PATRICK SMITH: There's a lot of boots out there.
I've used a lot of the different boots in my career.
Professionals Choice Elite VenTECH is the boot
that I choose to use. They're made for protection and
this is something that I think is overlooked.
A lot of people were paying 30, 40, 50 plus thousand
dollars for horses, and they don't spend very much
money on protection for their horse.
This is the cheapest insurance you can have on these animals.
You know you got four tires on your car.
You don't just check the front ones.
You want to check all of them. And that's something that I'm
big on is making sure that my horse is protected all
the way around. These boots are
great for support.
This is something I really like for the material.
They've got a lot of cool colors in it,
but it's a stretch material. It's contoured very well.
There's a lot of detail in this boot.
If you look right here. You can see all this extra
stitching that they've got in here that you won't see
on a lot of other boots. That stitching just to help
contour this to a horse's leg the same way that boots fit us
or shoes fit us. It's important
that it's a comfortable fit. Once you put it on you don't
want to just slap this on there and it bother your horse where
he's just on the ground all day and it's bugging him and not
only that it's not even protecting him the way that it
was made to do. So you'll see right here on inside as I get
ready to put this on this horse. Reason it's called VenTECH
is you'll see all these holes right here and that's
a breathable material. So when I wrap
this on this horse's leg it starts getting up there.
You know we go in places where it's well over 100 degrees a lot
of the times so that heat can escape.
That sweat can escape and it keeps this horse's leg
from getting too hot and getting blistered. Instead,
it let's it breathe, again keeping
him more comfortable. You can see right here,
this boot tells me everything I need to know — front left.
I'm going to put this on him right here.
And watch without even strapping it, you'll see how
well that boot conforms to this horse's leg. It fits him without even strapping it.
You can see how well it does. So I'm going to make sure
that I get this in the correct spot and get this under
that ankle under that fetlock. And I'm always going to hold
this with my thumb. Pull this tight.
And here's the most important part of this boot.
This is designed to support the suspensory on this horse.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to wrap this around.
Go underneath and pull it up at a 45 degree angle.
So many times I see guys just strap it across just to get
the strap done. That's not what these are for.
These are designed to be on, to be tight and to be fitted to
a horse's leg. So we want to make sure we get that strap
around and at a 45 degree angle then I'm going to go up one to
the next strap. Pull it tight.
Next one, pull it tight and then finish off with the top one
and pull it tight. Now I've got a good fit
on my horse. It looks good. It's comfortable to him
and it's supporting ligaments and the suspensory
in this horse's feet. Again, keeping him safe
throughout the day. Comfortable. And cheap insurance
for an animal that's worth as much as he is to me.