What do you do when your horse comes in from the pasture with a loose shoe? You might be tempted to leave it alone and hope that it stays put until your farrier can make a trip out to your farm, but this leaves your horse at risk of hoof injury. The shoe might pull off, taking a big chunk of hoof wall with it. It could also come loose and twist, causing your horse to step on the nails and suffer a puncture wound in his sole.
With the right tools, pulling a loose shoe is easy for an average horse owner to do when the farrier can’t make it out to the farm right away. In the video below, Kentucky-based farrier Eric Johnson shows step-by-step how to safely remove a shoe.
Abigail Boatwright Abigail Boatwright is a freelance writer and photographer based in Texas, and is the editor of Horse Illustrated’s sister publication, Western Life Today.