Horses should only be offered minerals free choice so they can decide for themselves how much, and what, they need. With the exception of a natural hunger for salt, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that horses can tell what mineral deficiencies they have, let alone select the correct mineral or mixture of minerals to rectify them.
- Barefoot is better. Much good came from this at first, in terms of reminding people that horses did not evolve with iron on their feet, and in shifting emphasis back to the anatomy and function of the horse's real shoe-the hoof wall, sole, frog-instead of focusing on what is nailed onto it.
However, in the process some odd ideas have emerged that amount to horseshoes being the source of all that is wrong with horses, or that every horse's foot needs to be trimmed to a set formula that mimics observations this or that person has made. A hefty dose of common sense will tell you that horseshoes don't make feet numb, that the heart is the center of circulation (not the foot), and that the dimensions and angles observed on 14-hand wild horses ranging free over rocky terrain are exactly that-findings appropriate for 14-hand wild horses ranging free over rocky terrain.
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Most dangerous of all is the talk about detoxing. When basic biology, physiology and medical knowledge are abandoned and replaced with references to "toxins," or "energy imbalances" that call for a variety of "detoxing" or "cleansing" and rebalancing alternative therapies we're in trouble. Or, actually, our horses are in trouble. What toxins? What imbalances? These claims are difficult to disprove because they're vague. We have a lot to learn about how the body functions, but to regress to the days when illness was blamed on evil spirits is a huge step backward. Short of dialysis, there is no way to "clean" the blood.
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The so-called detoxing or cleansing herbs for the most part either stimulate urine production, intestinal purging or release of bile. Obviously these are indeed important bodily functions, but these remedies work by themselves being irritants and poisons. Most of the liver remedies, for example, stimulate contraction of the gallbladder -but the horse doesn't have a gallbladder. We are, or should be, past the point where all disease is blamed on plumbing backups.
It's true that many things are wrong about what we do with horses-poor breeding choices, feeding the wrong things and not enough exercise-but major advances have been made in nutrition and preventing disease. Discarding this with a back-to-nature approach is not the way to go.
