Western style boots for horses offer protection from the cannon bone and the foot, and they also offer protection and support for the tendons and ligaments. See a few different types of boots, used for working and for shows, with helpful advice in this video on riding and caring for horses.
When working your horses, it's important to offer as much support and protection as you can. When we work our horses at home, we use a boot like this, it offers more support and protection for the tendon and ligaments in the cannon bone and it's got a bottom strap that wraps underneath the pastern and offers more support for your horse. When we go to a horse show, we use a simpler boot and this is just something that we use when we show. It offers protection from the cannon bone, it offers protection from the foot, maybe if it were to reach up and hit that leg. We also at work and at home or at the horse show, we also use a bell boot which just goes on the bottom of their foot like this and offers protection around their coronet band at around the heel of the ball of their foot. And then the reiners when we're showing and we're working on our sliding stops, we use something called a skid boot and this offers protection on the back of their ankles and this simply just attaches above their ankle and this goes around their pastern and their ankle goes in here. And as you can see it offers protection against the sliding stops.
