10/09/2026
Dear Gentle Reader ,
For those that do not know me nor followed me for very long ,let me introduce myself, for it seems some of you are unaware of my roots or where I stand .
I've been around horses since before I could walk, then growing up my sister and I were lucky enough to be able to ride the ponies on the yard where my mother kept her horse.
Not riding school ride ,but the sort of riding you learn by being put on ba****ck and riding the extra fat exmoor to the shop in a headcollar and learning to jump by a teenager friend whizzing the ponies up over crosspoles. It was always fun, not serious.
As a teenager my grandmother bought us both a horse each.
Milo was a TBxWelsh , looking back now it makes us laugh that anyone would buy that combo for a first horse ,but he grew in personality with me over the years . From a depressed horse at a dealers yard to the spicy potato he was right up until I retired him when he turned 24.
Now as a teen I always attended my farrier visits with Dave the farrier who I still know today and who probably doesn't know but he started my curiosity with feet.
I used to ask him an insatiable amount of questions.
Roll on about 9 years and I was looking to slow milo down and a friend called me one day and said she had a horse in who might suit me .
So 22 year old me popped over to meet him and ride .
We now introduce Loki a 4 year old Dutch warmblood x Irish sports horse.
He was beautiful, I was cautious though that I was very used to my Milo and my friend let me ride him 10 times in different settings before I parted with money.
We trotted and cantered through woodland, walked busy main roads the whole lot.
At no point did I think there was anything wrong.
But to be sure I did the responsible thing and got a 5 stage vetting done too .
Now what ensued between when I got him home to the new yard I was at with Milo and when I set up the track , can only be described as a s**t show.
From the first week he was trying to unalive me from the get go. I went through multiple riding hats being cracked and more concussions than a boxer .I was even catapulted through the air up a hill in the woods ,landing on the rump of my mums horse in front !
We had our local vet out who knew loki but he told me there was nothing wrong with him , even though I'd mentioned him tripping and I should either ride him or put him to sleep !
New farrier who I'd chosen because poor Dave didn't cover the new area , new guy was young , and said he specialised in competition horses. Brilliant I thought.
A few months went by and I was very sad but came to the decision that he was too much horse for me and we found a lovely lady who ran a business of schooling livery and sales.
So off he went to Isobel .
Now the story starts to unfold.
Isobel really liked him , said he was very smart but something wasn't quite right but she couldn't put her finger on it , she had the luxury of sharing the yard with team GB's vet so arranged a workup with them.
He was found to have 2 out of 4 legs with damaged suspensaries.... so equally lame he appeared sound .
Both hinds treated with stem cells as my insurance was good and he was delivered home to me for box rest.
Naturally loki and his brain hated this and he box walked and threw himself over the top door repeatedly.
I used to spend hours at the yard with him tied on the yard with a net and water instead .
After 3 months of this nonsense I decided to make him a 20x20 foot square in the field instead, but he needed 2 people to lead him in helmets and a bridle as he would walk on his hind legs and come down on your shoulders. But he was happier out there.
Now on my yard there was a very fancy dressage horse and his owner wanted to get further than the advanced medium he was at.
She had investigated barefoot and seen it was helping a few up and coming riders get better marks, more toe flicking or something.
She showed us the website and said it looks like its not a case of removing shoes but a whole body approach with a diet change too.
This website was Hoofing Marvellous .
She found a local trimmer from the site , her name was Caroline, she came to the yard and removed the dressage horses shoes , spent ages chatting to the owner about the importance of better low calorie feed and more hay and how the transition period might look.
The next visit she removed my sisters horses shoes, my mother's and both of my horses.
What i hadn't realised at this point is that changing farrier had not been as smooth as I thought.
My boys feet had gone from old school farriery to new school .
This had meant they now had been bullnosed on the hinds , had square toes on the fronts and crushed underrun heels.
None of which had happened in the 10 years previously.
So Caroline had her work cut out .
My job had now changed and I had to move my horses to a new yard on my own . Caroline came with me to the new yard to trim . We had spoken lots about my vet visits and how I did not trust my local vet as it had become apparent that he new the lady I had bought loki from and they used to hunt together, it also then transpired that the person who had sold loki to the lady I got him from used to work at a bigger different vet practice known locally to me.
So I changed vet practice to the same practice as he obviously had been previously registered at with her.
I had them out to look at him and they decided a proper run up at their clinic would be more beneficial than an on site visit.
So off we went xrays of front feet carried out and nerve blocks , full report came home with the prognosis of Grave...
This practice also happened to know loki but would not give me his previous history as it was linked to one of their nurses.... this started alarm bells for me, I felt they knew something.
Caroline told me about a new vet she was using ,he was supposedly a bit more barefoot friendly from a different practice.
So I called him out instead .
We looked at loki and I filled him in about the back story .
He picked up both of his front legs squeezed them about and flexed them about and then went and got the xray machine .
Transpired that loki had another suspensary ligament damaged in his front left and calcification on his Navicular bone on the front right....
Great , all 4 legs busted.
He explained that he is struggling to heal because he cannot unload the weight onto a good leg to let a bad one heal.
And that realistically barefoot and being turned away for a couple of years was his only hope.
So I spoke to Tim and his parents and they agreed I could bring the ponies to the farm to save my livery costs.
Caroline continued to trim and time went by .
She started talking to me about track systems .
So we set one up in the small 3 acre paddock next to where we now live.
It was great, it even had a figure of 8 and tree stumps etc.
Caroline persuaded me that other people need this set up and I should offer livery.
I put together a business plan and I decided to try it.
My first adverts went out , I blasted every fb group, every tack store and I was ridiculed.
People laughing at me trying to fancify grass livery.
But I stuck to my principles and eventually my first clients appeared.
The ponies were happy and owners happy their horses and ponies had somewhere outside but with limited grass.
Roll on 3 years and we set up the big track because we were having so many enquiries!
When I was setting up I had no one to bounce ideas off who had done this ,only Caroline to guide me.
Through the power of fb I found a few other people who had been doing this and asked advice and followed their pages , and I am forever grateful for their kindness and friendship back then when I was starting out.
Then came along Bethan at Gawsworth Track Livery , some of you may believe because her page is so huge and well known that she has led me astray into the world of HM .
Actually we met nearly 10 years ago now!
She is just amazing at promoting her page and I will always bow down to her dedication to this !
We helped each other with tracks and clients and propping each other up when it was tough.
Back in those days she still had a farrier and later a barefoot farrier but was not HM .
Now my track has morphed and evolved a lot over the years but something that hasn't changed is my allegiance to HM .
17 years ago I went to a talk with Lindsay in Bodmin Cornwall where HM all started.
Ive had Garry trim my horses when Caroline had her children and all the stages along the way I've never looked back and wished I'd put shoes on or changed back to a farrier doing a pasture trim and not talking me through diet and movement.
This does not mean I'm brainwashed , this means that through positive experiences I learnt to trust them.
They as a team have always been there for advice , and shown logical explanation to what they do.
It just makes sense.
Now as with my track , have HM also evolved , yes absolutely ! But thats why I like them .
Science moves on , research moves on and being stuck in old ideology is what hinders progression.
Do we all make mistakes in how we approach things , oh yes , I know I have .
But the underlying message is what is important.
Through following my own horses on my track and sorting feet of over 130 clients that have passed our gates ,I have learned that doing what we do works !
The only part of the message that has changed over the years is how we rectify a 'laminitic hoof'
We now describe this as capsule divergence.
Because thats what it is.
Laminitis is an umbrella term for inflammation of the laminae.
We have found on all case studies over the years to have heels left higher than ideal and sole taken away at the toe in front of the frog. This tips the hoof . It can be seen easier on xray , which is why we request them so often . Unfortunately once you lower the heels and keep them there every week , you start to see a new tighter growth angle grow in.
To quote David L who recently did a great post on this -
The toe is now 'the other man's foot'
This new angle continues to grow down if you keep the heels in perfect alignment.
And the long toe eventually just grows out.
You are then left with a very normal hoof.
We do not strive for long toes, they are a sad reality of what we have to rectify from the previous HCP.
They do not however hinder the horses in their movements or happiness whilst it grows out.
I believe every trimmer would love to just have 'good' feet on their books.
But the nature of what we do is we are picking up the pieces of a world that has got lost in their profession and we are compelled in our bones to help .
If you ever find yourself in the position like I did , don't be afraid to try something else.
Sometimes it will be the best choice you ever made. 🫶.
I am now training myself to be a HM pro.
I enjoy saving horses and owners that think they have no other choices but to call it a day because their farrier and vet have run out of tools in their toolbox.
My toolbox is not a closed box ,but a fluid pool of ideas and thoughts that are very much able to live outside the box.
And that readers is the end of this chapter, I do hope you join me on this journey 😊
