01/28/2026
On occasion a horse needs something a little different than the typical set up.
When we took this gelding (an older rope horse) on as a client his owners said he just hadn’t been himself for a while, getting angry and a little mean which was out of character for him.
So the first step was getting his feet right barefoot (they were a disaster) and that helped him some, but wasn’t the full answer.
The owners did their due diligence to get him checked out by their vet to make sure nothing else was going on.
The recomendation was equioxx and these soft rider shoes, then weaning off the equioxx and trying just the shoes to see if they made him comfortable.
This gelding has been in the soft riders for 12 weeks now and this was the second reset.
The difference in his attitude and demeanor has been night and day, and he’s back to his original self.
There may be some future experimenting to see if another more traditional setup makes him just as comfortable, but as the saying goes “you don’t fix what isn’t broken”.
Right now he’s happy, sound and rideable, which is the most important.
