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Horses are invariably stabled for long periods of time being kept in isolation, having little or no contact with each other, which means no natural social interaction and physical touch. Being locked up for hours on end, with nothing to do, nowhere to move to, no one to touch and feeling trapped in a small area generates stress; on an instinctual level capture and isolation means certain death.
Horses are herd animals with a complex and sophisticated group dynamic which means in their own environment they are highly intelligent and exceptionally well designed for survival. For a horse to be healthy he needs to feel secure within his own network, group, herd and 'family'. Just think, to be able to deep sleep which enables REM, whereby the system can rest completely, will only happen when the animal is prone (lying flat out). In a natural group/herd enviornment one horse stands guard so that the sleeping individuals can rest fully. How well does the stabled horse really rest?
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The horse's foot is not designed to be constricted by a metal shoe which diminishes its capacity to flex and function the way that nature intended. We have been shoeing horses for hundreds and thousands of years. There is a barefoot movement, supported by scientific evidence and empiricial evidence, that suggests that the horse can become perfectly well suited to functioning fully barefoot if, and only if, the foot is managed in a way that is conducive to full health of the hoof structures.
According to Dr Bowker DVM, a veterinarian who has researched the horse's foot extensively, 'every horse, regardless of breed, can have a healthy, functioning bare foot'. He quotes the American Farriers Journal:
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The horse is not designed by nature to be ridden and, if done without awareness or appropriate development, will become destructive to the horse. The structure and biomechanics of a horse's body is designed to cope with the weight of the belly which is suspended from the back; the horse is not designed to have a weight from above. Traditional and ingenious horsemen over the years have learned, and developed their knowledge, in bringing the horse to become strong enough to carry weight through the back but this is a long term undertaking and requires intelligent consideration. Without this consideration and skill the horse's back will necessarily be compromised.
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Rider injuries are common and can be frightening to both horse and rider. The horse is 'a limbic system on legs' and fast ones at that! He is designed to fight restriction, to run away to safety and then look at the cause for concern, to be hypersensitive to his environment for fear of predators and to act on his senses, aka his emotions. His thought processes in the higher cortex are only engaged after an initial response to move. The horse genuinely does not want to harm us, unless of course they have been abused, but the rider or handler is often in the way, is slow, by contrast, to respond, is handicapped by having two short, slow legs and the horse is consistently frustrated by our inability to understand them. In many instances we go against every instinctual impulse of the horse. By teaching the horse to overcome his natural responses through learning and understanding his environment and by educating ourselves we might limit the occurences of injury to both ourelves and our horses.
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