YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
A little about my personal journey and a professional epiphany.
After attending a few owner trimmer workshops and buying EVERY DVD I could get my hands on re hoof care, I bit the bullet and tackled my second degree. A 2 year Assoc. Diploma in Equine Podiotherapy in the Victoria High Country.
Ironically, that was the same year, 2014, that I was slapped down with Ross River. A debilitating mosquito born virus that results in full body joint pain & inflammation, chronic fatigue, skin conditions and mental health issues. I was unable to work or study. Lost use of all my limbs at different stages, was confined to bed except for the time it took each day to throw my horse a feed & had my first up close personal experience with mental health issues.
Here’s the kicker; there is no cure, no treatment and you never get rid of it. My Gp’s exact words were, “good luck with that….should last a year or so.”
Not taking that as a good enough answer, I started talking to everybody I knew who’d had it. I wanted to know what worked for them & what didn’t. I wanted to know how they managed to function on any level as parents, employees and business owners.
I cast my net high and wide and deep, when it came to my quest for knowledge.
What I discovered was ‘that you are, what you eat.’ I learnt that I could manipulate my bodies internal ‘dynamics’ to make life difficult for a virus to thrive. I learnt I could support my organs and my blood to help them fight this virus. I gave my system a break from all aspects of the modern diet ( ie alcohol & highly processed food) that cause it stress and I refused to see having RR as being a “bad thing.” I resolved to be the best RR patient I could be and not let it define me.
This concept is something that I now carry over into my work with horses and their diets & management. It’s also the method I employed to avoid Covid19. To date, I’m one of the rare individuals in Australia, not to have had a single episode (and I have the blood results to prove it).
At the end of that hellish year of Ross River, I rewarded myself, by taking on a new horse. Lola. Who, in turn, kick started my next great learning curve…..the grass affected horse. (more on her later)
I remember my barefoot trimming mentor, The Barefoot Blacksmith aka Andrew Bowe, saying to us all on day one of our course intake, “if I do my job right, you’ll all end up as equine body workers…..because you can’t just look at the hoof alone, without considering the 500kg that is attached to it, above the knee.” Bowie was right. I no sooner completed my AD in feet than I began attending various body working modality courses. The highlight being a 2 day then a 5 day intensive course with Jim Masterson, himself. A truly wonderful character.
So here I was out at the coal face, trimming feet for a growing client base of 200 horses, helping out with bodywork where I could, but something was missing. It was the nutrition. So many people have never had the opportunity to study, at a serious level, how to care for horses. Folk just generally get a horse, then ask a friend or the feed store merchant …and now Facebook (????) what they should do.
I was spending more and more time explaining basic principles about diet, management and species appropriate care, that it was becoming a larger and larger part of my day to day business.
I was seeing horses pass from owner to owner and being labelled as ‘problem horses’ when really, the various owners, just hadn’t got it right, for that horse.
I know, as I personally ended up with 4 of them coming to live with me….
Then I discovered ‘Calm Healthy Horses’ and things went NUTS! My own personal herd improved out of sight. My own problem child Lola, wet from a sunburnt, unpredictable, fire breathing dragon with SEVERE separation anxiety to a dreamboat, in days….. My EMS mare, sorted. My QH mare with unexplainable odemas on her belly that a full blood work up by the vet couldn’t shed any light on…..resolved. As did her impressive shying and bucking for seemingly, no reason. My foundered mini stallion? up and running around, 100kg & 2 nuts lighter, less than 6months later.
I was able to replicate these staggering results with my trimming clients & for nearly every issue you can imagine:
- Itch, sunburn, mud fever completely resolved and not returning
- Extreme Separation anxiety; like would run through fences if left alone or taken out solo
- Horses that have been non stop scouring for YEARS, stopped!
- Ulcers behaviours vanishing & not returning, with no ‘drugs’ used
- 25yr old TB’s been in shoes since her racing days, going barefoot successfully
- 35yr old Cushing pony having a new lease on life
- 4 yr of Stallion laying down for a week with laminitis, unable to get up….fixed
- 15 yr old gelding with big head & arthritis in one knee, now cantering around happily in his retirement with his herd of girls
- Head flicking; Gone.
- Aggressive and unpredictable behaviour…..sorted
- Swollen sheaths in geldings; easy fix
- Horses that have just unexplained lost of condition and the vet has done full bloods and nothing is “wrong”…..are now healthy, shiny and ready for another 10yrs +
- Hooves improved outta sight
- Locking stifle, resolved in a week & I have the videos to prove it
- The improvement in behaviour of horses for being presented for trimming, left me speechless
- My safety improved vastly
By the end of 2020 I had already had a shoulder reconstruction, a blown MCL in my knee, a few ribs kicked in and 3 mates go down with traumatic Brain Injuries, all from working with horses. But it was the baby heart attack and TIA (mini stroke) in mid 2023, that sat me on my arse. My days getting under horses, in any capacity, came to a sliding stop.
Yet folk kept approaching me to help them with their horses. Would I please have a look at their horses diets, make suggestions, draw up a plan and help them implement it. Vets were referring multiple clients to me and I was getting results that left THEM, scratching their heads.
So 2024 see’s me officially partnering up with Calm Healthy Horse as an independent consultant & launching the new side of my Trimming business.
“No hoof, No horse” is an old saying in horse folklore for a reason. For such magnificently huge animals, they are so amazingly fragile. If their feet (& their guts) aren’t right, you’ve got nothing.