Natural Hoof Care .com

I grew up in middle Tennessee and travelled quite a bit working on different breeds and disciplines of horses; shoeing everything from backyard horses to hunter jumpers. But what I really liked was a lame horse to work on. I had my farrier rig  full of shoes and if I didn't have what you or the vet needed I would just get out my anvil and forge and make it!

I worked on hundreds of foundered and navicular horses plus just about anything else you can imagine. I had moved to Connecticut and was working as a blacksmith at Old Sturbridge Village living history museum and, of all things, they had me shoeing their oxen. During this time I had my first two articles published, one on oxen as a historic draft animal and the other on how to make and apply oxen shoes....

How's that for a barefoot farrier story?

But there was a problem. I had 4 horses at four different barns. Three were foundered and one had been vet diagnosed with navicular disease. I did it all "by the book" and they just got worse. This was huge blow to my ego. I wasn't used to failure, and let me tell you I tried it all; eggbar shoes, heartbar shoes, pads and wedges, you get the picture?

Then in one swoop all the owners wanted to pull all the corrective and therapeutic shoes at about the same time. I advised against it and so did the vets.  Surely the horses would all have to be put down if we did that. 

I had an idea..... I had had some success with keeping horses sound WITHOUT shoes, crazy right? So I pulled the shoes (the vets were not happy) and I bet you know what happened. All four improved at a alarming rate. Maybe I was on to something, no one else was just trimming foundered and lame horses but I did, and they got better! That was in 1994 and I'm here to tell you I was the only one doing this it seemed and I was almost totally shunned by all the vets and other farriers. But like I said I was onto something....

I moved back to Tennessee and went to work, leaving my forge and anvil at home (after about a year, I thought I would eventually need it) and I worked full time as a Natural Hoof Care Specialist from 1995 till 2016 when I moved to Navarre Beach,  Florida.

There are plenty of more stories that I have to tell about what I learned along the way so call and schedule me to come out and trim for you and I will share a few!

For what it's worth, the oxen were the last thing I put shoes on...