How did I get here?
Woolly & Alan
Having become interested in horses in my late twenties, it struck me how lacking is the general knowledge about them, and that our dealings with them are often rather poorly thought through. Therefore, whenever I find that I am not obtaining good answers to any questions I have, I take a good look beyond tradition.
My first instance of this was a few months after I bought my horse Woolly, when his behaviour started to deteriorate. I had a simple question "why does he no longer move over when I ask him to?" and did not know anybody that could give me a good answer. When I found and read Kelly Marks' book Perfect Manners, I discovered that the answer was extremely simple, all I had to do was to reward him by removing the pressure when he did what I wanted. It still baffles me that such a fantastically useful, simple bit of information is so little known. I have since learnt about more sophisticated training methods and been on most the Intelligent Horsemanship courses but still find that going back to basic principles is great for helping other people to improve their horsemanship.
Enjoying being groomed
After this discovery that well thought out techniques could be hugely better than decades of experience I started to question everything, and when I witnessed the rapid decline of the shod feet of a friend's horse I started to question conventional (and alternative) ideas in farriery. I had listened to ideas about low heels versus high heals, long toes versus chopped off toes and how to cure navicular, and none of the arguments appeared to have any logical or sound scientific thought behind them. The only conclusions that I could come to were that most farriers do not have the knowledge and tools to effectively deal with many of the problems they encounter, and that metal shoes have a detrimental effect on horse's feet. I went exploring for ideas again, and only found one person could give good answers to my questions, being K C LaPierre of the Institute of Applied Equine Podiatry. I went on a course to learn about my own horse's feet, got hooked and decided to make a career change..........
I regard horses as being very intelligent, gentle, sensitive and educational. Dealing with them has involved me with concepts such as healing, kinesiology, osteopathy, homeopathy, the importance of nutrition, good training techniques and of course, equine podiatry. All of these have taught me that nothing happens in isolation, that the mind, body & spirit are inseparably linked, and when in balance form a wonderfully beautiful being. I have learnt more about life, the universe and everything since owning a horse than I did in the previous 20 years, and know that there is a huge amount more to learn.
I still have a few interests besides horses. My degree and original career was in mechanical engineering, and I still have an interest in anything mechanical such as clocks & sewing machines. I enjoy teaching people to ring church bells, playing the piano, DIY when I have time, riding and taking Woolly to heavy horse shows.