My journey to hoof care: the ups, the downs, and the borderline obsession

Looking back now, my hoof care journey really began before I was ever thinking about hooves. It began when my fell pony Reiver, then a 5 year old, was diagnosed with 'Calcinosis Circumscripta', a rare calcium deposit, which in his case unfortunately showed up in his stifle joint. Alongside this, he was also found to have osteoarthritis in both hocks. His riding career had only just begun, but it was ending already, and he would only ever be 'pasture sound'. I remember my very experienced and well meaning vet asking me if I had 'found a home for him yet'. I understood what she meant, she expected that I would want to keep riding and therefore would have to get another horse and find a companion home for Reiver, but it hurt my feelings. He already had a home with me, he was my companion, I wanted him near and I wasn't about to offload him.

It did, however, force me to take a hard look at his life as a horse and think about whether going from his boring stable to his flat square field and back every day, was enough for him. I decided that if home was all he was going to experience, then he needed more, which was when I moved from a traditional stabled livery yard to a small shared place with a friend at first, then eventually to buying our farm house, where I now have our track. This might sound like it has very little to do with hooves, but it was the start of me putting my horse's needs before my own convenience, and beginning to understand him as a whole being - his environmental needs, nutritional needs, and his social needs. Without this change, I don't think I would have been open to learning what I needed to in order to become a barefoot trimmer.

Around the time this was all happening, my then trimmer, Sarah Oliver of Dare2beBarefoot, advertised for an apprentice, and I momentarily thought about applying, then immediately discounted it as something I wouldn't be able to do. I thought I would be too soft with the horses, too worried about doing a good job, and too sensitive to criticism, and if I'm honest I was scared of failing at it. So I said nothing and forgot all about it. Courtney, whom Sarah took on as her apprentice, turned out to be a perfect fit and so I watched her become a brilliant trimmer and eventually take over my horses when Sarah went on maternity leave. Every time Courtney came over however, I couldn't help but wish I was doing what she was doing. Over time I started to wonder if maybe being gentle and kind with the horses might be ok, and whether being conscientious and not thinking you are always right could be good traits for a trimmer, rather than flaws. So, despite having missed my chance, I decided to book onto a 1 day owners trimming course with Sarah and use it as an opportunity to ask her if there was any other way I could train on my own as a professional. I took along with me a course overview from one of the prominent UK professional training providers to get her opinion on. Having counted up the number of practical days over the 2 year course, it didn't seem like enough field experience, yet there didn't seem to be any other options. You can imagine how over the moon I was then when Sarah took a look, and said "why don't you just be my 'next' apprentice?" I never realised she had had previous apprentices and it wasn't just a one time thing - I really thought I'd missed the boat!

Before going out alongside her, Sarah told me I needed to take the Liberated Horsemanship Gateway clinic as the first step in my route to an eventual qualification. Although based in the US, the LH team had been over to the UK the previous year to run this initial course and would be coming again, date tbc. This 5 day intensive clinic would cover the trimming philosophy and give me an introduction to the natural horse model, as well as practical experience trimming cadaver hooves, with an assessment at the end as to whether I was ready to start supervised training on live hooves. Sarah was soon to have her baby, so would be off on maternity leave for a time, therefore I just had to be patient and wait until she was working again and the Gateway Clinic was organised. That gave me about 9 months to start trimming my own horses a little and reading as much as I could of the foundational books on barefoot hoof care. I threw myself into the preparation, and Courtney was kind enough to look over (and correct) my trimming when she came to do my ponies, and also to take me out with her and let me observe. I waited excitedly from the October to the following July, but no Gateway Clinic for the UK was showing on the Liberated Horsemanship website. I contacted Sarah, but it wasn't the news I wanted or was expecting - Liberated Horsemanship weren't coming. Maybe they would come next year, Sarah said, and in the meantime I could just keep trimming my own ponies and observing, then perhaps pick it up again in the future. I was really disappointed - I'd felt the excitement of finally taking a step to do something that I really felt passionate about, and then to have to put that to one side after such a long wait already was just so disheartening.

I decided at that moment I had a choice, either to forget about it and chalk it up as a nice idea that never came to fruition, or to do something about it. For context, I was approaching my 40s and I knew that if I didn't do this now then I never would. I sat down with my husband and we had a really heartfelt conversation where I said "I've just got to do this" and he said he would support me with whatever I decided to do. So, I took out a credit card, booked a plane ticket to Arizona and a place on the US version of the Gateway Clinic. This might not sound like a huge deal, but to me it was a big leap. Up to now it had all been fairly easy and low risk for me - just reading books and saying it was something I wanted to do - but if I spent big money on flights and tools and everything that was involved with going out to America to take the clinic, I was committed to this career change. It also wasn't easy logistically - I had three horses by now which were kept at home and needed feeding, poo-picking, strip grazing every day, and a very non-horsey husband. All credit to him though, my husband looked after them amazingly for the whole time I was away, despite catching COVID (this was just as things were starting to open up again and you could travel if vaccinated) and made it all possible.

Going out to Arizona in 2022 was a life-changing experience. I'm so glad that I ended up doing it that way because being in that environment just made it even more of an immersive experience. We were learning from 8am to 6pm daily - in the classroom until 3pm and then practicing our trimming afterwards. Staying on a family run holiday ranch and spending all our breaks and meal times together meant that the chat was all horse and trimming related, and I met so many amazing people there. I'm a huge country music fan and one of my best memories is sitting outside in the evenings with a beer and listening to one of the group singing and playing her guitar.

The rest, as they say, is history. I came back and started going along with Sarah at weekends, gradually being given more responsibility until I was trimming independently, trimming Sarah's horses, and having mentoring days with other master trimmers. I remember the first time Sarah paid me £20 at the end of the day - marking the first time I had been useful rather than a burden. If I hadn't driven for 3 hrs to get there and needed it for petrol home I would have framed that bank note! It was hard - using every spare weekend and day off to try meet up with Sarah, often getting up at 4.30am or 5.30am to look after my horses first and then set off to wherever we were trimming that day. In between that and my day job I was taking a L4 Equine Anatomy and Physiology qualification, attending webinars and training events on reading radiographs, understanding pathology and learning remedial approaches. It was frustrating at times too - as I mentioned, I tend to take criticism very personally, so every bit of feedback was hard because I wanted so much to be good and to impress Sarah, after all she was giving me so much of her time and expertise. But bit by bit, it got easier, I got stronger, I started to see balance more easily, I learned more techniques, I saw horses improving because of my trim, and eventually I got to a place where I was ready to take on my own clients. Passing my final exam, a full day of observed trimming of horses which had been under my care for at least 6 months, was probably the proudest moment of my life, even more so than when I got my degree, because of what it represented. I know I'll never stop learning because there's always something interesting to find out and ways to improve what you do. If you've read this far you might have realised by now I'm a little bit horse and hoof obsessed, so that's just fine with me. I hope to trim for many more years to come, and to keep helping horses and donkeys to find comfort and soundness through enabling their feet to carry them as nature designed.