My horse's feet usually wear down on her own when in work. All I do is neaten up the edges and even the road wear (where it gets longer on the inside of the hoof due to the camber of the road) when she's doing roadwork. If it gets beyond that the farrier/barefoot guy (depending on what needs doing) does them. Ever tried trimming a horse's hoof with a rasp? It is VERY hard work. You can't do more than remove a few mm to even things out without nippers, and I don't own a pair of those or pretend to know how to use them.
I was taught to do what I do by a very good farrier around here who said it was stupid me calling him every two weeks to sort out road wear unevenness and sharp bits. He then checked them every six weeks for a year before he said it was silly him coming to do nothing and just to call him when they got long. That was four years ago. Until what happened in my post above due to them going soft etc, I carried on getting the farrier every few months, for a good three and a half years, for the farrier to say 'her feet are fine, you're doing a good job' or just to trim the frog for me. In fact I was doing next to nothing, the road trims my girl's feet!
I recently had the same farrier trim them. I haven't seen him for ages as I'd moved. Due to her being unable to do much work at the time her bars had grown overlong and were laying over. They had become uncomfy and I'd managed to get them a little bit shorter with the rasp in the meantime but that was it. He pulled them out and cut them short for me, then cut the residual wall off (about 3/4mm) because she wasn't doing roadwork at the time and wouldn't need that bit for protection. The person whose advice Horselover73 has taken on this thought that the horse's frog shouldn't touch the ground when barefoot and asked the farrier later if the hooves had been fine when he'd seen them (d'uh, wouldn't have needed him if they had been!!). He said that they were a little flared near the bottom, 'twas all. I have that in writing from him since I had to query it after that person started spreading rumours that he'd said something else. Strangely enough, the flare at the bottom is the lami damaged hoof growing out, the last couple of cm or so of it.
I highly recommend that Horselover73 has a look at:
www.barefoot.com with regards to unshod horse's feet and how they should look when not lami'd and how they should be trimmed. It's exactly how this farrier has always done it - remove all the wall until it's flush with the sole, cut the bars back if they're overlong and trim the frog if it's peeling. Some horses will naturally have more concave hooves than others. TBs have notoriously flat feet, ponies much better, harder feet.
Some questions for horselover73 - you should know the answers to these before you judge anything:
1. What are layed over bars and why are they bad?
2. Why are shoes taken off during bouts of laminitis?
3. What should an unshod horse's hoof look like? (pic would be good).
4. What changes in shape would you see in a laminitic horse's hoof?
5. Why is it important that the hoof wall is the same length all the way round?
6. Why is it important the bars don't get too long?
7. Why are shod horse's hoof walls much longer than the sole when barefoot horses's hoof walls are kept flush with the sole?
8. What are the main causes of flaring and what is it?
9. In which specific disease other than laminitis is it often recommended that shoes are removed to help the horse?
10. Why do horses need shoes in the first place?
11. What is the function of the frog?
12. Why does the frog recede when a horse is shod and what are the implications for concussion when in work?
13. What is the function of frog supports and heart bar shoes in the treatment of severe laminitis?
