About my horses feet

Question
Hi,
My horse Hildago is my first horse and all the sudden he is having bad front feet again.  We think its because he paws the ground alot and he chip a good inch off the side of his left front foot.  We had our farrier out and he looked at them and said they're fine but when i ride him he sort of trips then limps and then hes fine, then he does it all over again.  Hes had shoes when i first got him due to the fact the previous owner didnt do anything with his feet and they were badly cracked.  Can you tell me what i can do about this??  

Answer
Sounds to me from your description of his history that the walls of the hooves are being left too long so they are bearing the weight of the hoof loading by themselves. This means that just as if you were to walk on long fingernails, the leverage and pressure on the nails would chip, crack and finally begin to tear the nail away from the nailbed. This is painful. Ask your farrier to lower the walls more so they are not bearing the brunt of weight loading when the horse steps onto the hoof. Please see my website http://www.barefoottrim.com for illustrations and explanations of this type of situation.

:) -- Gwen