I've been searching through the EQ files as we get ready to launch a new website with community support and online learning and ran across a printed version of this article written by Tomas Teskey DVM in 2004 and EQ published it with permission and inserted EQ pictures.  

Because of technology rapidly changing the programs and computer I used to make this version are obsolete.  Soooo,  I took pictures with my iPhone of the original printed version and posted them here.  The words need to be heard and read still even after 14 years of being 'out there'.  

Enjoy!!!   and share....  

I wrote this article over a decade ago. It still reflects so many other horse owners' experiences.

          I had an Arabian horse named Sham. He was ready to retire and I was looking for a second horse. I surfed ads for half-Friesians and found a website called Equinextion with some beautiful horses for sale … and some different stuff about ‘Barefoot and Natural’.

          When I’d bought Sham, with his super tall coke-can feet (the fashion in the Arab world), I had him trimmed and shod ever since. I was taught that if I wanted to ride “on that ground” and “that many hours a week”, shoes were necessary. I didn’t question it … until I started reading the Equinextion website and a little voice in the back of my brain said, “This makes sense.”

          But all that...

On a 'barefoot trimmers page', someone posted the message:
Your work is not to drag the world kicking and screaming into a new awareness. Your job is to simply do your work...Sacredly, Secretly and Silently...
and those with 'eyes to see and ears to hear' will respond.

I have been doing my work.

I tried the kicking and screaming approach in my early ‘barefoot is best’ days. Once I realized the gravity and the depths of belief systems passed on from manly generations to another, I backed off and could only speak to those who heard. So I did manage to get a few people thinking differently and outside the box. Throughout the early years of the Equinextion forums, many people learned some trim techniques and many went on to do their own business in trimming and education, even though they were previously opposed to ‘barefoot’. It's not about shoes or no shoes.

This was long before Facebook and at a time, I kid you not, that Equinextion was on the...