Horse Boots for a draft?

Those of you who have read this blog for a while know of Rachaels feet.  They are just weak,  and I have to have her in shoes to do any real work or rides.  Even the last trail ride I went on was too much for her to handle barefoot.  Shoes are great, but they are very expensive, and I'm not sure the holes from the nails is really helping.

There have been countless times in the past few years, where I'll get a spur of the moment request for a horse ride, or a wagon ride, or something of that sort that I will have to decline because I am not able to get shoes on Rachael in time.  When this happens, I always find myself thinking:  "I wish I had some boots for her that I could just slip on when I want to, but then take off to put her back out into the pasture.  I've done some reasearch before and found Easyboots (http://www.easycareinc.com/) and hoofwings (http://www.hoofwings.com/).  I am typically the type of person who wants to see a new product before I gamble on it.  I found that the easyboots come mostly in normal horse sizes, and the hoofwings are completely custom and pricey.  I've never been convinced enough to take the plunge though and buy them.

I got asked to give some wagon rides to some kids for their Prom on April 13th.  Once again, I don't have shoes on Rachael, so I was going to have to get my shoer out here and pay for that.  Once again my thoughts were turned to how nice it would be to have boots. 

I am a member of a "draftndrive" yahoo group.  There are some amazing teamsters in this group, and I've learned a lot from them.  I presented the boot question to them, and got some great feetback.  One of the other members (Karen Garriot of The Princess Carriage in Arkansas) told me that she uses Easyboots on her drafts that she drives with.  She even has a video to show  how easy it is to put on the easyboots (Link Here).  She also has a blog entry on this topic HERE.  This encouraged me, so I did some more looking.  I did some measuring, and figureing, and here's what I found.

Rachael where's a size 7 shoe on her fronts.  Her front hooves are 7 3/4" wide.  I looked at the Easyboots, and found 3 types that could work.  The plain Easyboot, the Easyboot Epic, and the Easyboot Boa.  Of those, the plain Easyboot and Easyboot Epic had 7 3/4" as their Max size.  The boa was the biggest.  I liked the way the boot worked, and decided that I was going to gamble and buy a pair of size 8 Easyboot Boa's.

Yesterday they arrived.  The pic below is what they look like.  I got a pair of boots, removable gators for each (to help keep sand/mud/water out of the boots for those type of situations), a mesh carrying bag, and the instructions.  I was thrilled, and very impressed with the quality of the boots.

Boa Easyboots, Gaiters, and Mesh carry bag.

I had a rather busy day, so it was dark when I went out to try them on Rachael.  I was surprised at how easy it was to slip them on.  They were easy to tighten, and Rachael didn't have a problem at all standing in them.  I then walked her around for 15 minutes to see how they did.  She had no problems, and those shoes stayed put right where they were supposed to, although, it did look kind of silly to see a horse with tennis shoes on.  :)  I'm sure that will grow on me though.

Woo Hoo!  It looks like I may have found a way to save myself money, AND make myself and Rachael available for spur of the moment horse rides.  I'm going to try to hitch up this weekend and work Rachael in the shoes.  If they do as well on the road as they did just walking around last night, then this will be a great thing for me.  I'll get some pictures of her in them so you can see them better.