Talk:Natural hoof care/Archive 1

Merging Barefoot horse with Horseshoe page?
I think it's a bad idea. Barefoot horse page could be merged with pages about new and very attractive topics about horses, based on ecology and ethology much more than on "tradition". Some of such topics are Natural communication, Natural hoof care, Bitless riding, Natural horse boarding, Natural hoof trimming, Natural horsemanship. I saw a recent, excellent article on Wikipedia about Natural horsemanship. Perhaps an "index page" of these topics would be very useful.

--Alex brollo 12:51, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Some adds
I added a mention to diet and some links. --Alex brollo 12:51, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Some adds and edits
I added some wikilinks and I erased definitions of common words (Anatomy, phisiology)--Alex brollo 07:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

NPOV template without any discussion
I saw a NPOV mark on this article, but I didn't find any discussion about.

I well know that the matter of this article - just like many other "horse-topics" - could flame. But, when editing other horse articles reporting bare "received ideas" (see Horseshoe as an example), I never add such a template. I simply edited them, adding what - in my documented opinion - was lacking.

Please add - as required - some comment as soon as possible. On the contrary, time some days, I'll simply remove the template. --Alex brollo 09:49, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

If you read it it certanly seems POV. On the other hand, I don't know anything about this topic. 71.34.187.142 16:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I softened the NPOV tag down to a "check POV" tag. The article is improving, but it also is pretty quiet, the controversy is not all that heated.  I made a bunch of suggestions as inline comments in the edit window but no one appears to have had the time to consider them.   In short, there is still some POV bias, but I think it's mostly a style problem -- rephrasing a few areas will take care of most of it. Montanabw 07:06, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

NPOV template without comment removed
I'm goig to remove NPOV template on the article, because it has been added without any comment in its Talk page.

Please consider various points in Wikiquette remacks.

Please consider too that I know that this article has been posted by an horse expert, not so experienced in wiki conventions. Such experts are a great resource of wiki project, and, in my opinion, they are to be helped much more than discouraged.

I'd like to do my best editing any lack of neutrality in this, as in other incoming, innovative horse-related articles, but I need a comment about matters of controversy (and, as you see, some help about English). --Alex brollo 19:14, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I should add that I'm not opposed to this movement, nor do I know particularly much about horse care! I was just passing through. --Spudtater (talk • contribs) 18:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, that was me, wasn't it? I wasn't intending to be negative; I just felt that the article could use a viewpoint from outside the barefoot horse movement &mdash; it seemed to be full of gushing praise and empty of any criticism! Perhaps a section entitled "mainstream criticism" or "disadvantages of unshod horses" could be added for a little balance?

Controversy into Laminitis article
Take a look to Laminitis talk and history. There is just a good example of what I was pointing out in the previous talk post. Please help with good research sources and a careful NPOV!Alex brollo 07:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Adding NPOV template again
I'm going to add the NPOV template again. Reading the article, I was surprised that it didn't already have one until I came to this discussion page. The article is totally in favor of barefoot horses, and totally critical of shod horses. To be neutral, it would have to at least briefly cover arguments against leaving horses barefoot/removing shoes from shod horses. I am also going to add an unsourced template because the claims of the hazards of horseshoes are not sourced. --68.239.240.160 06:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I can agree perhaps that a better title would be "Barefoot horse movement", and I'm going to add some more scientific sources about harms by shoes. Nevertheless, most of external links have lots of other links inside; the body of scientific evidence is fastly growing, and damage from horseshoes is inherently underlined by the very old sentence "Horse shoes are a necessary evil". Lots of horses have been deshod all around the world, and many are performig into the hardest equestrian sports like endurance (as you can see if you read some from listed links); so it's impossible, by now, to believe that the word "necessary" is true. Take off this word, and we all agree: "Horse shoes are an evil".
 * I'm going to add the link to publication by dr Tomas Teskey, veterinarian: The unfettered foot. I'll not remove the NPOV but I hope that some interested people would remove it. --Alex_brollo Talk|Contrib 17:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced template revomed
I added a scientific article by dr Tomas Teskey about shoe damages, and then I removed unsourced template (in my opinion, external links and their content were already very good sources: please read them!). Any help about neutrality is welcome! But it is very difficult for me to have a NPOV point of view about this topic. Please add something to ameliorate NPOV - consider that there is a Horseshoe article with an opposite point of view. --Alex_brollo Talk|Contrib 15:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

You DID ask for my two bits! :-)
Overall, the article provides a good basic overview of what is actually a rather controversial movement...the "wild horse" trim as opposed to horseshoeing advocates, but also compared to what, for lack of a better term, is the "barefoot domestic horse" trim (which is not the same as a "pasture trim"). One of my farriers is a person who believes that horses are best off barefoot whenever possible, but is quite critical of the wild horse trim movement, really has some serious disagreements with Strasser (apparently she knows her), and believes that domestic barefoot horses need a different approach from the "wild" trim of the barefooting movement--so, you see, not only is there a "shoes or no shoes" argument, there are also fights over different schools of trimming!!

However, no article is perfect, and this one is off to a good start because the editors are knowledgable and passionate on the subject. Having just survived peer review and some serious flame wars on a couple articles (one was passed as a Good article and even survived an attempted delisting! Hooray!) I can maybe offer some suggestions for further improvement. I also made some edits to the article to go along with what I am saying here. Feel free to revert--or better yet, selectively remove--what you don't like, it's all just suggestions (Don't flame me! You DID ask!!) :

The reason you were getting nailed for not having sources is because they are all piled at the bottom and you have no footnotes, and the only intertext links are to external web pages, which should be reformatted into footnotes. (I did some to get you started). The wikipedians who care deeply about such things pretty much want almost every factual statement tied to a source right in the text, like a research paper. I threw in a few templates to flag some spots that need in-text sourcing. It looks like a lot, but most probably come from your external links at the bottom, so you probably just need to cut and paste--see wikipedia guidelines on how to do footnotes and if you use the format, it's real easy to reference the same source multiple times (if it's a good source)

You can get away with assorted overview paragraphs and intros without footnotes, but beyond that, if anyone has a gripe, they should be able to click on a footnote right in the text, go to the reference, and if it's on the web, be able to see the web link for themselves and hence analyse the source. Essentially, if a paragraph goes by without a source, it's "unsourced" by the standards of the wikipedians who review articles across subjects.

To see what I mean about sources, look at what I had to do with Horses in Warfare. I somehow let myself get drug into that one, even though my interest in military history isn't particularly strong (I do have a history background), but the military historian sorts found the article and were just hammering on it for how terrible it was...which, by wikipedia horse article standards, it wasn't THAT bad, but by the anal-retentive standard, well, the critics seem to have disappeared for now, and WHEW! It isn't perfect, there is still a need for additional sources, but it's also an article that I don't have a particular attachment to as far as the subject goes so I think it is pretty NPOV (I hope). I just put it up for GA review and shall see what the sane people think of it.

But back to this article:

The first paragraph of the article is good, no real problems, a nice overview, etc. I tweaked a couple of words.

The second and third paragraphs, though, have a LOT of problems. I did not rewrite much, moved one sentence elsewhere and added some organizational headers to give you some thoughts on structure. It's disorganized, jumping through historical eras with no sources, then jumping into physiology, etc... too much in too little space, too few sources. There is no source to the info on when horseshoes were invented, there are "weasel words" that make it clear the author has no clue when horseshoes were invented and could care less, no source cited in the text for the proposition that horse's hooves are weakened by standing in stalls (I personally agree with you on that point, but the point is that it's unsourced, so no one knows if you just made it up or if you got your info from an unreliable source, or what...) etc...I hope I'm making sense. It isn't that what you are saying is right or wrong, it's that no one can verify the info... and verifiability is one of the five pillars of Wikipedia.

I'm not going to go on with the rest of the article, you can probably see where the rest is going.

As for the POV issues, it's tricky. People feel passionately about some things and what sounds pretty reasonable to an aficianado sounds biased to someone outside the movement. In this case, the neutrality tag is deserved, but on a 1-10 scale (1 being total NPOV and 10 being a flame war) it's about a 5-1/2, IMHO, I've seen worse. (try Bloodless Bullfighting for an example of an article with, IMHO, serious POV problems, disorganization and just plain bad writing!!!) Basically you have to explain the reasoning for this point of view but still be fair to other POVs... let me use examples from your article:

IMHO, this paragraph IS pretty NPOV. It states the views of the barefoot movement, but makes it clear that it is one viewpoint and doesn't criticize anyone else: "Proponents of keeping horses barefoot have observed and strongly advocate that the equine hoof stays in notably better condition when horses are kept in a herd situation so that they are free to move around 24 hours a day, as wild horses do, permitting good circulation inside the hoof day and night. Unlike humans, horses only sleep for short periods and naturally keep moving through the night as they graze across the prairie — and their hooves seem to require this continual movement."

This paragraph is POV: "Due to damage from horseshoes — both to internal tissues and in a gradual distortion of hoof shape — hooves are often unsound at first when horse owners decide to "go barefoot." It can take as long as an entire cycle of hoof growth (new horn growing from the coronet to the ground), thus about eight months of transition period before the horse can be worked without protection for its healing feet."

I think a paragraph on the same material, but written with more NPOV, would read like this:

"In the view of [insert famous expert's name here], horseshoes cause damage to the internal tissues and gradually distort the hoof shape by [describe more about the damage...constricted heels, imflamed lamina, whatever...].[then add footnote here] Therefore, some horses may become lame when shoes are first removed.[footnote]  While some horses who have minimal damage to their hooves adapt to being barefoot quite quickly, in as few as X months, more severe cases may require an entire cycle of hoof growth (new horn growing from the coronet to the ground), i.e. about an eight month transition period, before the horse can be worked without protection for its feet.[footnote]

The paragraph could be further improved by details on how horses act lame--all the time, just when ridden, just when ridden hard, etc... Also, for someone like me who leaves my horses barefoot most of the time but does not do the wild horse trim, I want to be a devil's advocate and say, "My horses are never lame after only 8-16 weeks of having shoes on in the summer, what do you mean horses are lame when they first go barefoot?" An appropriate answer might be to explain the subtle changes that occur to any shod hoof--describing a spectrum on harms from short-term and minor to long-term and major.

Hope I am making sense. I don't want to over-criticize this article, but simply give you an outsiders viewpoint on ways you can improve it. I also threw some invisible comments into the article text to flag a couple places that particularly struck me as problematic.

I sincerely hope this helps, forgive me if I got too harsh or too fussy. Montanabw 07:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much. As I see the whole matter, the best way to write an article on barefoot horse would be to write something NPOV about "The Barefoot horse movement". Nevertheless this article has been the first one naming "barefoot horse" here into wiki, after a my suggestion to Marjorie Smith; she is an expert and a great divulger of barefoot horse, but obviously she had no specific experience about subtle topics of wiki philosophy, and about NPOV.


 * I'll read again, word by word, your observations - as a key for an article on barefoot horse movement on it.wiki. Then, if I'll find someone willing to help me for a good English translation, I'll post it here overwriting this important, but somehow inappropriate, article. --Alex_brollo Talk|Contrib 07:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * No need for a total rewrite, look at some of the parenthetical comments I made in the article itself (when you edit the article, they will show up. Basically, it's more a rephrasing that's needed.  The basic article is a good start, just too biased.  You can say things like, "some people say X, but other people say Y," you just basically can't "knock" other viewpoints.  It's the difference between saying something like "horseshoes damage the horse's foot," and "the barefoot movement considers the use of nails and the limits on movement caused by horseshoes to be damaging to the horse's foot."  Do you see the difference?  You still put forth a point of view, you just phrase it as ONE point of view, not a universal truth... Does that make sense?  Montanabw 04:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

--

January 22nd 2007

I added to the list of major barefoot/shoeless teachers yesterday, along with the web address for this tutor, but it had been removed. Can anyone shed light as to why please? Healthyhoof 10:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Commercial links are not appropriate for wikipedia. Frankly, I suspect there are other links in the article that also need to be removed, but I don't have the time to go through all of them to figure out which ones link to actual articles and which one link to things inappropriate for wikipedia like commercial sites, chat rooms, message board forums, etc... and some links to commercial sites link directly to a fact article within an otherwise commercial site.  This whole article needs a lot of work in order to remove the POV tag on it, but the work needs to be done by someone who understands the movement better than I.  I am merely a horseperson who edits a lot of the equine wikipedia articles for style and accuracy, I try to avoid getting into "political" disputes.  I routinely am removing links people put into the farrier and horseshoe articles that link to a specific farrier or whatever too...it isn't just this article.  Hope this explains things. Montanabw 20:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Veterinary Medicine
I've added this page to this WikiProject - see on Talk:Farrier. I've classed it as Start for the moment, but I reckon its nearly up there with B - just wasn't quite sure that a B should have active NPOV disputes and so few citations. Dlh-stablelights 11:44, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I changed it to "low," primarily because the "barefooter" movement is basically the next thing to a cult (Sorry barefooters, but you are), it rates about the same place as an article on, oh, chelates or magnets for arthritis, or ginko balboa or whatever ranks in human medicine...alternative approach at best. This is NOT to say that it isn't good for horses to be barefoot -- it often is -- but this particular article is about a branch of hoof care that takes the extreme position that horseshoes are always bad.   (luckily they have spared us, for example, the "horseshoe nails give horses metal poisoning" rant).  I tried to go in here and clean it up some, but realized that the farrier and horseshoe articles were a lot more NPOV (most farriers eagerly state that horses are often better off barefoot).   Montanabw (talk) 05:14, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Please be careful; claiming that the barefoot movement is a cult is a pretty strong POV and likely to ruffle more than a few feathers. Also, to correct you, barefoot advocates do not say that horseshoes are always bad.  Again, your personal POV, and not appropriate here. --AeronM (talk) 20:06, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Article name
Shouldn't this article be called "Barefoot horse movement" instead, since it's about the modern barefoot horse movement, not barefoot horses in general? Sqrtminusone 13:37, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Maybe. What probably is needed is an article entitled "hoof care."  What exists now are the articles farrier, horseshoe and this one.  What's missing is the generic overall one.  There is some info in horse care, but not specific to just feet.  Montanabw (talk) 03:20, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * "Barefoot horse movement" redirects here, and is addressed in this article. --AeronM (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with AeronM. I am in favor of keeping the current name. I think this allows for the most flexibility.  "Barefoot horse movement" seems to me to be a subset of the broader topic.  For example, it seems that one of the opening sections could be titled something like 'feral horses' which could explain the findings of the vaious studies on these populations.  There could also be a short section (if all agreed, of course) on horses who are shod through much of the year, but have a barefooted period every year for the fhooves to recover.--Getwood (talk) 16:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Structure of the hoof section removed
I have removed this section. I am sure this will raise issues with the barefoot movement people, but the whole section is unreferenced, uses words such as "always". Unreferenced statements that shod horses tendto incur excessive lameness....... It also leads to the conclusion that horseshoes are being used on horses because of tradition, rather then science and observation. This section needs to be rewritten and actually talk about the structure of the hoof, if that should be included in this article. --mceder (u t c) 12:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No argument that this article needs a lot of help. I just don't want to start edit wars.  I am not a "barefoot movement" person (though, truth be told, all my horses have been barefoot for several years) so I have been pretty careful wading in here because I don't want to be jumped on.  I guess my thoughts on the matter is that it is OK to edit if you want to, but be fair to both sides, don't turn the article into an "anti-movement" piece, add footnotes and remember WP:NPOV.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Montanabw (talk • contribs) 02:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Redirect/Merge
I have redirected "Barefoot trim" page (which I started but am now convinced it belongs here as a section) here, and will continue to flesh out the section.... --AeronM (talk) 20:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Photos
Meanwhile, am in the process of asking/getting permissions to use various photos showing the types of barefoot trims. --AeronM (talk) 20:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Speaking of photos, does it not strike others as ironic that the opening picture on the 'barefoot horses' page is of a horse in boots? It seems like that picture should be moved down adjacent to a section where the transition period is discussed, and an image of a barefoot horse could be used for the opening.--Getwood (talk) 15:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Agree 100%. --AeronM (talk) 20:41, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

POV Tag removed
I removed the POV tag as it looks as though the article has come a long way since the tag was added in 2006. Open to discussion if anyone disagrees. --AeronM (talk) 01:49, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Kinda sorta, but before I slap the POV tag back on, here is my concern: While the "shoes are always evil" thing has been toned down a lot, and the article is indeed much improved, I still feel this article still has a slant too much toward the "movement" side of things (Strasser in particular has something of a cult going), and yet the depth of the controversy is not really addressed (Miller goes over it very well and in a balanced way in Revolution in Horsemanship if you want a source to use).  While personally I haven't put shoes on any of my horses for about four years, and I clearly prefer to keep them barefoot as much as possible, I do not consider myself a "barefooter" because the movement itself encompasses a considerable amount of management in addition to shoe removal and specialized trims that is simply impractical for the average horse owner (who can't afford let their horse run on 40 acres and do little mini-trims every week). Yet, when I read this article, I still feel like it lumps people into two camps, good people who never shoe horses and bad people who want shoes on their horses all the time.  I would like to see more acknowledgement that there is a huge amount of middle ground here.  This article is better, but I still feel like it lumps people of moderate views, such as myself, into the "you don't believe in the benefits of barefoot" camp, which is simply not the case.   I guess I'd be happy to see more of what Getwood mentioned, that one POV is that shoes have their place, but even people who shoe their horses still like to give their horses time off from shoes.  Something like that.   Montanabw (talk) 03:42, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I actually think this article is in pretty good shape as is. It describes the topic, it's not too long, and it seems pretty NPOV.  I don't think the article emphasizes the barefoot 'movement' to the point of excluding the shoeing advocates.... on the contrary, I think the part about the people who advocate shoeing is good.  And after all, this is an article about keeping horses barefoot.  I'd hate for it to get to the point where we have to split off a whole new page to describe the controversy, like the Water fluoridation and Water fluoridation Controversy (now 'Opposition') pages...... ugh, what a mess those are. --AeronM (talk) 18:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Hoof health
It seems that the nutrition comments are sort of an orphan here. Obviously, the movement component is important in particular to barefoot health. The nutrition part is obviously important too, but doesn't somehow fit here. It seems like it belongs either on Horse hoof or Equine nutrition. Maybe a comment saying something like "barefoot advocates typically emphasize proper nutrition as a critical part of the horse's care" would cover it?Getwood (talk) 08:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that the section doesn't flow brilliantly at this point, but I do think it relates to the topic in that it (nutrition) is very directly affecting things like laminitis, which is very much releived (in many cases) by barefoot techniques. I will try to tweak it to better reflect the connection... if it still doesn't work, we can take it out.  --AeronM (talk) 18:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)