In the late 90’s my husband Neil and I lived in Kalispell Montana, where we managed a small ranch “hobby farm”, for a millionaire, who’d been run out of Aspen Colorado when the billionaire's moved in (his words not mine). He’d started out trying to raise elk only to have them all die off from liver flukes. Two previous managers ago, before we arrived had talked him into raising horses, beginning with Quarter horses with the first manager and ending up with an “high dollar” Paint Stallion ($8000.00 worth), of rather low quality and a number of colorless foals, from the previous Quarter Horse mares purchased under the previous manager. Hence a money looser all the way around, not a money maker, as those managers had falsely advised him from the start. We on the other hand advised him to get rid of the horse operation and maybe try just try purchasing quality heifers and selling first calf heifers. Then we left to go back to living and working on big ranches in Wyoming, until a twister of circumstances landed us here in OZ (Kansas)
But the point is that while I was there managing that hobby horse farm, I met the owners son in law, named Rich Clark who was a horseshoer, who came out to trim and or shoe the ranches horses. Unlike most horseshoer's I’d met, Rich talked a lot about the horses feet and their anatomy, as if he were trying to inform or educate me on what he was doing and why. And it was at this time I first heard the concept of what had come to be called “The Wild Horse Model Trim”. And it was at this time I first heard the name of Gene Ovnieck.
Now I had been raised in Rawlins Wyoming on the area of what is called the Red Desert, and had been around wild horses most of my life. So when Rich began to talk about the whole concept of how wild horses have better feet than most domestic horses, it just clicked with me. He tried to explain the trim he was doing to me, and really all I remembered was the fact that you rolled the toe and slightly relieved the quarters.
We only stayed in that job for about a year and a half. Long enough to help the owner find good homes for most of the horses, and get set up with the cattle. And in 2000 we found ourselves in Kansas. We brought our mare Molly, who’d always been a good faithful cow pony with us. And due to a set of circumstances I wound up getting a foal out of her, which I call the last foal of my old age. Not so much as due to age as economical and practical circumstances. He was a stallion, I called him Valor because of his courage, and had him gelded.
From the start I tried to take good care of his feet by finding a local farrier to come and trim him every 6 weeks. This man called like clockwork and keep me on a schedule. However when Valor was about 2 years old, I started noticing that his feet were getting long and cracked and had holes in the wall from what is called “graveling”. This is where a small piece of gravel gets in the white line and works it’s way up the hoof wall popping out of the wall further up.
Now when I was a kid, the farriers would often mention, when shoeing a horse how he was “platter footed” as they called it. Or they would say a horse had feet like dinner plates. Hence flat and round like a plate or pancake. For some reason I had a dread in me that my horse Valor, now had a dreaded hoof disease called “platter foot”. And obviously this must be physical, genetic or something a horses catches like a disease in his foot, to my way of thinking at the time, because after all he’d been receiving regular hoof care every six weeks since he was about 6 months old.
Then one time about three days after the farrier came and trimmed both he and his Dam Molly, I was happening to clean his hooves and noticed that there was about 1/3 of an inch of hoof wall sticking up above the sole as if the hoof had never been trimmed. And though I knew little of hooves really, I knew that something was wrong with this picture. I fretted over it a few days, and then I called the farrier and politely and kindly and every so carefully told him that I had a problem with the way he’s trimmed Valor’s feet. He apologized and said he did not know what he’d done wrong, he’d been trimming him the same way every time, but he wanted to please his customers and so he’d come out in a few days and take a look.
About three days later he showed up to see what was going on. However in the meantime, between the time I called to complain, and the time he came back, I started thinking about that time we were in Montana and meeting Rich Clark and that wild horse theory of trimming. I tried to remember the name of the man he’d spoken of that had done the research and could not.
Now I remember when the internet was small yet, as it was back when I was in Montana, few people actually had web pages comparatively. But I thought maybe there’d be something on this whole wild horse themed trim by now, so I started typing words into the internet concerning it. I was surprised to find quite an abundance of information and web sites, including Gene Ovnieck one of the original researchers and developers of the whole concept.
Over the next three days before my farrier came back, I read everything I could find, printed out some articles and pictures. I also started to understand what was happening to Valor’s feet and that the dreaded “platter foot” was not a disease but more likely caused by not really understanding how to trim. So I thought I would share what I was discovering with my farrier when he came, and try to get him to round off the edges of the hoof wall, and rasp down the quarters a little more.
When my farrier showed up, and picked up Valor’s foot and looked at it, even he was stumped and said he did not understand it. He did not know why he could have trimmed his walls flat with the sole seven days before, and yet here was at least 1/3 inch of hoof wall sticking up above the sole. He said he could understand why I called him, that he was sorry, that every one has a bad day here and there.
As he took his nippers and nipped of a whole rim of hoof wall, and then rasped the foot, I was talking to him sharing my experience in Montana and talking about the papers I’d printed and the theory of the wild horse trim. I tried to get him to lightly roll the walls with his rasp. During this time he said nothing, and when I kept “nicely” insisting and asking him to just lightly bevel the walls, he kind of complied but looked as if he was in pain the whole time.
I’m not totally stupid, I could tell that regardless of how nice I was being, he did not want to hear what I was saying, let alone even consider doing as I asked. When he was finally done with the last of Valor’s hooves, he started to pack up his tools to leave. By this time I was pretty fed up with his attitude. It so happens that Molly’s feet were in the same condition three days after the trim as Valor’s were, but I was not going to say anything about it to him. You know not wanting to upset the apple cart too much and being overly concerned with people’s “feelings”, and all.
But when I saw that he was totally ignoring anything I said as he was trying to pack up and get out of there, saying he was done. I said, “So then are you going to fix the mares feet because hers are the exact same way. This brought a look of incredulous disbelief and frustration to his face, upon which he replied “They are?” And I said, “Yes and I’d like you to fix hers too.
He redid the mares feet, packed up his stuff and left, acting nice, but I could tell he was not happy. That was the last time I ever heard from him. He’d called every six weeks like clock work for a year and a half. But no matter because now I was hooked to learn more about this wild horse trim. Little did I know that it would come to consume almost every thought for the next ten years, as I sought to learn the truth about the horses hoof. This was as a labor of love for Valor the colt of my old age, the last horse I would have in this life. And this was because I was seeking the answers to help him have the best feet possible.
But the point is that while I was there managing that hobby horse farm, I met the owners son in law, named Rich Clark who was a horseshoer, who came out to trim and or shoe the ranches horses. Unlike most horseshoer's I’d met, Rich talked a lot about the horses feet and their anatomy, as if he were trying to inform or educate me on what he was doing and why. And it was at this time I first heard the concept of what had come to be called “The Wild Horse Model Trim”. And it was at this time I first heard the name of Gene Ovnieck.
Now I had been raised in Rawlins Wyoming on the area of what is called the Red Desert, and had been around wild horses most of my life. So when Rich began to talk about the whole concept of how wild horses have better feet than most domestic horses, it just clicked with me. He tried to explain the trim he was doing to me, and really all I remembered was the fact that you rolled the toe and slightly relieved the quarters.
We only stayed in that job for about a year and a half. Long enough to help the owner find good homes for most of the horses, and get set up with the cattle. And in 2000 we found ourselves in Kansas. We brought our mare Molly, who’d always been a good faithful cow pony with us. And due to a set of circumstances I wound up getting a foal out of her, which I call the last foal of my old age. Not so much as due to age as economical and practical circumstances. He was a stallion, I called him Valor because of his courage, and had him gelded.
From the start I tried to take good care of his feet by finding a local farrier to come and trim him every 6 weeks. This man called like clockwork and keep me on a schedule. However when Valor was about 2 years old, I started noticing that his feet were getting long and cracked and had holes in the wall from what is called “graveling”. This is where a small piece of gravel gets in the white line and works it’s way up the hoof wall popping out of the wall further up.
Now when I was a kid, the farriers would often mention, when shoeing a horse how he was “platter footed” as they called it. Or they would say a horse had feet like dinner plates. Hence flat and round like a plate or pancake. For some reason I had a dread in me that my horse Valor, now had a dreaded hoof disease called “platter foot”. And obviously this must be physical, genetic or something a horses catches like a disease in his foot, to my way of thinking at the time, because after all he’d been receiving regular hoof care every six weeks since he was about 6 months old.
Then one time about three days after the farrier came and trimmed both he and his Dam Molly, I was happening to clean his hooves and noticed that there was about 1/3 of an inch of hoof wall sticking up above the sole as if the hoof had never been trimmed. And though I knew little of hooves really, I knew that something was wrong with this picture. I fretted over it a few days, and then I called the farrier and politely and kindly and every so carefully told him that I had a problem with the way he’s trimmed Valor’s feet. He apologized and said he did not know what he’d done wrong, he’d been trimming him the same way every time, but he wanted to please his customers and so he’d come out in a few days and take a look.
About three days later he showed up to see what was going on. However in the meantime, between the time I called to complain, and the time he came back, I started thinking about that time we were in Montana and meeting Rich Clark and that wild horse theory of trimming. I tried to remember the name of the man he’d spoken of that had done the research and could not.
Now I remember when the internet was small yet, as it was back when I was in Montana, few people actually had web pages comparatively. But I thought maybe there’d be something on this whole wild horse themed trim by now, so I started typing words into the internet concerning it. I was surprised to find quite an abundance of information and web sites, including Gene Ovnieck one of the original researchers and developers of the whole concept.
Over the next three days before my farrier came back, I read everything I could find, printed out some articles and pictures. I also started to understand what was happening to Valor’s feet and that the dreaded “platter foot” was not a disease but more likely caused by not really understanding how to trim. So I thought I would share what I was discovering with my farrier when he came, and try to get him to round off the edges of the hoof wall, and rasp down the quarters a little more.
When my farrier showed up, and picked up Valor’s foot and looked at it, even he was stumped and said he did not understand it. He did not know why he could have trimmed his walls flat with the sole seven days before, and yet here was at least 1/3 inch of hoof wall sticking up above the sole. He said he could understand why I called him, that he was sorry, that every one has a bad day here and there.
As he took his nippers and nipped of a whole rim of hoof wall, and then rasped the foot, I was talking to him sharing my experience in Montana and talking about the papers I’d printed and the theory of the wild horse trim. I tried to get him to lightly roll the walls with his rasp. During this time he said nothing, and when I kept “nicely” insisting and asking him to just lightly bevel the walls, he kind of complied but looked as if he was in pain the whole time.
I’m not totally stupid, I could tell that regardless of how nice I was being, he did not want to hear what I was saying, let alone even consider doing as I asked. When he was finally done with the last of Valor’s hooves, he started to pack up his tools to leave. By this time I was pretty fed up with his attitude. It so happens that Molly’s feet were in the same condition three days after the trim as Valor’s were, but I was not going to say anything about it to him. You know not wanting to upset the apple cart too much and being overly concerned with people’s “feelings”, and all.
But when I saw that he was totally ignoring anything I said as he was trying to pack up and get out of there, saying he was done. I said, “So then are you going to fix the mares feet because hers are the exact same way. This brought a look of incredulous disbelief and frustration to his face, upon which he replied “They are?” And I said, “Yes and I’d like you to fix hers too.
He redid the mares feet, packed up his stuff and left, acting nice, but I could tell he was not happy. That was the last time I ever heard from him. He’d called every six weeks like clock work for a year and a half. But no matter because now I was hooked to learn more about this wild horse trim. Little did I know that it would come to consume almost every thought for the next ten years, as I sought to learn the truth about the horses hoof. This was as a labor of love for Valor the colt of my old age, the last horse I would have in this life. And this was because I was seeking the answers to help him have the best feet possible.