Hoof care seminar

THIS hoof care seminar is at Nar Nar Goon North in Australia (I’ll give the details at the end of this post) – but even if you live on the other side of the world, this seminar is a timely reminder for all of us on how big an impact our horse’s feet have on their health and their overall sense of well-being.

As an alternative medicine/alternative therapy specialist on horses and riders, I came to a point in my work where I realised how big a deal the feet are in the “big picture” of good health that I look for in my healing sessions.

If you can picture it – 1 cm of imbalance in the foot, by the time it is translated through all the leverage angles of the leg, every joint angle on the way up the leg leveraging the pressure a bit more – by the time it gets to the hips and the sacro-iliac joint – the pressure of that 1 cm is HUGE.   I discovered that with some horses, I could fix their muscles and spines until the cows came home – but they wouldn’t stay fixed because the pressure of out of balance feet was just too much.

Some horses with big muscle mass around those joints can handle the pulling apart pressure of that leveraged 1 cm (although goodness knows, it must be uncomfortable) – and some horses cannot – and the muscles and joints are damaged as a result.  And the most common point of damage is in the sacro-iliac joint, where the spine meets the pelvis – and yes that is also the joint that is MOST stressed by you sitting on your horse’s back when  they are out of their comfort zone and their back is sagging as a conseqence.

Most of you on this website are either already working on expanding your horse’s comfort zone or you are about to get The Six Keys to Happines with Your Horse and start experiencing that wonderful journey, so that takes care of THAT damage to our horse’s back .  So, that leaves the feet and feet shape as the next most important thing to address in your horse’s health, to take stress out of those joints.

I started my learning journey into barefoot, then went back into shoes because Bobby was in too much pain for too long – and went back into barefoot again later when I found a gentler way of going about it.  I am now a passionate barefooter, although going back into shoes at one point has me sympathetic to those who choose shoes.   But whether you are barefoot or whether you are in shoes – feet – their shape, the breakover for the horse’s stride, the length of the toe and the height of the heel ALL have a huge impact on your horses’s ability to carry your weight.

Anyway – that’s enough to get you thinking!

Claudia Garner of the US based Equine Soundness Inc. Hoofcare Academy is giving a two day seminar on the 19th and 20th of May 2012 at Nar Nar Goon North, north east of Melbourne, on:

• What you didn’t know about your horse’s health.
• What you didn’t know about your horse’s hooves.
• What to do when mysterious lame-ness strikes.
• Founder & navicular – a death sentence?

The cost is $225.00 and email Carola Adolf hoof.care@bigpond.com for registration and more information.

I don’t know Claudia’s work personally, but I checked out her website and it sounds like we are on the same page on a lot of issues.  She comes highly recommended.

And in case anyone wonders about the last question in particular – founder and navicular are definitely NOT death sentences and both conditions are recoverable with the correct attention to their feet – often by a combination of correct attention to the feet, adjusting the kind of food that they are eating and a combination of muscle work and homeopathic, acupuncture etc.  There are many useful kinds of healing out there.

Click here for the article that I have already published on feeding foundering horses

 cli[highlight color=”blue”]ck here for the website barefoothorse.com[/highlight] for some great information about feet shape, feet trimming and many things barefoot.