Bar H Renegade Boot Update

Chief at Bar H. Photo by Lynne Glazer.

I rode Chief both days at Bar H (100 miles) plus marking trail in a new pair of strap on Renegades with built in gel pads. I thought I would do a quick update so others can learn about them.

We had a great ride all three days (1=trail marking, 2=50 mile rides) and I was happy with how Chief felt over the rocks and hard ground.

I haven’t been using pads in my boots. It’s easier not to, and the horses move fine in them without pads.

When I started using Renegades I was always surprised at how many riders already using them would say stuff like “my horse doesn’t need pads”. Well, once I started using them myself it didn’t take long to figure out why.

I did initially glue pads in my Renegades and did that for one pair each for both Bo and Chief. That did work though it took some time breaking the pads in and getting everything adjusted.  Again, it didn’t take long though for me to realize that I didn’t really need to be going through that much trouble for horses that have healthy feet.

I’m not a big fan of gluing boots or of squirting in pad material. Even if a squirt in pad material is soft, it is still taking up space and I don’t like having the risk of there being uneven pressure. Mainly because I’ve seen a lot of horses over the years come up footsore from having uneven pad material put in either under shoes, or boots.

So far this season I’ve been enjoying the simplicity of only using the regular strap on Renegade boots.  With Bar H my horses have now completed 600 miles on endurance rides in them this year.  More than a couple thousand overall.  I’ve done a few rides with glue-ons but think they are too much work except for special circumstances or events.  I also think that it would be healthier to nail a shoe on a horse than to continually glue boots on a horse.

At the end of December Chief’s hooves had reached a point where they were obviously a little more sensitive due to the health issues he had last year with his eyelid surgeries. He had a mild laminitis where afterwards stress rings grew out. This means that the laminae separated from the hoofwall.

Chief came up footsore at Death Valley over the rocks. Fortunately I’ve been able to keep him comfortable since then and he now seems to be past that stage. He’s completed four 50′s since then, 200 miles. The last 100 were in the boots with gel pads.

I got some great advice from Kirt Lander about doing a couple of minor changes to Chief’s feet which have really helped.  It’s been good to be able to get advice from somebody who really knows a lot about performance horse feet.  I’ll try to write more about this in detail later, but first I need to get some photos.

A little history on the boots with gel pads, so that nobody thinks that this is anything new. These built in gel pads have been used since 2005 on horses that have had various hoof issues with success.  The company that makes them doesn’t advertise this option because the Renegade boot material is so resilient that the majority of customers don’t need it.

The gel pad itself is very thin (see photo), and are available by special order only at an additional charge of $10 per boot. To find out more, visit renegadehoofboots.com I did not clean the boots after Bar H, what you see in the photos is exactly how they looked after being removed from Chief’s hooves on the last day of the ride.

A few things to note about using Renegade hoofboots with the built in gel pads. Time should be spent getting a really good fit. When the boots get wet they will be more likely to twist or come off until they are broken in and adjusted. I had to do some additional fine tuning and adjusting to my boots on Friday when we marked trail. I also had the boots twisting and even coming off going up Dawson Canyon on Saturday during the ride. This canyon is *extremely* steep, there are water crossings and most importantly the footing is slippery and super hard for a horse to get traction in regardless of what is on their feet. The good part is that in spite of having those couple of issues, my gel padded Renegades made it through the trail marking and both days of the endurance ride without anything breaking. Now that I’ve got the adjustments made to them I should be good to go for the next ride. There aren’t any other rides I do that have hills or conditions like that one at Bar H.