legs, he also handles ground better than most. Many cow bred horses have excelled to the top in barrel racing as well, outrunning the top "running" bred horses. Owners are breeding their mares with performance records to stallions with performance records and forgetting all about their conformational flaws especially when it comes to feet and legs. The sad realization is that these horses are having shorter and shorter careers due to injuries, then when they can't hold up, they are used for breeding. Maybe I am alone in saying this, but you couldn't give me Color Me Smart or Peptoboonsmal or many others, because conformationally, they have some serious problems. I'll take the conformationally superior horse that never got a chance anyday. For those of you that believe that bloodlines outside of the excepted norm couldn't possibly compete with the specialized, you're neanderthals in a world meant for homo sapiens. Open your way of thinking for the benefit of the horse industry. If you don't agree, I completely understand, just go back to nursing your crippled 5 year old who had a "brilliant" but short career and has moved on to the breeding shed to produce more short lived athletes.

What is the proper hoof angle of a horse? This question cannot give a definate number answer because it really depends upon the horse. A definate answer without giving the exact angle would be that the angle of the hoof MUST match the angle of the pastern. The transition from pastern to foot should be smooth with no break in the line. If you were to draw a continuous line starting at the top of the pastern and down to the toe from the side, the line should not break foreward or backward. This is the angle the foot is meant to be at and is the healthiest and safest for the horse. If a horse has really long, sloping pasterns, the angle of the foot is likely to be in the 40s. A more upright foot will tend to be in the upper 40s and into the fifties. A club foot will be even steeper, but a shoer should try and get a club foot's angle as close as the foot will allow to the angle of the other foot. You want a horses feet to match. You want the front feet as close as possible to the same angle and the same is true for the back feet. Back feet tend to be steaper, but there are exceptions to every rule. So no matter the discipline, the rule is the same for angles. When you start messing with angles to shorten a stride or lengthen a stride, you run into problems and are risking the health of your horse. The best angle of your horse's foot is the angle of his pastern. Keep in mind that if a horse has been injured in certain ways, let go to long or has been trimmed wrong, it will take a while to reach the desired angle. For instance, if a horse has been trimmed without enough heel being taken off, the heel has nowhere to go, so it grows foreward causing the angle to be lower. In order to fix this, the heel has to be trimmed back to the widest part of the frog every time it is trimmed until the heel begins to grow at the proper angle again, which should match the angle of the toe when viewed from the side. So in correcting this problem, the angle is probably going to be a couple of degrees lower than it should be until the heel begins to grow correct again. Then you can achieve the desired angle. It only takes one bad trim or shoeing to screw your horse up, but it takes a long time to fix it.

I recently graduated Farrier school and have been applying my aquired skill on my own horses for trimming until I get the rest of my shoeing tools. In doing so, I've learned a few more things that only results can teach you. We are currently leasing an older mare for breeding that had gone "navicular" many years earlier. She is a pretty upright horse and her heels were always left pretty long when she got trimmed. She was quite crippled when we got her. She was kept in a smaller pen with quieter horses because she just couldn't move that fast. After she had her baby, we put her on a pain supplement for a couple of months. She has been off of the pain supplement for a while now and was still quite slow moving. After I got home from farrier school, I went to trimming on all of our horses. She was one of the last ones I did and I pulled her heel back significantly to get it to the widest part of the frog. She will now have to grow out and be trimmed correct one more time to match her pastern angle. (she is a couple degrees low right now). This mare, isn't limping anymore. She is even running around. I think one of her biggest problems was being set up too high. Being set up even higher than her pastern angle directed a lot of concussion onto her bones. This result is physical proof of what I learned in school. You have to match the angle of the foot with the pastern and the heel must be brought back to the widest part of the frog. One thing especially that is quite a debate among horse shoers and owners is heel length. I've heard a lot of owners claim that their shoer "cuts off too much heel" resulting in a low heeled horse with what appears to be longer toes, when most of the time it's because they left too much heel on an "underrun" horse. We all know what this looks like, wether it be on our own horses or someone else's. What causes this? It can be from conformation. Some horses are predisposed to have low, or as shoers call it "underrun" heels. Unfortunately, how the horse is trimmed is what typically affects this. The same is true for a horse with an upright foot and a ton of heel.
First off, let me explain exactly what underrun heels are. When the buttress of the heels is left to grow long, they have nowhere to go but foreward. Some horses just grow this way, while others are forced to grow that way when trimmed improperly. When the buttress migrates foreward, it not only moves the heels foreward, but the whole foot. The pitch, or angle of the heels when viewed from the side are now much shallower than that of the toe. This is VERY common. Underrun heels can lead to a variety of problems; tendon and navicular problems are examples.  Leaving too much heel length on an upright horse can lead to just as many problems. This will cause more direct concussion on the bones, wheras a low heel will cause strain on the tendons.
Every horse is going to have a little bit of difference in their feet, whether it be growth, shape, or problems. You want the angle of the foot to match that of the pastern. Now on an "underrun" horse, the opposite of what you would think has to be done to correct the foreward movement of the heels. It used to be, and unfortunately still is a common practice, to leave the heel length where it is when they go to trim because they are already low. This will only worsen the problem, again leaving the heels nowhere to go but foreward. You want that foot under the horse with the heel angle matching the toe angle and the whole foot matching the pastern angle. THE HEELS  MUST BE BROUGHT BACK TO THE WIDEST PART OF THE FROG EVERY TIME THE HORSE IS TRIMMED. (exceptions may occur for certain lamenesses). In bringing them back to the widest part of the frog, the heels have more incentive to grow at the correct angle instead of foreward. If done correctly every time, underrun heels can be corrected a great deal and sometimes even dissappear completely. A really upright horse is going to grow more heel anyway and some will just grow straight up causing a lot of soreness. Again, the heels need to be brought back to the widest part of the frog and lowered enough to make the hoof angle match the pastern angle. An extreme version of this foot would be a club foot. On a club foot, you rarely have to take off any toe, but you have to take off quite a bit of heel.
In short, heel legth is very important and seems to get overlooked by not only owners, but many farriers as well. A horse's career or usefull years can be prolonged if proper care is given as far as the feet are concerned. Horse owners need to become more educated so they can ask these questions and know if your farrier is doing what is best for your horse. It is easy to assume they always know what they are doing, but that is not  always the case. We all know the saying, no foot, no horse; farriers and owners need to take that seriously. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Afterall, it's your horse.

When the Romans started shoeing their horses, they conquered the world...
Shoeing versus barefoot; which is the better option? This is an argument going round and round these days. People tend to be adamantly barefoot, or adamantly shod. Barrel racing especially is taking a turn for barefoot lately. It has been said that shoeing is detrimental to the hoof. People are saying that their horses are even running better barefoot. But what are the facts?
Let me start off by saying that there is nothing wrong with going barefoot. Competitively speaking however, I would rather my horse be shod. The fact is that a shod hoof has more traction than an unshod hoof, unless it is shod with a plain stamped shoe with no creases. Which would resemble a sliding plate for reiners without the trailers. The creases collect dirt, and believe it or not, dirt on dirt is the best traction. A more severe version would be a rim shoe. A shoe is also an extention of the hoof wall. The more cupping allowance a hoof has, the more traction. Shoes, because they are an extention, add that much more space. Also if you've ever noticed, no horse wears completely even. Barefoot horses' feet can be trimmed to balance and will again be unbalanced in a very short amount of time which can cause soreness elseware in the body. Therefore the unshod foot actually takes much more maintenance and ends up costing just as much or more than shoeing in the end. However, on the other hand, if a horse is trimmed out of balance, then shod that way, a horse cannot wear it back to even with steel on. So it is very important that the horse is to receive a BALANCED trim before being set with shoes.
Shoeing has been most accurately described as a necessary evil. Even back in Roman times when the horses had much better feet than they do today, there was a desperate need for shoeing. The unshod horse was wearing it's feet faster than they could grow, they got tender on rough terrain, and hoof problems and abnormalities were difficult to fix. Today, few horses have the feet to compare to back then. So are we nieve enough to think that our horses today are better off barefoot when being used hard, when the horses that had better feet weren't? The nails are another argument. It has been said that they are detrimental to the hoof. first off, the outer hoof, or horny hoof wall as it is called is dead. If nails are driven properly, they will cause little change. If a horse is shod properly, expansion should be allowed from the quarters back to the heels. That is the thinnest part of the hoof and it needs to expand. If a horse is shod without expansion, yes that is bad for the hoof. With expansion done properly, the hoof is allowed to expand. This is a practice many shoers missed the lesson on creating problems and forcing horse owners to search for a different option like barefoot while they blame their horse' s foot problems on shoeing when it was actually improper shoeing that was causing the problems, not shoeing in general.
So if your horse is an arena baby and never steps out of an arena, they will do fine barefoot. They will not, however, have the same traction as a shod horse. If you're anything like I am though, your horse will be ridden on all different terrain and ridden often, therefore shoes are a must. Competitively, I want my horse to have every advantage, and shoes are an advantage.