Dr. Joe Stricklin

"“My name is Dr. Joe Stricklin, Ive been an equine practitioner for 38 years now - I’m also a team roper. These Soft Ride Ice Spa Boots have a place for every type of performance horse there is. We know that ice therapy helps with circulation, it brings in that cooling temperature, that relieves inflammation. Theres A lot of different uses for the spa boots, its not just for injury, its for helping maintain, rehabilitate those legs so they’re ready to go the next day. We used to have to put ice in a bucket, the waters going everywhere, the horse moves, they kick the bucket, the bucket rattles, it scares the horse, the horse stomps on your foot - life is so much simpler using the Soft Ride Ice Spa Boots. The spa boots have a gel insert that goes into the bottom of the boot, the horses foot sits on the top of this gel inset, which allows the cold water to circulate through the bottom and around the horses foot. Another good thing about the boots, theres a drain plug that you can use to just drain the water from the boot, there’s also an option to have a hook up with an air hose so you can turbinate the water. Moving water cools faster than static water. The application of the Soft Ride Spa Boot is very easy. We have this gel wrap, it either goes above the knee or hock. Then once you have the horse standing in the boot, you’ve got your straps - they’re a magnetic clip. Usually what I’ll do is hook all of them but I will come back and unhook one of them when I get ready to put the ice in, fill it up with water, bring the sleeve up, and take one of these other straps, bring it around, and that helps seal up your leg so that the leg stays cold. Horses feel very comfortable in these boots. I can’t over emphasis how important it is that we take care of our equine athletes. We need to give them every chance they can to be successful for us and for them. Soft Ride has come up with a product thats for the horse, it will help our horses maintain their health. You can get these boots either through your veterinarian or through the Soft Ride website. Get them. It will save your horse. It will save you. It will make it for a happier, healthy time.”

Dr. James Belknap

“I mean it is the only effective therapy for laminitis. In 2017 we published really the first through textbook on equine laminitis, everything from the research side of it, and going through the clinical aspects of it. And certainly we’ve got a chapter in the book on Cryotherapy, or as we call it Digital Hypothermia and the efficacy of it in sepsis related laminitis, one of the main types of laminitis. Working with Soft Ride to design a boot, and certainly we’re still improving the boot, but its given us the first time we can put a boot that incorporates a pad in it, and at the same time that we’ve documented that the hoof wall that gets down to the temperature needed for the hypothermia to take effect and be affective as a prophylactic therapy to decrease the damage of the laminae, that leads to laminar failure. Its not just a prophylactic therapy, its also effective at decreasing the amount of laminar injury and the severity of the amount of injury we’re gonna get to the foot, even when started after the animal shows signs of laminitis. People used to ice because somebody tried it and it worked, now we know why.”

Jon Barry

“We have 9 head of horses here and every one of them came in with a set of Soft Ride Boots on. Anytime I get a little bit of soreness in them, we let them stand in them and it is such a helpful tool. We’re going to get this mare ready for the Soft Ride to put the mare in ice for a while. Gonna put the sleeve on, the collar on as tight as we can to keep it held up, lift the mare’s leg, and just let her step right into the boots herself. Trying to get her toe to the front of it as much as possible, so when she sets her foot down, she sets it down flat in the boot. Go on the inside and hook our buckles first, to keep it held up tight. Now she’s ready to add water, add the amount of water that you want to use, then we’re ready to add the ice to it. Same scenario add the amount of ice that you want to use and put it right in there. Then we lift this up, to keep all the coolness in as much as possible. It has velcro you can pull extremely tight, if you’d like it, going over the top of the knee to hold it all in place and you’re completely ready for that mare to stand in those boots for as long as you want her too."

Ice Boot How to Use

“Hi, I’m Julie and I’m here with Simon and we’re at Sutters Run Farm, the base of Ariel an upper level event rider and we’re here to show you the Soft Ride Ice boots that we’ve had for about a year and absolutely love. They’re worth every penny.

So I’m just here to show you how easy they are and why we love them so much! So to start with, this is the boot, and this is the cuff that goes around the pastern and then Velcro’s into the boot, so I will show you how to do that.

So the cuff has three tabs, two angled that will go on either side toward the front, and then one straight tab that goes in the back towards the heel. Then theres the velcro that attaches, double sided in the front and it goes on just like so - with your two angled tabs up front and your flat tab behind.

So once the cuff is on the horse’s leg, and you are ready to put it in the boot, there are three velcro tabs - be sure they are velcro-ed back so they’re out of the way and they’re easily accessible when you go to actually attaching it to the cuff. Pull the back velcro, right by the heel so you can grab the boot. So you put the toe in first, let the heel rock back and press the velcro and then let the horse step down.

So the back velcro got attached when he stepped down, you want to now pull this down by the loop and velcro it to the front tab, and do the same on the other side. The more velcro, the more secure you can get the velcro, the better it will be if the horse decides to dance around or step out of it.

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Ice Boot How to Use (cont'd)

Once you’ve got the velcro tabs attached, you pull up on both sides and then you just zip up. Now that we’ve got the boots on, you’re going to fill it with water, to about a third, maybe half full, you can tell how full it is by the hose.

You can see the water levels about right there, I’m going to fill it about half full before I put the ice in. I’ve got almost half here, and almost half here - so now I’m going to put the ice in. Alright so now I’m going to add ice, I’m going to use my hands as a funnel, while I pull the boot out at the same time, put in as much ice as you need, and then you can add more water.

Alright so now that I’ve got the ice and water started, I’m going to add some more water, in this particular case I want to bring the water level up so that I can get his knee also. I’m going to watch it here, now that I’ve got the water where I want it, I’m gong to close up the boot which will help stabilize it and keep the cold in.

Like so, and the same thing on this one and there you go. SO one of the other things I love about these boots is that you can easily turn them into whirlpool boots. So heres the hosing, you’ve got a main hose, connected to a split. You take the split and put it over the horses shoulders.

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Ice Boot How to Use (cont'd)

So once I’ve got the hoses on, be careful if its your first time putting them on, some horses may think its a little bit weird. But once the hoses are around the horses shoulders you’re going to take this end and simply just slide it over the hose and you’re ready to go.

Then I’m going to take this end and connect it to my air hose thats connected to my air compressor.

Taking them off is even easier than putting them on. You take the velcro there and the Velcro there and then you unzip - I like to unzip the far one so that I’m not unzipping the water into me, and then like so and then the same on the other side and there you go. Then un-velcro and step out and you’re done!

So as you can see Simon is demoing two different sizes of the Soft Ride Ice boots, this is the 21 ice and this is the 28 inch and they’re basically the same except that they’re different heights so it depends on the size of horse and their leg or what area of the leg you're looking to ice. This is a fairly large horse, I like to ice the knee so usually he goes in the 28 inch but if I have a smaller, shorter horse they will go in this one also. These are the Soft Ride Ice boots, go to softrideboots.com to learn more about these wonderful ice boots. Thank you!”

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Andrea Fappani

“I was first introduced to the Ice Spa a couple of years ago and I fell in love with it right away. It’s been a great product from the beginning, you know I’ve noticed that none of my horses have had a problem getting their legs in and out, none of them are scared. Its a tight fit so horses feel like its part of their legs pretty soon, after a few minutes they don’t feel like its a big deal anymore. We take it to horse shows, we have a pair set up right now in the wash rack for Congress, we can take the horses right there, after they get washed, they get put in that for 25 minutes. I’ve had some great results.”

Brian Bell

“We use the Ice Spa almost daily, anytime we ride a horse a little bit harder than normal or if we have one that has any kind of issues we put them on there daily to keep them from having any kind of problem. I think its good even if you don’t have an issue that you’re working on because that blood flows through there and it cools down their limbs and their body temperature cools down so much quicker so they can recover a lot faster.”

Lara Knight

“It’s been absolutely amazing because you can stabilize the foot in the boot with the sleeve so my horses actually don’t move out of them. If they pick up the foot, they stay in it so they learn to stand quieter in the boot. The water channels underneath circulate and help that circulation underneath and with the sleeves up top, I can get the knees now - where before none of the boots came high enough. The boots that they’ve designed now they come up higher around the knee and you can ice knees and hocks and everything.It’s pretty cool.”

Rylee Harding

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