Lost Shoe? Don’t Panic!

Losing a shoe on a trail when you’re far from home is frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world. Here are two quick fixes— a best option and a MacGyver approach.

The Best Option

You’re a well-prepared trail rider, and you always keep at least one hoof boot with you on the trail. You keep it tied to your saddle strings or in your pack, ready for when you need it. A hoof boot protects a bare foot from breakage and excess wear until you get home and can tack the shoe back on. Even if your horse has strong feet, if he loses a shoe on the trail, he’s more likely to wear or even break the hoof wall than a continually barefoot horse would, as the area that was protected by a shoe is now vulnerable to the terrain.

The MacGyver Option

If you don’t have a hoof boot, you’ll need to get creative and find something to pad the hoof. You might have to sacrifice your glove or part of a jacket for your horse’s comfort. With the cushion cut to fit the hoof without extra bulk that could cause your horse to trip, tie or duct tape the pad to the newly bare foot.

I’ve had to use this method a few times. Once, my husband and I were checking cattle far from home when his horse caught a foot in a rock crevice and lost a shoe. It was extremely rocky country; the horse would’ve gone lame trying to get home without the shoe. We tied part of a jacket around the foot to protect it and got the horse home without soreness or stone bruising.

We used this same trick again years later, when my daughter and I were checking cattle 6 miles from home. Her young, flat-footed gelding was shod with hoof pads to prevent stone bruises. While scrambling through rocks and sagebrush on a steep mountain, her gelding stepped on the heel of his left front shoe with a hind foot and pulled off the shoe and hoof pad. He’d been recently shod and didn’t have much extra hoof, and we knew he’d get tender and lame if we led him home without protection on that foot. We made an instant hoof pad using one of our sweatshirts, folding it across the bottom of the foot in several thicknesses, then tying the arms of the sweatshirt around his pastern. I always carry baling twine in my pockets for emergency fence fixing. I used it to help tie the sweatshirt padding securely to the horse’s foot. My daughter was then able to lead him the 6 miles home without injury to his shoeless foot. The hoof wall wasn’t chipped or worn, and we were able to put a new shoe and hoof pad on him when we got home. The sweatshirt, by contrast, was worn through three of its four thicknesses— with big holes—but the gelding’s foot was just fine.