I've been most surprised in reading and hearing about owners using boots as routine with horses - particularly such as sports medicine boots, tendon boots, bell boots or splint boots.

I have been involved with high performance sports horses for over 50 years and despite that (crosses fingers and toes ) have never had horses lame with tendon or ligament difficulties.

Having had a good day's riding on challenging high hills in heavy wet going and with 5 fit horses, I came in to see this post and so thought I would share some experience and knowledge and hopefully answer the OP's question and also pose some ideas for consideration for those who think that boots should be normal horse attire.

If you always use support for your horse's legs, then the legs are never "exercised" enough for them to develop their own strength (stretching and absorbing concussion; tendons, ligaments, bones). So if you want to do more, but your horse is already using maximum support all of the time, how do you up that support for greater stress and impact?

If your exercise regime is begun slowly and built up so it increases steadily , then he will develop strength of his own. If he is fully supported, he will never need to develop structural strength, and so when you ask for more effort, he may do damage because the legs do not have the right internal support structure.

It makes more sense to me to depend on the horse to develop internal strength in his legs by keeping the horse very fit and in hard condition, and then support him only when you are asking for considerably more than his usual effort.

So if you're going to be in a long session, say 3 times as long or 3 times as hard as usual, you may then want to provide extra support. For example, if the horse is used to galloping two miles, and also used to jumping 15 jump courses, then you could probably provide simple impact protection for either; but I'd want to put SMB's on to do a two mile cross-country course with 15 jumps in it. I usually handle it by using tendon boots for impact protection. For most normal work; they don't provide support. I might use support boots when riding cross-country jumps, or when hunting or fast work in heavy ground as per this morning. Typical work, typical exercise, the horse should be able to handle with his own legs. For mine typical work is 2 hours - 10 - 15 miles of exercise including hill work at walk, trot, canter gallop.

Then we turn to what sort of boots to put on a horse and again it seems to me that all too often the decision is taken without knowledge or understanding of what or why - so almost like its a fashion accessory and the main decision is "what colour".

"Sports Medicine"-or as we call them here, tendon boots provide support for the tendons and ligaments in the fetlock, as well as impact protection.

They go all the way around the fetlock, and apply pressure all around. They're like an ankle or knee brace. They work well for situations in which the horse will be asked to perform more than usual; riding cross country, slippery terrain. However as I'm said DO NOT use them all of the time; if you use them all the time you prevent the horse's leg from developing its own strength and you will run a high risk of having a horse with tendon problems as a recurrent feature.

Splint boots (and brushing boots) provide only impact protection. They have no support for the joint. They work well for situations where a horse may be expected to interfere (lateral or circle work). So there is a risk of banging or knocking legs: so also for situations where the horse may be expected to bang his legs occasionally, but won't need leg support, e.g. riding on very rocky moorlands or through the brush and trees.

What you guys call polo wraps - we call bandaging is to look pretty only - NO SUPPORT and a little impact light protection unless of course you use what we call a gamgee (padding) underneath called racing or track bandaging then they offer better impact protection and its then possible to wrap to offer support if you know what you are doing and how to wrap.

I hope this makes all those owners who regularly and routinely boot horses think again - you are really and truly not acting in your horses best interests.

For cross country jumping 2' 6" I'd personally not bother.   I don't have anything that has a way of going that means it's going to interfere and strike into itself .   Furthermore I don't have anything that is likely to bang into a jump that small and so I'm of the view that impact protection wouldn't be required.  

IF it were something more challenging then I'd grease up the front legs and have something on for impact protection and just in case they smack their legs into a solid and unforgiving structure.   

Here you can and I do use open fronts for jumping knock downs or cross country solids.

Last Edited By: Spooksandbolts May 7 14 8:11 AM. Edited 1 times.