From: Anonymous
Ten weeks ago my horse had a straight deep cut above his eye, requiring stitches. Six weeks ago my horse was found in the pasture with a gaping throat wound, the jugular was missed by a hair's breadth, the trachea was visible. The injury was very straight and deep, it severed a muscle, and ran about 8 inches across. With a lot of stitching and care, he has recovered. Last week he came in with a mild wound that was superficial but parallel to and resembled the first. We found nothing in the pasture to do this. My horse does harass and play with a much smaller horse, and I have seen him running behind the smaller horse, who fits under my horse's neck. There are usually lots of minor, scraping-type bite wounds on my horse's throat area. The vet says the bad wound was not a bite, however--too straight. I noticed yesterday that the little horse has hind shoes with something called a trailer on the back of the heels. It looks like a triangular piece of metal shoe coming out the side starting about an inch from the back and then flaring in a triangular shape out to the back where it reaches about 3/4" wide. It is very straight and has a definite point at the edge. I strongly suspect kicks from this shoe are the source of the three straight-edged wounds my horse has had. The worst wound may have come if the little horse kicked out, caught my horse's neck with the point on the outside of the heel, dug in and made the long slash in his neck. What can and should I do? How do I handle this or bring it up? I like everyone involved and know how much it hurts people's feelings and causes real friction to suggest something like this or to expect anyone to change their horse's regimen for the sake of your horse. But I will never forgive myself if I don't speak up and my horse suffers any more injuries as serious as this. It is simply dumb luck that he did not die the last time.
I find it difficult to imagine what could be going on in the mind of a person who would turn out a horse wearing hind shoes, even without trailers. I mentioned your letter to a veterinarian friend of mine, who shook his head and told me that he was sickened and sad, but not particularly surprised by your description of the situation. He said that every year, he sees more severe and fatal injuries resulting from similar situations. He thinks that they are the inevitable result of ignorance: that of inexperienced people who buy barns and open "boarding stables" where sensible safety practices are simply ignored, and that of horse-owners who don't know enough to realize that the practices followed by their boarding stable are putting their horses in danger. Just in the last three months, in fact, he had been called out on three separate cases involving horses with broken legs from pasture kick injuries - a direct result of horses being turned out wearing hind shoes.
As a horse-owner, it's your obligation to protect your horse. In the situation you've described, he will certainly be injured again, and again. He might not sustain exactly the same injury again, but the odds are that he WILL sustain other injuries, possibly more serious than his previous ones. The risks are just too great. Horses turned out in a group are like small children on a playground - it's simply not safe to give any child a dangerous weapon and assume that nothing will happen and that nobody will get seriously hurt. Horses play rough - as do many children - and after a day together, some of them will come in with scuffs and bruises and the occasional scrape or cut. All that is perfectly normal. Horses and children need the companionship of others, need to have play-time, and shouldn't be deprived of normal activity. Horses will kick each other in play - as will children! - and sometimes pasture or playground fights will erupt. Again, this is normal, but if someone adds weapons to a normal playground or pasture situation, the results can be extremely damaging or even deadly. Look at it this way: You wouldn't allow your small child to play with a group of other children - even toddlers - if you knew that some of them wore steel-toed boots and carried knives - the equine equivalent of steel-toed shoes would be hind shoes, and the trailers make those shoes even MORE dangerous.
When one horse kicks another in a pasture, you can't automatically assume that the kicking horse was a brutal aggressor deliberately attempting to injure another, innocent horse - or that the kicked horse "deserved" the kick. There are many factors that can play into a turned-out horse being on the receiving end of a kick from another horse. The turnout area may be too small for the number of horses involved; crowding horses is asking for trouble. The kicking horse may be aggressive - or the kicking horse may be reacting with fear to the aggression of the horse that gets kicked. A clumsy or improperly socialized horse may blunder too close to the "business end" of a horse that is dozing and becomes startled and kicks out. A foolish human may elect to catch a specific horse by walking into the pasture with a bucket of feed, thus provoking an outburst of food-related aggression in all of the horses. Unless a particular horse is known to have a pattern of aggressive behaviour that involves kicking, you may never know what prompted a specific kick. In this particular case, it sounds as though it may be fairly simple: Your horse chases the shod horse, and the shod horse, quite naturally, kicks out at the horse that's chasing it. But here's the bottom line: As you've begun to discover, once a horse has been kicked and injured, it's too late for prevention and too late to take sensible precautions. The time to take precautions is BEFORE the horses are turned out together, which, again, is the reason for the very sensible tradition of removing hind shoes. If, for ANY reason, there happends to be a flurry of angry or annoyed activity that involves kicking, then whether your horse or the other horse "started it", the risk of a severe injury goes from "possible" to "extremely likely" if hind shoes are involved.
So, for your horse's sake, get him OUT of that situation NOW. Even if you plan to negotiate with the barn owners regarding more sensible and safer turnout arrangements, remove your horse in the meantime. Turn him out alone in a small exercise paddock; he'll miss the grass and the company, but he will be much safer, and you won't have to worry about him whilst you are discussing the problem with the owner or manager of the facility. If, for some reason, you are told that horses with hind shoes WILL be turned out with the group, and that your horse will simply have to continue to take his chances, then I strongly suggest that you look for another, better-run home for your horse. Turnout is a basic need, but we as horse-owners are responsible for arranging SAFE turnout for our horses. Three "red alert" elements - any ONE of which should be enough to keep you from turning a horse out in a particular field - are barbed wire fencing, overcrowding, and the presence of horses wearing hind shoes.
Good luck!
Jessica
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