Like many of you, my husband Greg and I have been involved with horses for a whole lot of years. I have ridden stock and endurance, dabbled in western, trained racehorses, carted 3 girls all around the state competing in pony club and now in middle age, I'm really enjoying dressage and social rides with Frank, my equine partner. We are training Level 2 dressage, attend clinics, weekend camps, social endurance rides, navigation rides etc. I used original easy boots when they first came on the market basically as a backup for a thrown shoe on endurance rides, then for horses with problem feet, but always returned to shoeing horse. Then Frank arrived, a lovely thoroughbred, and I entered a real learning curve as I strove to keep shoes on his flat, thin-walled, crumbly hooves. I listened to various people, riders and farriers, and researched everything from cytecs to plastic shoes to glue-on, but at the end of the day it was the increasingly good reports of barefoot trimming and hoof conditioning that led me to want to try what seemed like a very logical and natural way. So we gave it a go, along with hoofboots. Frank was 15 the year the year we took off his metal shoes; I doubt that he'd ever been unshod as he started life as a racehorse, then jumper, then show hack and now pleasure. He has always been in work apart from the odd 2 - 3 week let up, so I suppose that says something for his soundness and constitution. It took a good few months to transition him, Greg diligently trimming and me using easy boot bares. Now nearly two years down the track, I couldn't be more impressed with with the changes to the quality and resilience of his hooves. The wall thickness has increased and he has grown a slight concavity to his soles and they are TUFF. When Frank was shod I had him on hoof supplements hoping to hasten the growth of the hooves, and though it did help a bit, it was nothing to the extent that going bare has. I started Frank in Bares, and now am using Epics, simply because of ease of application. Greg and I own a saddlery and believe us when we say we've seen shoeing fads come and go. I am more than ever convinced that in this day and age, when there is access to a range of boots from a company that is committed as Easycare is to research and development, there will soon be no need to ever drive nails into horses hooves! I hope that with widespread acceptance of boots, that the discipline of Dressage will come to accept them as shoe alternatives and not horse boots which are now disallowed for competition. By the way, Karen, could you mention to research department that the exposed screws on the outside of the Epics catch on the horses fetlocks and draw blood! Is there some way they can be recessed perhaps? Thanks Easycare for the opportunity to be part of such a committed team. Regards, Anne