A friend of mine snagged me after church last week saying, "Lynn, I have to show you these pictures! We were in Poland last week and when I saw them, I thought of you and knew you'd want to see them."
Wondering what the "them" was that she was referring to, we slipped into an empty pew and sat down.
She was right - I did want to see "them."
Polish draft horses pulling carriages in Krakow!
Cindy also asked me about the shoes the horses were wearing and mentioned how odd they looked. I don't know a lot about shoes but I do know their purpose and my guess was that part of it was to keep the horses from slipping on the cobblestones.
Cindy asked me what breed the horses were, another question I could not answer for her, so I did some research when I got home.
If anyone knows the answer to the shoe or breed questions, feel free to post in the comments section or email me at horsiemama8@gmail.com. Not only am I curious about the answers, but Cindy would like to know, too!
I know that foals born with contracted tendons can sometimes be helped by using glue on shoes with extensions. Heel extensions to fix contractions that pull the toe up and toe extensions for contractions that pull the heel up (do an image search at your own discretion, a lot of the photos are of VERY extreme cases and heartbreaking while much more mild contractions are common and what I am talking about). I imagine shoes with a heel extension would also behave similarly on adult horses and you can see just how upright, almost unnaturally so, the darker pair of drafters pictured is through their front pasterns. Since horses grip and dig with their toes on deep or slippery surfaces, I can understand how this may help them on slippery cobbled streets but I can't help but wonder just how much stress this is putting on their skeletal structure and that it could cause arthritic changes much earlier than the horses may develop it with a more natural shoeing. The spotted pair don't seem to be as extremely shod, it's hard to tell from the angle of the photo but their pastern angle seems more normal so it may have to do with specific purpose or even be "cosmetic" for lack of a better word. As for Polish breeds I have zero answer though the spotted one does remind me of the WIA Gustav spotted release so I imagine there is some purpose beyond wanting a spotted drafter behind his paint job. AJG
ReplyDeleteThe spotted may be Noriker
ReplyDeleteI don't have the answers for you, but what a fabulous friend and such cool pictures!
ReplyDelete