Progress!?

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I received the following email from a new client the other day –

I wanted to give you a quick update on my (horse type deleted) that was so sore before you started working on him. I have been noticing that he is moving more freely in the pasture than I have seen him since he came to me almost a year ago. Last night I rode him on a short trail ride in which he did very well. I then did just a bit of ring work. Typically in the past he has shown more of a head nod at the trot in the ring but not this time. He was more sound there then I have ever seen him! He still has a bit of healing to do because I can feel he is not quite there 100% but getting pretty darn close – especially considering the awful dx that he would of been labeled with just 2 trims ago!!

Thank you again!  It is amazing to see him move more freely and to live without chronic pain.  I also can see his heels beginning to spread out and fill in!  Yah!!

When the client first called me in April, I was convinced from the description that I was going to be working on a horse with chronic laminitis. And when I saw the horse, he did, indeed, exhibit the typical “founder stance” – his front feet parked out in front, and his rear feet tucked underneath him to shift more of his weight onto his back end. But a quick walk around him revealed no “cresty” neck, obesity, or distorted hoof capsules. What caught my eye, though, were the dark lines running up the backs of his feet between the heel bulbs and up past the hairline. “Your horse isn’t laminitic,” I said, “but he does have a bad infection in all four feet!” The client, of course, wanted to know why neither the veterinarian nor the farrier had caught it – in fact, as the email alludes to, the vet had misdiagnosed the horse as having laminitis.

I can’t answer that, but I can tell you that I’ve now seen this type of infection go undetected by veterinarians and farriers a number of times; the horse is often very lame, and yet “no one” seems to be able to figure out why. And the horse owner has every right to expect more from their equine professionals. But the sad reality is that most vets and farriers simply aren’t properly trained to diagnose hoof problems. For more information on this problem from a veterinarian’s perspective, check out my friend and colleague Dr. Neal Valk’s website.

And let’s celebrate that another horse with a less-than-wonderful prognosis is finally receiving the treatment he deserves!

Why Me?

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Before saying too much about hooves, I think it’s extremely important to give you a little information about my background. After all, how credible would this blog be if all I had to back up my assertions were more of the usual “credentials” many horse people tend to offer, like “I love horses” or “I’ve been trimming hooves for 25 years”?

I’ve always believed that a solid formal education is a great point of departure for most any undertaking, and the 7 years I spent at universities yielded undergraduate degrees in music theory & composition and sound recording technology, and a graduate degree in engineering. At various times over the past 30+ years, I’ve been employed as an electronics engineer, graduate and undergraduate university professor, recording engineer, and professional musician. I’ve worked on several Grammy-winning recordings, have a couple of patents, designed quite a few products, and educated literally thousands of students in technical subjects at four different universities. I still do a lot of both teaching and engineering – I teach full-time at one of the largest universities in the country, and own a small engineering company specializing in electronic product development.

And while none of that directly matters with respect to the horse world, what does matter is the insight this technical background gave me when I purchased my first horse in 1993 and was confronted with trying to make sense of the myriad information facing every horse owner. What immediately struck me were the half-truths surrounding hoof care and what veterinarians and hoof care professionals alike alleged could be accomplished with this or that type of trimming or shoeing. And so, reinforced by the technical expertise of other engineering and health care professionals as well as my own, I started examining these claims as I practiced hoof trimming and studied equine anatomy and biomechanics, systematically testing each assertion against what science and common sense show us to be true. And many simply didn’t measure up.

In late 1999, after more than 6 years of struggling along on my own sorting hoof fact from fiction, I found a book entitled The Natural Horse: Lessons from the Wild, by former farrier Jaime Jackson. In it, he makes an extremely compelling argument for a method of hoof care (and horse management as well) based on his observations and measurements of the feral horses of the U.S. Great Basin. And so I began communicating with Jaime to help me refine my trimming technique, and, in 2005, finally went to study with him in person. Shortly thereafter, I joined his then-newly-formed organization called the American Association of Natural Hoof Care Practitioners (AANHCP), and became a Certified Practitioner and Field Instructor. Several years later, Jaime changed the name of the organization to the Association for the Advancement of Natural Horse Care Practices. In 2009, I was asked to join, and teach in, an organization consisting largely of former AANHCP members called Liberated Horsemanship (more on that organization in a future posting), where I currently teach an Advanced Topics clinic on trimming hooves with particularly challenging pathologies like laminitis and white line disease.

And so I keep steadily increasing my knowledge base through interactions with clients and with other industry professionals, and, especially, through treating as many “abnormal” cases as I can find. I’m also conducting research in two particular areas: movement analysis, and 3D modeling of the equine digit. But I must confess, though, that after more than 17 years of intensely studying equine hooves, I feel as if I’ve got a solid handle on only about 20 – 30% of what I believe one really needs to know to be 100% successful at understanding every hoof one encounters. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think anyone has a better grasp of it than that.

But we’ve still got a long way to go…

A Simple Question

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With so much information readily available to today’s horse owner, particularly online, why did I decide to start what might be perceived as just one more blog? Simple – because, quite frankly, much of what’s out there is outdated, inaccurate, or pure nonsense. And, ultimately, your horse suffers for it.

He deserves better.

This blog is about knowledge based on science, not hearsay. As our knowledge continues to increase through high-quality research, more questions will inevitably surface. Initially, since my particular equine expertise is in hoof care, the vast majority of postings will be confined to that subject. But I hope to start identifying other experts in the horse world and ask them to contribute information in their areas of expertise as well. So stay tuned.

And thanks for coming!