HoofNexus

Hi there.   

I started trimming horses in 1999, tutored by a farrier from Washington state.  I had one lesson and bought his books but  a month hadn’t gone by when I found Jamie Jackson’s book, The Natural Horse, which I devoured with relish.  I was in full on search mode, reading everything that I could get my hands on.  I don’t recall how I came across Hiltrud Strasser, a German vet who had done years of research into hoof anatomy and dynamics but after reading her book, “Shoeing: A Necessary Evil?”, I knew she suited me perfectly.  Here was someone I could learn from: Not just the practice but the foundational theory that supported the practice.  Here was someone who was familiar with mathematical models and hypotheses and who had done many years of field work to give to her theories the empirical foundation required.  Feynman would approve.

When I was four, I lived in Oklahoma City and was smitten with horses.  They dominated my existence:  But then circumstances and a move to Massachusetts changed that.  They still had a hold on me, but like a far off horizon.

College was about pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology.  Having to work my way through I got to play in electronics and architectural design, two of my other interests.  There are a lot of cliches about doing what you love.  That was Clinical Psychology, though I admit to a flirtation with architecture.  But the more I learned the less I loved.   The more I studied the greater the chasm grew between theory and empirical evidence to back it up.  The theories were grand but spun mainly out of  imagination.  Poetic, but hardly substantial.  Beautiful in some respects, as they sought to weave a narrative including anthropology, sociology, religious aspirations into a a sort of Theory of Everything about Man.  My clinical internship was the empirical evidence that sullied the relationship.  ’Talking’ was about as effective as getting hit in the head with a brick.  Whatever positive effect there was, was due mostly to ‘transference’.  All the grand theories fell like a house of cards.  I couldn’t recover.  I’d been betrayed and there was no going back.

Dropping out of graduate school left me totally disoriented and lost.  ’Where to now?’ was my everyday question.  Having spent time in the corporate world I wanted none of it.  Nothing wrong with the corporate world but, there, a certain set of psychological attributes are required to be successful. I don’t have them.  I am instinctually anti-hierarchical and anti-authority.  Not the best frame of mind for success at  IBM, Apple, GE et al.

While I floundered I met some business people that turned me down a path to Commercial Insurance.  Not the most exciting subject to study but interesting if you pursue it from a perspective of how we manage risk.  (Read The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb for a discourse on probability and risk management and how it all relates to the crash and burn of 2008).  But more importantly it gave me what I needed: a productive career with  independence, the ability to call all the shots, to suffer the consequences and enjoy the rewards of those calls.  So,  I built a commercial insurance agency in Los Angeles and was a happy camper while raising a family.  Then, as life would have it, a sister-in-law gave me a book for Christmas by Monty Roberts.  I read The Man Who Listens To Horses nonstop and by the time I was finished was committed to getting a horse.  A few months later, in the fall of 1998, I bought my first horse:   A registered Egyptian Arab I renamed Caliente.

He and I have been to hell and back, had our differences and our fights, our fits and tantrums.  But we got Parelli certified and he’s taught me more than I can ever repay him for, so he pretty much gets whatever he wants these days.  I learned how to ride on him and how to build a handle with him and learned to  trim on him. (I’m happy to say that he’s never had a lame day in his life).  How to be patient with him, how to flow in his time and see beneath the surface.  How to understand an ear twitch, a lip curl, a head toss and how unsentimental and reality oriented horses are.  Arabs in particular are tough, smart, athletic and all around great horses.  Caliente is all of this and more.

He has been joined by Dusty, a quarter horse Paint, built like a tank who use to get diarrhea at the sight of a saddle which was beat into him by an abusive trainer.   Today I can ride Dusty in a saddle or bareback, with a snaffle bit or just a rope halter, at home or in a new place and he is calm, well behaved and gentle.  Star, a Morgan mare who is alpha through and through. She runs around me asking to be groomed instead of running at me which is what she was doing to people when her owners gave her to me.  And the goofball, P-Nut. A thoroughbred gelding and grandson of Secretariat, he had hooves that qualified him for euthanasia when I discovered him.  I’m still working on them, he’s still abscessing.  But, his walls are three to four times thicker than when we started and the quality of his tissue is hugely improved.  His hooves look like hooves, now, instead of pancakes.  He actually has some concavity to his soles, his walls aren’t flaky and cracking and his frogs are robust.

Today I trim and rehabilitate horses diagnosed with founder, navicular and a host of other problems, physical as well as psychological. Whatever the need was that drew me to Clinical Psychology has come back in the form of a clinic I created,  based on touch, to teach people how to deepen the bond with their horse.  There is a lot of ‘magic’ in this clinic which has led me to a profound conclusion: Doing is far more powerful than talking.  Doing the right thing in the right environment is powerful in the experience, the insights it generates and the growth (and healing) it promotes.

So, here I am, having come home to what I truly love. Which I knew when I was four.  But which got lost in the shuffle of life.

My hope is that I can share some of what I’ve learned and add something of value to the fabric of your life.