they dont need them if you only intend ot have the horse running around on dirt roads and fields without significant loads on their backs.
the idea of horse shoes became a necessity once horses had to start going thru more solid ground like asphalt roads and being used as cargo animals. if you didn’t somehow reinforce their hooves they would end up getting injured and would eventually endanger the animal’s life thru infection.
A hoof is like a fingernail on a person, but the horse is walking on it. It’s really thick, but can still split if it’s put down on a hard surface. The horseshoe prevents a split and can also enhance the healing of a split. For some sorts of surfaces, like concrete, a plastic polyurethane shoe can be best, reduces slipping.
The frog (the soft part in the center of a horses hoof) is sort of like a pump and an important part of the horses circulation. Horseshoes attenuate compression of the frog (particularly on hard flat surfaces like pavement), so they should only be used if the pros outweigh the cons.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_(horse_anatomy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_(horse_anatomy))
Horses in the wild also don’t have access to stables, vaccines, blankets, etc. and as a result don’t live quite as long (or healthy) as their domestic counterparts. Horseshoes are a protective measure similar to the aforementioned examples to keep their hooves from splitting when running on hard or uneven surfaces.
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