Bare Hooves and Open Hearts: Tales From Nelipot Cottage

The journey to barefoot horses and sustainable fields.*How and why horses benefit from going barefoot.*Feeding the barefoot horse.*Re-wilding your fields to grow food for your barefoot horse.*How to pasture the barefoot horse.Bare Hooves and Open Hearts: Tales from Nelipot Cottage is the author's story of her journey from horse-mad child, to goal-orientated doctor training horses for competition, to listening to her horses and learning from them about life and love.We have high standards that govern how we keep animals in zoos. We legislate to ensure they have space, suitable food, and social interaction with their own kind. Yet somehow we do not apply the same minimum welfare standards to our domestic animals. Leisure horses undoubtedly suffer in human care. They demonstrate stereotypical behaviours, like weaving and crib-biting, associated with confinement and stress. The supplement market is awash with calming powders and digestive health remedies. Equine vets are busy investigating mystery lameness and treating sports horses for gastric ulcers. What if we could keep our beloved horses in a way that is governed by their needs, rather than our convenience? What if we could offer horses a life that fulfils their needs for friends, forage, and freedom, as well as our goals and desires? This seems a fair exchange in return for allowing us to share their grace ad beauty. A healthy, happy, and sound horse would be a partner in a dream come true. Fran McNicol bought her first horse at the age of 32. She was a surgical trainee, with a good salary, and an aspiration to compete in amateur one-day eventing. Paddy was a dark bay, almost black, a good jumper and an elegant mover, with a troubled past. He didn't know what apples or carrots were for, didn't much like cuddles, and was generally suspicious of humans. And he hated the whole process of being shod. She tried to work with him because after all, horses need shoes to be ridden?don't they?