Hoof care is an important element in the care of a horse. With a young horse it is really important to start foot care early. Handle the feet as soon as a foal will allow it. You can prevent a lot of conformation problems by trimming early. Sometimes a hoof grows upright and boxy instead of at an angle like a normal hoof. This is called a clubfoot.
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I grew up in Florida, where the main riding season is the winter. Our main chore to get ready for winter was body clipping the horses, to get rid of the winter coat they were not going to need. For the last 30+ years, I’ve lived in the mountains of Colorado, at an altitude of 8000 feet, where the winters are long and cold and preparing your horse and barn for the winter comes with some important concerns.
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We need to set standards and have expectations for our horses. There is always a pecking order in a herd. When a horse is a member of a herd, it knows how to behave and what is expected of it. It is no different with us. We are obviously not going to kick our horse if it doesn’t do what we want as a boss mare would do. However, we can duplicate that leadership by controlling the feet and putting pressure on the horse,
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What qualifies a person to be a horseman or horsewoman? I think maturity is the number one factor. By this I mean handling horses over a lifetime. We can certainly have a talent for horses and get along with them but being a true horseman or woman is not something learned over night. I was first introduced to horses as a teenager and I thought that every older cowboy I met was a horseman.
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