Wednesday, August 24, 2011

OSNHC

I'm back! Did you miss me? Heh, heh. I finally got home yesterday afternoon (half a day late, thanks to San Francisco weather) and am now feeling rested enough to cobble together a post. I spent all last week at the Oregon School of Natural Hoof Care in Jacksonville, Oregon learning even more about the ins-and-outs of hooves and trimming.

If you want to learn more about hooves and trimming I whole-heartedly recommend taking their Whole Horse course. I chose this school because after all my research I felt that Cheryl Henderson was the person I could learn the most from and I wasn't disappointed. You might find some naysaying if you google her on the internet but don't believe everything that you read, Cheryl is a trailblazer and in her hunt for knowledge she's taken on many a horse that everyone else had given up for dead- she has guts like you wouldn't believe.

Anyway, back to my experience. I arrived late on a Friday evening, we pulled up to a house that looked like a hotel and were escorted inside. Cheryl had us drop our bags by the door before we walked through an enormous kitchen and out the back. We walked out onto a huge back deck overlooking a pond with a waterfall and a yard full of little lighted butterflies twinkling in the flowerbeds. I asked if we were in paradise and one of my fellow students told me that yes, we were (he'd been before so he already knew).

That set the scene for the whole week. Between Cheryl's beautiful landscaping, the hot tub, the sauna, and  the scented oil massage I got it was like staying in a resort. Then there was the learnin'. Everyday started with a lecture and then it was out to the barn for the hands-on experience with the help of the co-instructors. My class was made up of a group of people who had never trimmed, those who had already established a clientele they trimmed for, and one world class farrier. I even shared a room with Laz's new trimmer over at Sweet Horse's Breath (it's a small world after all...). It was a diverse group but we all got along like gangbusters, so much so that our class was named "Harmony."

Over the course of the week I trimmed four horses. The first was a 38 year old! pony who was blind, had no teeth, and was a total sweetie for me. Stupid me forgot to get pictures though. Then I trimmed a donkey:

Me, getting to work

Cute little donkey foot
And a paint mare that was brought in. She was also super sweet for me (there's a picture of me trimming her floating around somewhere, I'll post it when I get a copy), which was a good thing because her feet were quite overgrown and needed some work.
Paint mare pre-trim

Paint mare post-trim, check out the bruising, also the imbalance. This is why pictures are good.
Here I am taking a breather while Sparky got a White Lightning soak after I trimmed him. This little guy came in obviously feeling quite bad. He showed signs of DSLD and what we thought was a pretty bad sheath infection so we spent the day convincing the owner to get a vet out ASAP. Fortunately the guy took our advice and got someone out the next day. Diagnosis: Terminal cancer. That was that for Sparky, poor guy, but at least he's not in pain anymore. So it goes...
Despite that note of sadness it was a great week and an incredible experience. There's a post or two I want to make about what I learned but I want to ask Cheryl for her permission first- so keep an eye out for those. In the meantime, I'm off to trim a horse tonight!

15 comments:

  1. HOW COOL!!! I love how small the world is :) How great is my trimmer, she's awesomeness x 1000. Cheryl, whom I've never met but was told to call from Frizzle over at http://dressagewannabes.blogspot.com/ talked me through my panic a couple of mths ago and got me to switch to my new girl. She's all kinds of awesome. Dropped everything to talk to me, a stranger, for over an hour at 9pm at night. Truly awesome. How cool that u are trimming...I'm still SO intimidated but lightly practice with my rasp.

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  2. We were sitting at the table and she was saying how she was from Michigan and was working with Bowker so I asked, "do you happen to know a horse named Laz?" and she said, "I just started trimming him!" It was too funny.

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  3. Sounds like a wonderful experience with knowledgeable people. You can never know too much about hooves and how to trim them to make the horses feel and go better. Glad you had such a nice time with great people. Shame about the poor guy with the cancer.

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  4. It was a really great week, it was a bummer about Sparky but he was pretty uncomfortable there at the end.

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  5. Congrats, smaz!! And how funny that you shared a room with Laz's trimmer Michelle, lol. The horse world really is a small community.
    I'm jealous, I'm sure you learned a TON!! :-D
    OK, now you have to write like 8,000 posts about what you learned so we can all benefit from your experience.

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  6. Frizzle- Cheryl and her crew will be in Florida this January, you should sign up for a clinic while they're there!

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  7. Welcome back! I loved the photos! It sounds like you had an amazing experience. I hope that you are able to share more.

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  8. I'm so jealous! Here I am scouring for a book, and you're doing hands on training! I hope Cheryl is okay with you commenting about what you learned... in the meantime, I'm off to do some research. :)

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  9. Yup, me too, totally green with envy! I'd have to go abroad to do more hands on training. Can't wait to read more posts about your week...

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  10. I missed you! :-) I am so happy for you. You looked comfortable and in your element. Glad you had a great experience and the Kristen connection is way cool!

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  11. Ahhh, so jealous! I am totally wanting to sign up to do it next summer. Jacksonville isn't too terribly far away from me... Can't wait to hear more about it :)

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  12. Very cool! I've "known" her from email lists for years, that's awesome that you got to meet and work with her!

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  13. Good news everybody, Cheryl gave me the okay. Now I've gotta do a bit of brainstorming...

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  14. Can't wait to read the next post. I learn so much from reading your blog. (And poor Sparky--I hate hearing stories like that, but at least the owner finally decided to call the vet.)

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