Protection for tendons and ligaments
Leggings
Tendon boots protect your horse’s front and hind legs.
You can get gaiters with either neoprene or lambskin or faux fur lining. The outer material can be made of plastic, carbon, Kevlar, leather or faux leather, as well as nylon.
Gaiters as impact and tendon protection
If your horse runs in dressage without grazing, it does not necessarily need leg protection. However, you should protect the leg when doing show jumping or eventing.
These are the advantages of gaiters:
- Protection from small stones and branches that could be thrown against the leg
- Protection from stripes with the other hooves
- stabilizing effect
- Protection against falling bars when jumping
Dressage boots and jumping boots
What makes dressage boots?
- Applying is much easier and faster than bandaging
- Impact protection is higher
- protect the fetlock and cannon bone
- mostly matching the collection colours of the individual equestrian brands
- made from a durable synthetic material or leather
- usually cut a little higher than the usual hard shell gaiters
- often lined with faux fur or lambskin
- made of flexible material
What is a jumping boot?
- protect the cannon bone and the fetlock joint with the outer hard shell
- Outer shell has a shock-absorbing effect
- mostly anatomically shaped
- often with high-tech materials such as carbon, gel and Kevlar in the outer shell
- Inner material made of neoprene, lambskin or faux fur
- significantly greater shock-absorbing effect than, for example, wrap-around gaiters
Why are boots not allowed to be used in dressage competitions?
You are not allowed to use bandages or boots in a dressage test, as the judges want and need to judge the horse's natural movement. This can be made more difficult by bandages or boots. Your horse should also run as balanced as possible so that it does not injure itself during the test.