We are now into day 4 of the barefoot adventure, and he doesn't seem to have noticed at all that he has no shoes on. He is exactly the same as he always was, not footy, not 'completely crippled' as I was warned, he is fine.
My vet is very pro barefoot. He said that I need to get out of my head what the 'perfect' hoof looks like, as Ben needs to rebalance and shape his own feet. The most important thing to look at is how he moves, not what his feet look like. While he has always been barefoot behind, he has been trimmed incorrectly so his hind feet are shaped in an artificial way by the farrier. The plan is to leave them alone for a while and see what happens (obviously my vet and new farrier will keep checking him but the farrier will only trim him or intervene if there is a problem).
The ultimate goal is to self trim, which basically means that the feet are left pretty much alone. My vet has clients who have horses who have not seen the farrier for over 3 years and this is what I aspire to. They have a rasp and rasp down any chipped bits etc. as needed, but no trimming takes place. It is a completely different way of looking at hoof care as previously I had it drilled into me that the farrier must see every horse at least every 6 weeks.
To succeed in self trimming, he needs to work on lots of different surfaces and hack out for at least 4 hours per week. While I am a nervous hacker and tend to keep to my 'safe routes' my hacking does consist of a mixture of grass, stony tracks, smooth tracks and tarmac, plus we have a rubber school, so the different surfaces are all there. I am planning on taking him long reining in different places (I long rein far more confidently than I ride), so this should increase both our confidence about going out, and will be good for his feet as well. He needs to have a high fibre diet and avoid excess sugar, which he does already. He lives out overnight and comes in all day at the moment to get off the grass when the sugar is high. The vet doesn't feel that he needs supplements for his feet at the moment, but I am going to get my grass analysed to tell me how much nutrients are in it.
I have been warned that his front feet will probably crack up to the holes where he was last shod, but this is cosmetic and will grow out in a few months. This is apparently the time where the anti barefoot people will say I am ruining my horse. But there is nothing I can do about the cracking, it is only because of the weakness that the nail holes have created. So I am bracing myself of the inevitable criticism, but will nod politely and ignore it. I have no idea at all if this will work out or not, maybe in a few months time I will have the shoes put on again, but it is something that I want to try, and so far it is going OK.