Caddy had his shoes taken off last march and for the first 6 months his hooves cracked and split, but once the nail holes had grown out he had lovely hooves! still had his feet trimmed every 8 weeks, but as he is now being brought back into work and will be on the roads he had his shoes put back on last week

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www.tonette.co.uk

Only 1 of my horses has front shoes on and that's because her feet crack really easily. My horses are now oldies and are not ridden, but they were like this for most of their ridden days too, I did ride mainly on farm tracks, but also went for rides on the roads with no problems.

Years ago when I was pregnant with Ben I had my mares shoes taken off as she was turned away for a year. When I started to ride her again I didn't bother with shoes we were only doing light hacking and other than that riding on grass tracks. The farrier said her feet had hardened up well so we rode her without even hacking to shows with her.

I also had an old coloured pony he was retired school pony. He was 43 when he had a heart attack in the night and was dead the next morning when we went to the field. He had been fine the day before. He never wore shoes in his life and the farrier asked that I told him if it wasRingo that needed his feet trimming as he had to sharpen his rasp before he came to us. In his words Ringo had feet like concrete. That hard he struggled to trim them it didn't help that Ringo had arthritis and struggles to stand on 3 legs for too long.

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Sammy you may be gone but your sprit will always live on in the sunbeams R I P Sammy

William- 6/11/03 - 24/3/10
Midge - 8/2/11 - 10-2-11

My sister and I used to ride our ponies out barefoot (us and the ponies!) without any problems. We used to hack out on grass and roads. Our friends pony however had shoes on his front feet only because he had brittle hooves on the front. I suppose it depends on the individual pony but from what I can gather once their hooves have grown down past the nail holes after the shoes have been removed, then the hoof wall grows much stronger.

completely depends on the horse and what you are doing with it :P
best thing it hink would be to ask your farrier becouse he will have a better idea of how your horse would cope
i personal think that if there is no reason for the horse to have shoes might as well take em off

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My shetland pony is barefoot but i think all or most of the ridden horses on the yard are barefoot aswell.

Where i ride a spanish guy keeps 8 horses, none of them have shoes.