So why did I decide to go barefoot with my showjumpers?

I’ll be honest, there was no real plan to go barefoot!

I was toying with the idea of keeping my 4 year old (Jurgen) barefoot. He’s very funny with picking his feet up, and the thought of putting shoes on him was giving me nightmares!

Then I saw an article about Peder Fredericson and how he had recently taken most of his horses barefoot… and I was like.. okay, well if one of my favourtie riders can do it with his Olympic string of horses, then maybe I can with my little 4 year old. So, that’s how jurgen went from a barefoot youngter to staying as a barefoot horse!

Then somehow, and I still don’t quite believe that I was there, I got to go to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – and see all the showjumping, right there by the out gate. I got to watch all the horses, all the riders – train, compete, trot up and hand graze. And out of all of them, who’s impressed me the most… the Swedish team. The horses looked simply stunning, were in my opinion the most sound – and to top it off had the least faults across the whole competition. Now I knew Peder’s horse (H&M All In) was barefoot, but what I didn’t know till I got there was that 3 out of 4 horses on the team were barefoot – now I was truly interested. 

So my ear’s were pricked to the potential advantages of barefoot… one of my two horses was desitned for a shoeless life already, but the other one – he posed a conundrum. Buster is a 20 year old belgiam warmblood by Quidam de Revel, I have owned him since he was 5 – and he’s not changed much. He’s still a cheeky bugger that like to buck and just generally dick about. He is starting to feel his age now, and has been in Aluminium shoes for 5 or so years after the slightlest tendon issue. I was VERY warey of rocking the boat – I know I’ve only got a few years left of proper work with him, and I don’t want to risk even a month of that by changing something which has worked for him for hos whole life…

But then something did change! Find out what in the next post!