If your horse pulls a shoe partially off, and your farrier can't get to you for a few days, it might be better to carefully remove the shoe yourself rather than risking your horse stepping on one of those loose nails and/or breaking up his hoof worse than it already is. | Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt/The Horse

All horses wearing shoes occasionally lose one; do you know what to do if that shoe doesn’t come off all the way?

Everyone who owns a shod horse will have that horse lose a shoe at some point. Popped clinches, missing nails, interference from one limb to another, or an overreach can cause a shoe to come off. It might be a nuisance, but the shoe normally pulls off completely when it catches on something solid. A lost shoe doesn’t cause much more than an annoyance when you can find the shoe, although it can cause some hoof wall damage that takes time to grow out.

But what happens when the shoe comes halfway off and your farrier can’t get to you for hours, or even days? During that time, your horse can slash a loose toe clip into the other foot, or he can step on the dangling shoe with another foot and rip off chunks of hoof wall with the remaining attached nails. Worst of all, any detached nails that are still on the shoe can penetrate the sole of his foot, causing infection and serious, possibly long-term, injury. Sometimes it’s up to you to remove the loose shoe before more damage can be done.

Removing a shoe isn’t as difficult as you might think. You just need the right tools, the right information, and a little strength. Michael Wildenstein, Certified Journeyman Farrier of Cornell University, agreed to take us through the process