Training |

I’m definitely embarrassed that it’s been three years since I last posted anything, but, in my defense, it’s been a very busy time with a lot of exciting changes! Since that last update, we’ve taught several hoof care clinics, done a number of presentations for veterinarians and chiropractic doctors at the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association‘s annual conferences, recorded video classes for the International Veterinary Chiropractic Association‘s first-ever virtual conference, were interviewed for a couple more White Stallion Ranch Cowboy Up! podcasts, and become regular consultants to a major zoo regarding the hoof care of their ungulates (mostly giraffes). And those are just the highlights!

But the most exciting news of all is our establishment of Enlightened Equine Workshops, with our flagship offering being the Hoof Care for Horse Owners Workshop — a four-day workshop aimed at the horse owner, hoof care professional, and other equine-related professionals who want to better understand the why of hoof function & form from a whole-horse perspective. Held at the White Stallion Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, this Workshop consists of morning lectures on hoof care theory, anatomy, trim evaluation, boot fitting, hoof pathologies, and a whole host of other topics. Afternoons are reserved for trim practicums using cadaver legs, combined with a number of demonstrations including horseshoe removal, leg & hoof dissection, and tool sharpening, plus live training and trimming demonstrations — all in all, the most comprehensive Workshop offering we could envision. You can see the Workshop schedule here. Note that we limit new student enrollment to a maximum of twelve (12) to ensure adequate one-on-one time in the practicums.

And there’s more news as well! For the past several months, we’ve been working on putting a hoof care certification program together: coming up with the format of the program, contacting various subject experts to teach some of the more advanced topics classes, figuring out the best way to tie it into our existing Hoof Care for Horse Owners Workshop — all the things you’d imagine would be involved in creating a high-quality, comprehensive hoof care education program. What we’ve come up with is a three-level certification program model structured after the bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctorate degree concept. That’s to say that the first level is the foundation level, where the student learns all of the basics of hoof care; the second level is the specialization level, where the emphasis is on a deeper understanding of hoof care principles; and the third level is a research-oriented education where the student pursues research into a particular area of interest in hoof care.

We’re confident this certification program will set a new standard in hoof care education. It focuses on the whole-horse aspects of hoof care, with the goal of producing the highest-caliber hoof care professionals, and is intended to be an affordable alternative to more traditional methods of learning hoof care while setting and maintaining strict quality standards. It will be taught by industry-acknowledged experts, with all first-level content delivered in-person. And all in-person classes will be held at the award-winning White Stallion Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, which is a fantastic facility with absolutely everything we need to ensure a convenient, comfortable, and safe learning experience.

The certification program starting point is the Hoof Care for Horse Owners Workshop, and we’ve already added a day to the May workshop schedule called the Advanced Practices Day: Core Classes. Although this six-class day will be a requirement for those seeking certification, it’s open to everyone. Topics covered will be: Trimming the Laminitic Horse, Understanding Navicular Disease, Basics of Equine Behavior, Equine Lameness Identification, Equine Foot Radiography, and Fundamentals of Equine Nutrition. These are the subjects we believe to be absolutely crucial to the success of the professional hoof care provider.

We’ve also established an Enlightened Equine Workshops YouTube channel, and created twenty (20) brief videos (so far!) covering a number of topics, with more to come. Check them out.

Thanks for listening! My goals for the Enlightened Equine blog for the next few months include updating the entire site to make it more mobile device-friendly, and providing more content on some key hoof care issues I’ve started writing about but not yet finished. And if you’re truly interested in understanding the details of proper hoof care, consider joining us in Tucson for one of our Workshops; I guarantee you won’t regret it! And if you have any questions, please be sure to let us know…

For several years now, I’ve wanted to give my Austrian-born wife Dora the opportunity to answer some questions about her work as a licensed Straightness Training Instructor and certified natural hoof care professional, and her thoughts about the relationship between the two. Not, mind you, because she’s my wife, but because I daily witness the amazing work she does with horses, and recognize she has a great deal to offer the horse world.

Straightness Training, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, is a method of training that embraces the idea that the role of horse training is to acknowledge and address both natural and human-created asymmetries in the horse’s body and consequent movement to slowly and methodically bring the horse’s body into balance. It also recognizes that the goal of classical dressage wasn’t to win pretty ribbons at the local horse show, but to have a horse so athletically and mentally fit that it could successfully perform the high-level dressage movements as preparation for mounted warfare. Extensive study of the works of the old riding masters of dressage such as Pluvinel, Guérinière, and Baucher led Dutch-born founder Marijke de Jong to develop a system of unmounted and mounted exercises designed to strengthen and supple the horse’s body and create a strong, willing partner for whatever discipline you may be interested in. And it works!

Dora also studied natural hoof care with Liberated Horsemanship (which is how we met), and continued on to become a Certified Natural Hoof Care Professional and Field Instructor. And she’s noticed a strong connection between the results of her work in Straightness Training and her hoof care, which is one of the topics we’ll explore with her in our upcoming interview. So please join us for this Facebook Live Event, and bring your questions! And meanwhile, if you’d like to read more about Dora prior to the interview, you can learn more on her website.

Hope to see you soon…