When you flip over the cover of Jaime Jackson’s book, Founder: Prevention & Cure, The Natural Way, there’s a line describing the text as, “The most controversial book yet written on the subject … and the most useful.”

Well, farriers will agree on the former and debate the latter. Jackson, a 26-year hoof-care expert who has authored such books as The Natural Horse; Horse Owners Guide To Natural Hoof Care; and Boot Your Horse!, pulls no punches with his theory on shoeing horses – don’t do it.

While this may send farriers into a frenzy, he offers a natural and researched alternative to putting shoes on horses, especially when they are foundered, that will help you understand these ideas that can be useful about having horses go barefoot when you receive numerous questions from your shoeing clients.

Jackson takes it one step further and says that shoeing and caring for horses in an unnatural way could be the cause of many hoof problems, including founder.

“Founder is really unknown in wild horse country,” Jackson writes in this 164-page book. “More than once, people have suggested to me that wild horses are exempt from laminitis due to their inherited characteristics. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is their lifestyle alone.

“It is improbable, except largely through chance, to cure or prevent founder without knowing how we violate the horse’s natural state, and doing something about it.”

The Natural Approach

Before dismissing Jackson as crazy, he asks that you hear…