In 1982, as an unintended consequence of accepting an engineering position with Altec Lansing in Oklahoma City, OK, I had the exceedingly good fortune to become acquainted with the Bremseth family: three individuals who would arguably become the most important people in my life for the next thirty-some years.

I previously wrote about my relationship with the husband/father Gerald, a truly brilliant engineer and remarkable human being whom I continued to work closely with until his untimely demise in 2013, in my Post called Tribute to an Unsung Hero, so I won’t say any more about him here. Sadly, the focus of this Post must now be on his wife Vera, who passed away mere days before my recent trip to the UK to conduct a Liberated Horsemanship Gateway Clinic.

How do you sum up the granddaughter of a respected physician/state senator and princess of the Chickasaw tribe, and daughter of an Army lawyer stationed all over the United States with his family, in just a few sentences? Vera probably had the richest and most varied set of life experiences of anyone I’ve ever met! A teacher by training, she spent much of her life working with and for various arts- and education-related organizations such as the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, the Ouray County Historical Museum, the Foothills Craft Guild, and the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, establishing education programs, managing gift shops and shows, and handling public relations and marketing tasks.

But mostly, for myself and for many, many others who were fortunate enough to have their lives touched by Vera, she helped people. Without question, she was the most generous person I’ve ever known; she would’ve given a total stranger her last dollar or the clothes off her back if she believed they were truly needed. But she was so much more as well – a genuine force of nature: always the polite, well-turned-out lady, intelligent, wise, and inherently benevolent, she was also fiercely loyal to, and supportive of, her friends and family. Being at odds with Vera was definitely done at one’s own peril (a position I somehow always managed to avoid).

In fact, the last time I saw Vera, we were attempting to have dinner together in Maryland at a very busy restaurant. The hostesses kept putting us off, and, after a very lengthy wait, finally told us our table was ready and then seated another party at it instead. By this time, I had complained to the hostess several times about the delay, and then about giving our table away, but without any obvious effect on the situation. Finally, Vera decided she’d had enough. I have no idea what she said to the hostess, but the next thing I knew, we were being shown to a table by multiple people who were practically falling over themselves apologizing! As I said, it never paid to cross her!

Vera and I had a wonderful relationship consisting of every positive aspect of one between mother and son coupled with that of the best of friends. We spoke multiple times each week, and, like it or not, I cherished her advice because I could always count on her to tell it to me straight and it was nearly always spot-on. And she definitely had a sense of humor as well, as you may glean from the photograph below. After all, how many people do you know who’d willingly pose for a portrait wearing a pink plastic raincoat while holding a friend’s stuffed Highland cow wearing a (custom-made!) raincoat?

This wouldn’t be complete without mentioning that Vera loved real animals as well, and at times they had as many as five dogs and two cats in the house. Most were strays of one sort or another; just as with people, Vera looked for opportunities to help animals too – to the extent that Gerald used to say he hoped to come back as one of Vera’s dogs because she took such good care of them!

But for me, one of the most memorable things about Vera was her laughter. The four of us – Gerald, Vera, their daughter Victoria, and myself – spent a great deal of time together over these past thirty-six years, and Vera would regularly laugh as I regaled her with one of my crazy stories about my own crazy life! I really liked that she said I always made her laugh, and I know she looked forward to those visits and conversations as much as I did. She was a very special person to me, and one particular kind of conversation we had many times over the years sticks in my mind. I’d frequently return to the house at 2AM or so, having been out listening to jazz in one or more of the clubs in Knoxville, and I always feared waking her as I came in through the front door and crept up the stairs to my room:

Me: “I hope I didn’t wake you up this morning. Sorry it was so late when I came in.”

Vera: “Nope. Didn’t hear a thing. And I’m not your mother.”

You’re absolutely right, Vera: you weren’t my mother. You were so very much more to me than that. Thanks for all the wonderful memories and everything else you’ve given me these many years, and I trust you can still hear my crazy stories and you’re still laughing…somewhere…

…and Always With Love.

This coming year promises to be an exciting one, for a variety of reasons that should be of interest to my readers!

First of all, I’m extremely happy and proud to announce that my new Austrian-born wife Dora has completed her instructor certification in Straightness Training, making her only the second person in the United States to earn the instructor designation. This method of training, established by Marijke de Jong of the Netherlands, is all about working towards overcoming the horse’s natural asymmetry through carefully-designed ground and riding exercises to allow them – not force them – to comfortably achieve proper collection and movement. Having watched the profound improvements in my own horse and others, I cannot say enough positive things about this method of bringing a horse into balance; if you want the most from your horse in terms of performance and behavior, please consider checking out Straightness Training!

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, we’ve noticed that as the horse’s body becomes more symmetrical, the hooves become more symmetrical as well (Dora is also a Certified Hoof Care Professional). As I’ve said many times in the past, hoof form is the effect of movement and not the cause; long-term balanced movement will produce symmetrical hooves, whereas asymmetries in hoof form can nearly always be traced to conformation and movement, and/or improper trimming. This is but one of the research topics I hope to embark upon in this new year.

But there are lots of other exciting things in the works as well! I’m particularly looking forward to Liberated Horsemanship‘s upcoming hoof clinic in northern England in March, up near the Scottish border. People have been asking us to do a clinic in the UK for years, and I’m very pleased that we’re finally able to make the trip. We’ve put together a brief video about the Liberated Horsemanship clinics that describes the clinics and their content in more detail, with interviews with three of the instructors. And please share the video with your friends and associates. But…we only have a few UK spots left, so please register soon for what promises to be a great experience!

We’ve also produced a version of the video for our German-speaking friends, featuring Dora speaking her native language with the instructor interviews subtitled in German. As I discovered while doing hoof lectures in Austria, there is a great deal of interest in natural hoof care in both Germany and Austria, and I’m hopeful that some of our German-speaking friends will consider joining us in the UK, especially since Dora will be along to offer language support as necessary. Links to the English and German version videos, respectively,  are below –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAIyCqYvc6g

https://youtu.be/eP5zr2ZJqqY

For those of you who aren’t able to join us in the UK, we’ll once again be offering our Gateway Clinic in the U.S. this June, in our fourth appearance at The Ohio State University ATI in Wooster, Ohio. Please consider joining us for one of these clinics; I promise you won’t be disappointed!

And I have several research projects I hope to be able to report on this year, including my ongoing movement and landing analysis, some product reviews, and several new products of my own aimed at both horse owners and hoof care providers. Plus, I’ve resolved to get back to writing more articles.

That’s enough resolutions! All for now…

I love numbers! More correctly, I suppose, I should say that I love the fact we can always learn something useful from numbers because they can be relied upon to tell the truth if we let them. But when things don’t make sense – when the numbers don’t “add up” – it’s time to start asking why!

This all began when recent events prompted me to revisit a topic I touched upon several years ago in The (High?) Cost of Hoof Care: the huge disparity between what farriers charge to shoe a horse, and what farriers (and, consequently, horse owners) perceive to be the value of a properly-done trim. Part of the impetus comes from a client in the process of opening a small full-service horse retirement facility who wanted to offer her boarders another hoof-care option; problem was, the farrier she contacted wouldn’t come out just to trim a single horse! So I decided to do a little investigating into pricing strategies, looking first at data for shoeing versus trimming costs.

According to a survey conducted by The American Farriers Journal of its readers last year, the average nationwide price for trimming four hooves and applying four keg (machine-made) shoes by a full-time farrier was $131.46, while, interestingly, the same work performed by a part-time farrier averaged $94.49. Trimming and resetting those same shoes by a full-time farrier averaged $125.52. To trim a horse, full-time farriers charged an average of $43.13, while part-timers averaged $37.22.

A couple of things to keep in mind about the people who subscribe to The American Farriers Journal i.e. participated in this survey:

• They’re farriers, not hoof trimmers. I often read this journal in the university’s library – mostly between 1997 and 2014 – but stopped reading it due in large part to the obvious disdain for so-called “barefoot” hoof care and its providers that permeates the magazine’s articles and letters.
• About 70% of full-time farriers went to a farrier school, for an average of 12 weeks, according to this same survey.

I also found the following results of an earlier survey conducted by the same journal, along with one farrier’s explanation of how he prices his work. Note that the article was published in 2015, but the survey results shown on this graphic from the article are for their 2014 survey –

Armed with Mr. Wynbrandt’s formula and numbers, and the 2015 average nationwide shoeing price of $120.19, we should then be able to calculate the 2015 national average cost of trimming a horse. But first let’s find the national average hourly wage for shoeing –

So to obtain the national average, we have to reduce the Hourly Wage to $35.56 per hour. Note that nothing else has changed, because everything else on the list is essentially independent of location.

Armed with our new national average Hourly Wage, we can now calculate the cost of a trim, but first we need an idea of just how long the typical farrier spends trimming a horse. Although I have no hard statistics on that, I’ve often had new clients remark that their previous hoof care person already had the horse completely trimmed in the five minutes or so I spend on each foot! In fact, years ago I asked an experienced farrier how long she takes to trim a horse, and, interestingly, she replied “Five minutes!” And so I’ve used five minutes as the average time it takes for a farrier to trim a horse, which admittedly may be a bit short, but I’ll talk more about that later. So here’s our new average trim cost –

A couple of explanations are in order:

• I’ve left the Rasp and Tool Replacement amounts the same, although one might argue that the tools required for trimming-only are fewer than those needed for shoeing. However, the tools that wear and need to be regularly replaced – the hoof knife and nippers – are the same for both situations.
• I’ve calculated the Total Miles by dividing the Vehicle Cost by the 2015 IRS mileage allowance of $.575/mile.

As you can see, even with a severely-reduced labor time, the calculated average cost of a trim still comes out to over $75; yet, according to the survey, the national average that year was only $42.06! Let’s see what we’d have to do to make our trim cost total that number, still pretending that it’s possible to properly trim a horse in only five minutes –

Wait! So in the above scenario, collecting the national average cost of $42.06 for trimming a horse entails driving for an hour and wrestling with a horse for 5 minutes (ha!), but, ultimately, pocketing only $4.92? I’d do far better at MacDonald’s, and (probably) wouldn’t even have to risk my life! That would explain why farriers don’t want to drive to a barn to trim a single horse, but what it doesn’t explain is why farriers themselves believe that (only) trimming a horse is so much less valuable and/or important than trimming and shoeing. After all, the cost differences come down to shoes, nails, and the time required for the actual work, with the “hardware” costs representing a rather small portion of the total picture (contrary to what many horse owners are led to believe, by the way!). So why the huge disparity; why not charge the $75.67 common sense and their own formula prescribe?

One possible answer may be hinted at by an examination of the course of study undertaken during that 12 weeks of farrier school by some 70% of full-time farriers: At what many consider to be the best farrier school in the U.S., anatomy, conformation, and biomechanics appear to comprise only about 3% of the total course content of their Advanced Horseshoeing and Blacksmithing program, with no study of trimming apart from shoeing even mentioned on their web page. And yet, I daresay not a single instructor at this or any other horseshoeing school would argue that the best handmade shoe in the world could possibly make a correctly-balanced hoof when placed on top of an unbalanced trim!

As an interesting contrast, I know that in the Liberated Horsemanship hoof trimming training program, for example, the introductory clinic alone consists of approximately 40 hours of trimming theory along with directly-related topics such as biomechanics and nutrition, and practice. From there, students go on to study individually with field instructors for another minimum of 24 hours, and then typically spend another year or more trimming their own client horses to gain experience before final assessment for certification. When it comes to understanding the hows and whys of proper trimming, that’s a pretty marked difference in education and training as compared to the horseshoeing school’s 12-week advanced training program. And when it comes to the actual process of proper trimming, it also makes it extremely difficult for horse owners to compare skill sets between those who have gone to farrier school and those who have studied in one of the (admittedly very few) dedicated natural trimming training organizations. More recently, the problem has been further compounded by the ever-growing number of “weekend-style” trimming workshops that allege to teach proper trimming in a scant few hours. But, back to the numbers!

So, one might argue that perhaps farriers devalue trimming as much as they do simply because it was only a small part of their studies, and instead see their value as being more directly in the area in which they received the overwhelming majority of their education – making,  modifying, and applying, horseshoes.

Likewise, I might also argue that the work of those hoof care providers who have gained their knowledge about proper trimming techniques through a similarly-in-depth course of study should be worth just as much (minus the hardware costs, of course!) as the farriers’, especially when a more realistic figure for performing a proper trim is considered.

In my opinion – and this is after doing thousands of trims myself, as well as training hundreds of other trimmers from all over the world – one cannot do a proper trim in less than 20 minutes, even on a quiet horse with a minimum amount of hoof to trim. Realistically, I’ve found the average trim time to be somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes, so here’s another look at our numbers with the Labor at 30 minutes and, consequently, the Hourly Wage necessarily adjusted downward again to maintain our national average of $42.06 –

So, realistically, the hopefully-well-trained hoof care provider working for far less than minimum wage still only pockets $4.92 for his/her hour-and-a-half time commitment!

On the other hand, if horse owners (and farriers!) were to consider the skill set of the properly-trained hoof care provider to be commensurate with those of the advanced farrier, albeit in trimming rather than metalworking, the numbers would/should look more like this –

So, what do you think? Is the expertise of your hoof care provider worth it? Would you expect to pay less for a doctor’s visit for a cold rather than a case of bronchitis? Doubtful, because you’re not paying “by the disease;” you’re paying an expert in his/her field for the best diagnosis and treatment possible, regardless of the disease. On the other hand, you would (and should) probably balk at paying the same amount to a dentist for his/her diagnostic abilities with regard to your cold, because there are significant differences in their educations. In fact, I suspect it’s highly unlikely you’d even consider going to the dentist about your cold!

So if the best and healthiest option for your horse turns out to be “only” a trim, then it seems logical that it be carried out by a properly-trained hoof care provider. And if the cost of shoes and nails is really just a few dollars, why would/should you expect to pay the trimmer significantly less than the farrier?

Just some food for thought…

Yes, I’m fully aware that it’s been way too long since I’ve posted anything, and I apologize for it. But life has been, well, crazy these past few months, so I do have something of an excuse for my apparent neglect. But I assure you I have a variety of interesting articles under way,  several hoof research projects I’m working on, and a number of hoof-related products I’m in the middle of designing, so I definitely haven’t been sitting around on my hands. And as each of these comes to fruition, you’ll be (almost) the first to know – I promise!

Meanwhile, I’ve also spent many, many hours planning, recording, and editing this video on the basics of hooves and hoof care, which I created for several reasons: first and foremost because I wanted to provide a solid resource for the horse owners out there who truly want to understand what I call the “why” of hoof care so they’re in a better position to know whether or not their hoof care provider or veterinarian is telling them the truth; second, because I’ve long desired to try making a video in what I call the “Cosmos” style (remember Carl Sagan?); and third, because I knew going through the process of producing such a lengthy video would help me decide if I’m willing to do it again. The jury may still be out on that last reason!

This 1hr 16min video begins with a look at the knowledge gap of both hoof care providers and horse owners, punctuated by some quotations from Dr. Deb Bennett, followed by a description of the external and internal anatomy of the horse’s lower limb. For this part of the video, I used images from a program called Hoof Explorer, which, although useful for learning basic leg and foot anatomy, uses an incorrectly-trimmed hoof with bad bone placement in its model. Its user interface also suffers from some serious flaws, and I plan on writing about my experiences with it in a review of this product in a later article.

It continues with a discussion of the role of the hoof in the life of the horse, including some great footage of feral horses provided through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and then focuses on the causes of hoof form and the characteristics of properly-trimmed hooves. There’s some slow-motion video of proper landings as well.

And then there’s a description of hoof imbalances and their consequences; what can and cannot be accomplished through trimming and shoeing, and why; and some slow-motion video of bad landings.

It finishes up with a brief examination of why people believe horses are trimmed or shod in a particular style, and how other management issues can adversely affect a horse’s feet. Finally, I discuss what to look for in a hoof care provider, as well as describe some of the challenges faced in transitioning a horse to barefoot.

I’m convinced every horse owner, hoof care provider, and veterinarian can benefit from watching this video, regardless of what he/she believes they already know about hoof care. I also hope you’ll find it enjoyable, and that you’ll share it with as many of your “horse friends” as possible.

And I realize it’s extremely short notice, but if you really enjoy learning about the equine foot, please consider joining us at the Liberated Horsemanship Gateway Clinic 2017 June 5th through June 9th in Wooster, Ohio. There will be much more in-depth coverage of not only the hoof, but also of the other management issues affecting your horses’ well-being. I guarantee you won’t regret it!

(Special thanks to production assistance from Dora, Scott, Andy, Kim, and Woody!)

I’m told people don’t say it often enough, but I have to admit to hearing it on a fairly regular basis. In fact, I heard it again not long ago when one of my clients introduced me to a friend of hers with a couple of horses she was having some hoof difficulties with. And so, as I trimmed my client’s horse, her friend watched while I explained what I was doing and why. This particular horse – a Mustang – has wonderful feet that made an excellent aid as I described how some valuable insight into proper hoof wall trimming can be found through careful observation of changes in hoof tissue as the wall is trimmed, and how that relates to the abrasive forces the feral horse is subjected to by nature.

Not surprisingly, this was news to her, although it probably shouldn’t have been since her horses were being trimmed by another “barefoot professional.” But maybe I’m different than most in that I view every trim as not only an opportunity to help the horse, but also the chance to help educate the owner (and any innocent bystanders!) as well.

Unfortunately, there’s way too much bad information out there – thanks, in a large part, to the Internet. The Web has made it all too easy for anyone and everyone – educated or not – to share their brand of “expertise” with the world. I’ve discussed some of these problems with the “expert” side of this bad-information-propagation equation before (see The “Expert Syndrome” and The “Expert Syndrome” Revisited). Much of this seems to be a deliberate effort on the part of the propagators to set themselves apart in the world of hoof care by promulgating variations on a (logically-sound hoof care) theme that manifest themselves as what can only be described as patently illogical theories and practices. Fortunately, most of their information won’t stand up to close scrutiny by even a moderately logical thinker.

Consider, for example, the popular trimmer who uses the rather cryptic phrase “the heels follow the toe” as explanation for her belief that horses’ heels shouldn’t be trimmed. Seriously? No wonder her “after” photos show more distortion of the hoof capsule than the ones taken before she began “helping” them! Others may sound more reasonable at first blush, like another popular trimmer who claims that if the bars of the hoof “grow back quickly” after being trimmed, they must “want to be there,” as if his mere saying-so offers a reasonable alternative explanation for what is simply normal growth not subjected to the same abrasive forces in the typical domestic equine environment as they are in the feral horse’s. My fingernails grow pretty quickly, too; I guess they must “want to be there,” so I’d better stop trimming them!

While it’s extremely unlikely we’ll ever see an end to this plethora of uninformed/misguided “experts” and their bad information, I can’t help but wonder about the recipient side – the horse owner – and why so many of them are so quick to buy into and share such information without carefully thinking it through. Just a few examples…

One of my clients recently told me about a Standardbred in her barn that apparently “paddles” when he walks. His owner carefully explained to my client how these horses are “bred to walk that way so they don’t interfere when they race.” And how her farrier is now attempting to “correct” the gait by deliberately unbalancing the feet.

Or how about the new client whose friend told her the bars, sole, and frog shouldn’t be trimmed because “whatever should come off will be worn off by the horse walking around.”

Or maybe the client-for-a-single-trim whose veterinarian told her she really needed to put shoes back on her sound horse “just in case.”

Or perhaps the client’s friend who cannot accept that her horse’s ever-increasing lameness issues could possibly be due to her farrier’s (bad) work, because he’s on the board of directors of a prominent farrier organization.

Perhaps the most potentially-serious example of this bad-information problem I’ve personally encountered of late was with my client whose horse’s normally-healthy hooves had begun losing sole concavity, developing white-line separation around the entire hoof wall, and frequently abscessing – all signs of a dietary problem leading to laminitis.

His veterinarian and barn manager both dismissed the idea of diet issues, instead blaming the horse’s problems on his hoof care. The vet carefully “explained” to him that the horse’s feet weren’t trimmed to “look like Quarter Horse feet,” and that the abscessing was caused by the forces at breakover traveling up the “long” toes and constantly bruising the tissue at the coronary band. I’m not going to describe the details of her recommended treatment now, because I may want to write a more detailed article about this entire experience in the future, but let’s just say it involved surgery, reshaping the hooves to “look more like a Quarter Horse,” and shoeing!

Fortunately, this horse owner isn’t one to merely accept what others say, regardless of their level of education, experience, or presumed expertise. He dismissed the vet’s explanation and advice as illogical, and, after discovering the barn manager had been feeding his horse three pounds of vitamin/mineral supplement a day instead of the recommended amount, he decided to move his horse to another facility. Within a few short weeks, the white-line separation had nearly disappeared, the sole concavity had reappeared, and no further abscessing had occurred – all with only dietary changes and without following any of the veterinarian’s recommendations.

My point in bringing up this particular client’s experience is only to hopefully reinforce to you my strongly-held belief that one must always question advice, no matter the source! (For a more in-depth look at bad advice from “experts” that nearly cost one horse his life, check out Toy Story.) Insist any advisor explain his or her recommendations until you feel confident that the logic behind them is sound. Avoid courses of action that strain credibility, or seem unduly complicated and counter-intuitive. The design of the horse’s limbs makes sense; so, therefore, should any advice about caring for them.

The graphics I’ve included in this article illustrate a fine example of a very common practice endorsed by many, many veterinarians and farriers that completely falls apart under close scrutiny. Most people will readily grasp the absurdity of believing tire shape can somehow fix the bend in the axle, yet many will just as quickly accept exactly the same premise when “special” trimming and/or shoeing is touted as a “treatment” for their horse’s splayed or pigeon-toed legs. What, exactly, compels someone to out-and-out reject the former, but never question and, instead, accept the latter? If every horse owner would just take the time to think through every piece of advice, carefully considering not only the source, but also what’s actually being offered, I believe our horses would experience far more freedom of motion and long-term soundness.

I encounter many different types of people from many different walks of life in my hoof care practice. Like the woman I mentioned in the first paragraph of this article, a large number of them have suffered through my sometimes lengthy explanations of how and why I do what I do when I care for horses. And what, besides their love for horses, do most of these folks have in common? It’s those “three little words” they utter after the explanations have been offered and considered, most often in light of others’ prior offerings on the same subject:

“That Makes Sense!”