Natural Hoofcare Clinic I

Today was part one of Marian Figley's natural hoof care clinic. My previous barefoot trimmer transitioned Calatar over five years ago and Marian is currently transitioning Eclipse. I am always interested in learning as much as possible so when I discovered that Marian was having a clinic I signed up right away. I have no plans to start trimming my guys anytime soon but I do want to learn how to trim before I move out west (which gives me a good two years). 

After sleeping through the alarm I drove down to Winston, GA as quickly as I could. When I arrived I met the other clinic participants and we started talking about various horse-related topics. It was nice to be around so many like minded people and we had many interesting conversations throughout the day. The clinic was excellent and it started off with us reviewing both the external and internal structures of the hoof. As a prerequisite for the clinic, Marian recommended reading Pete Ramey's Making Natural Hoof Care Work For You. I read this in addition to Jaime Jackson's Horse Owner's Guide to Natural Hoof Care and have been very satisfied with both books. Keeping horses barefoot has always made so much sense to me but these books are excellent resources and are quite informative for those still unsure about the benefits of barefoot horses. The next topic of discussion was common hoof pathologies and Marian shared her experiences of how natural hoof care can rehabilitate horses suffering from such conditions. We also talked about the crucial role that diet and environment play in hoof health and briefly discussed Jaime Jackson's Paddock Paradise, a book that I plan on reading before I purchase my own property. After lunch, Marian showed us some maintenance type trimming and made it look so easy. Many of her horses have not been trimmed in over two years but thanks to their diet and environment their feet looked amazing and actually needed very little trimming. 

When Marian was done trimming the first horse, we took a break to watch a clicker training demonstration with Meg Eades. It was very interesting and is something I would like to learn more about. I had some misconceptions about clicker training and thought that it would surely result in pushy, mouthy horses but Meg showed that this is not the case when it's done correctly. I could see how much more the horses offered and it reminded me of when Linda was using cookies to reward Remmer when he was learning passage at liberty. I think that clicker training has the potential to work really well with the principles of natural horsemanship and I am looking forward to trying it out when I have some extra time.