Paula Curtis (00:42)
Today we have Nick Hill here and Nick does a lot of farrier hoof trimming work and hoof care, that's kind of Nick's specialty. It's not just about trimming. It's about the whole horse, which I love about your philosophy and teachings. Nick's traveled the world. He's studied natural hoof care and the biomechanics that connect hooves to the rest of the body. With a background in both traditional farriery and wild horse research,
Nick offers a fresh perspective on keeping horses sound and thriving. I'm so excited to dig into this topic with him today. So welcome, Nick. It's great to have you here. Thank you. Nice to be here. All the way from Bulgaria to America. All right. that's amazing. That is amazing. Modern technology is really allowing us all to connect from everywhere, which is pretty extraordinary. Well, we sure appreciate you being part of the fair and we would love to hear
about your journey and how it's brought you to where you're at today. Well, started off by a lot, like a lot of people went to school, went to colleges, college. And then from that, I worked alongside people at courses and things, never really got on with them. I thought they're all up and happy. And then it ⁓
things turned around a little bit for me where I was looking for work and I couldn't find any work on farms. So I got an offer of a job in Germany to work with horses. And I thought, I can't speak German. I don't really like horses much. And my sister said, well, you won't last more than three minutes. I said, right. Okay. I've got no money, so I'm going. And that was quite a few years ago. 76, I believe, or 75, 76.
So anyway, I ended up in Germany, learning German and all the bits about horses as I went along. There was a little bit of a sort of like drop it in the middle of nowhere and find your way out sort of bag. And then I spent a couple of years in Germany going different places working with horses and very traditional. Came back to the UK, went down the traditional route of teach
and thought, well, that was my career. That's what I was going to do. So I came back, started teaching. And then from there, I sort of fell into the hoof care world a little bit because when I was teaching, there was an awful lot of problems you could see with riders and horses and just horses were trying and people were being blind to the horses.
And then with my own horses, when I moved to Scotland, I noticed a whole change in how the horses were a lot more lame. I was thinking, well, the farrier down South, he kept them sound. So what's happened? And with a different side, then you start seeing the shape of the hooves all changing, the body shape changing, the tightness and the tension in the horses. And then you start thinking, well, what am going to do about this? Cause I'm not a farrier. How do I, how do I change this? Cause I'm not going to have.
My horse has messed up. my wife at the time, she found a book. She was doing a bodywork course and she found a book from Jamie Jackson. Brought it over and I read that and this is after about two and a half years of actual shearing horses myself. And she brought this book back and it was all Jamie Jackson and barefoot. And I think, okay, fine. This sounds actually really quite
good because this is what I experienced when I was shooting for two and a half years. Horses knocking their shoes against doors, their feet through wire, pulling the shoes off, stamping, kicking around, going lame, just with a nail bind. Things like this were happening. So I was looking for something different, something that would work. You could see how the horses were getting better with what you're trying to do, but
They kept failing or lot of us kept failing, not just me or the farriers as well and everything else and you could see it period of time. And so I went over there and I did tell him I was coming and knocked on his door and he said, coming in, said, well, before I do, I just want to let you know I'm here to find out if you're a bullshitter or not. So, come and have a coffee. And we had an orange out of his tree in the backyard in California, which is quite
bizarre for me from the Highlands of Scotland. So anyway, hit up a friendship there, got chatting with him, went and worked with the ANHCP and then after a years, self-pinned them out, traveling around different places in different countries doing clinics, from Israel to the Eastern Bloc countries and certain parts of America. Then I
that are doing more and more different clinics, they can be dissolved. Like a lot of the fufiming training groups all split up in Splinter and somebody falls out with somebody else. you know, it's like, generally a little bit, I think. But it doesn't really matter. You're all fine. You go along through and it was great. And the great work and I still think his work is extremely valid when you actually look at it without any personal
Um, do anything like that. You look and see what people do and there's some very good people out there that doing some wonderful things. But after quite a few years, um, had this COVID thing happen and during the COVID, I got the opportunity to keep traveling and keep working. So I was alone in my van and went around and traveled around and I thought, well, I'll go and help people keep their horses because there's some fires couldn't work or everything else.
I'll be out doing something. And one of my clients said, can you come and give me a lesson? Hey, so we sat down and said, why don't you teach you? You treat me your own horses. You ride them every day and you ride and ride and ride. They're all barefoot. They're all doing fantastic. What am going to teach you? See what we always talk about wear patterns. Nobody's ever explained it. And if you look on the internet, you don't see
see the thing saying were patterns but nobody's explaining it so I thought okay then it got me thinking right what am I looking at for when I look at the hoof excuse me what we're looking at what's the horse telling us why would we take something away or leave something we were talking about were patterns and then starting putting a were pattern schematic and showed her how a horse was moving when she looked at the horse's hooves
So you could see now she has a horse out and they're running around on the track system, which is a very popular way. Again, that comes to naturalization video of I've done apparently. And anyways, ⁓ we look at the wear patterns and we start seeing how the horses are actually moving. What's going on with them, where there is actually comfort. Some could say even pain and you can actually then turn around and say, well, if you really see this part,
and see how that's moving. Then if you train your horse and move in a certain different way, then you stop that from happening and building up. So we've like, called blocks. So things that block the horse's movement and things that are called easement or aids. So it's like a worn part of the hoof. This is obviously in the video, it tells you a little bit more about the whole thing. So anyway, then I carried on doing this for the last four or five years.
I've been carrying on doing more of that wear patterns, doing more clinics around the world. I think I've got been to Africa, Namibia and Kenya doing them and in other countries as well in Bulgaria, and also in Belgium. And Barbara Hufstra, who is a colleague of mine, she's been helping me doing a course last year. We took students from several different
training backgrounds and then brought them to this one place with 22 horses and there was 11 of them, the practitioners, we showed them the hoof pattern schematic and they said, you trim this one. I don't mind how you trim, what school are you coming from? This is what the horse is showing you. This is what it's telling you. This is patterns. This is what you'll see over a year period. So every six weeks or six, eight weeks we went back.
and they had to make the schematics and then saw how the horses moved and changed. Nothing else changed within the group of the horse. Everything else stayed stable, a rescue place. And so at the end of it, all the trimmers were trimming in exactly the same way. Not that we taught them this is what you need to do. They started listening to the horse. They started seeing how the horse was moving, what was blocking the movements, how to help that horse move.
or wouldn't move better. so the part of the thing is to also have to feel the bodies. So you have to feel over the whole bodies, go through it. So you can feel lumps, bumps, where things are tight. My wife's a vet as well, who does acupuncture, my present wife and Relitza, and she's does acupuncture on lots of different horses, lots of different animals. And we've done some times testing where I've done the if-where patterns and she's gone over and done a
what we call an acupuncture scan, which goes over the points of the horse's body, which show discomfort, tightnesses and all the rest. And we matched them up. They did it blind. I did mine, she did hers and then we them together. We did this on several different horses and we always came up with more or less the same conclusions, which was quite amazing. So a very simple thing to do once you know how to do it. It's like everything, isn't it? I think it's extremely easy and simple.
You also go, the heck's all that about? Hopefully the videos will help make that a bit more clear. And I love that you teach the horse owner to do it, to maintain the horse as well, because it's, it's a tough thing when there's a farrier schedule. And I know you, we have to do that, but sometimes the hoof needs attention before the farrier can get there. And then things are out of balance and out of whack. And then all of sudden it's more of an invasive.
trim or rasp to get the horse back in balance. And so I always think about trimming the horse in such a way that facilitates natural wear to more simulate a wild horse. And so if I can get to my horse and rasp, and I do this with my own and all my training horses, if I can rasp their feet frequently, they're not coming in and out of balance with their trim. And I find that that works really good. So thank you for educating people and showing people how to manage themselves.
Well, it gives a great amount of pleasure doing this, but also looking at body workers, COs, aircrafters, acupuncturists, vets, generally vets, riders, trainers. And when you turn around tell them how the horse is moving and what they have to do to change it, to move it better. I mean, today I was working on short jumpers in Bulgaria, the top level ones. The trainer, the rider, he's always saying,
Can you tell me what this horse is doing? Because what do I need to do to make it go better? So I tell him, and he just makes them changes in his riding and the horses go better and stay better. And so the thing is, he's knowing what's actually blocking that horse's movement. And sometimes it'd be like a millimeter. If you have a medialateral imbalance of a millimeter, I'll give you an example. One horse in England and the lady, we know the horse.
We know it quite well. know how it goes off balance. And this time it was off balance by about one millimeter, I would say on one hoof. And she took it in a sanderina and you could see it was laying out the sanderina. So a millimeter shouldn't make any difference. And I took out a striker. I'm just going to take this shave off there and took it around and trotted it around again and it's sound.
It's knowing what to take and what to leave is really, really important. And if you're very particular with it and if you make schematics and go through this, this is why I do clinics. I'm going to the States in July, I think in Illinois, I've got two two-day clinics there. I'll go anywhere to teach people this because I think it's so important because it's something that everybody can do and everybody can understand. And if they understand
these things, they can understand a bit more about what the horse requires, how it should be living, how it should be moving. So when we talk about wild horses, it's really feral horses because they're always interfered with anyway. But the thing is, that lifestyle of 24-7 movement, it's not 24-7 all the time. They do have rest periods of a few hours, they'll sit down and chill out and do stuff.
But think about their body movements, how they move from left to right, how they fight, how they have sex, how they swish their tails, sniff the air, sniff at the females. All these little tiny movements every single day that that horse is moving, that feedback to the ground creates and forms a hoof. So it's every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, all the way through their life.
is what keeps that tooth balanced and formed. Now, when we put them in domestication and we restrict their movement and their social ability, then we have to then fill them gaps in. And a lot people say, I have to put shoes on, I have to do this. It's because you haven't put everything else in place that horse needs to be a horse. So everything ties in together, you know?
What would you say would be like a simple change or a simple thing that a common horse owner, you know, just somebody red, like any old person can do to help their horse? Okay. Couple of things you can do. If you get a hardwired brush and some cider vinegar and you scrub them hooves daily, twice daily if you can. Once it'll get you nice and thick, get your arms nice and strong.
but it'll also exfoliate and invigorate and get these horses' hoofs moving and grooving. it exfoliates the old dead skin, but it also stimulates. And the cider vinegar, that'll help get rid of bugs as you go along. Now that's one thing. The other thing is, everyone spends so much time grooming their horses. I I know they like to be nice and shiny and look, the best thing you can do though is get them moving.
Forget your brushes, just give them a wipe off and then just get them moving. We don't move them enough. We don't move enough as humans. So we need to make a big change. There's small but big changes. think, you know, a feral horse moves approximately 16 miles a day or something like that. That's incredible. You think about our, you know, in times, it's a lot more. There's a lot more. think that's average of 25.
Yeah, about 25 kilometers. It depends which feral groups you're studying where you go to. And I mean, you hear, you know, they can have a three eighth inch sole. mean, that's amazing. That's amazing. And if our firefowl horses could do that, but movement to stimulate that growth and to facilitate that wear pattern to naturally do this and get more movement. think you're right. More people need it too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like,
We're all trying to get fit and stay fit and we get a diet strike. The amount of junk that is out there that's dressed up as feed for animals, I'm not talking just horses, but dogs, cats, rabbits. It's all bits of rubbish put together and then it's, no, this is good rubbish, but we clean it. So it's clean rubbish. It's lovely clean rubbish that we can feed them.
It's like going to McDonald's. mean, everyone likes a McDonald's or something every so often, possibly because you've got to keep trying and think, ⁓ it is crap. Okay. But, you know, just to remind yourself, you know, every so often, it's a like we've got that choice to do that. on a slightly serious note, the horses or animals that we own, they don't have that choice. So we have to, we have to ask ourselves very serious questions about.
why we do something. Is it because it's a popular brand? Is it because it's actually really good for them? And who's telling us that it's really good for them? Is the horse itself? Is the dog itself? The coat, look at the eyes. Is it because of shiny coats that mean it's totally healthy? Not really. Look at the weight. The thing with weight is there's a weight gain, weight loss. It's like a wave. in through the year, you have the weight.
It's like us in summer and winter. If you do winter sports, you might lose a bit more weight, but if not, you probably put it on through the winter because you're going to be a bit lazy because it's cold outside and you don't want to do anything. I'm speaking myself there a little bit. I like the summer and like the heat, but you know, this weight loss on and off is a big thing for the horses in particular, prey animals. If you know anything about falconry and birds, a falcon will only fly
at a certain weight. If it gets too heavy, it can't fly. If it gets too light, it can't fly. So it dies. the necessity for that predator animal is huge. Now with a prey animal, they have to be fleet and nimble of feet to move. And they need to have that from birth all the way through their life. So if you have them and you start them at three or four years old and they've been stuck in a
books doing nothing. They're not going to be good ones to be buying. So if you're going to buy a horse, buy one that's been running free from day dot and by free, mean, with other youngsters, with other people, other animals socializing, knowing it's a horse, then you're going to have something strong that's going to last you for your life. I love how you are. really are keeping in mind the whole horse.
I mean, that's everything you're talking about is dealing with the whole horse, the mind, the body, the life, the spirit, but the nutrition, everything, it's all part of it. so I thank you for putting that message out there. I've also got to give a lot of credit to my wife, Relitza, who said before, she's about does acupuncture. That has opened my eyes so much into how what we do at the hoof.
How that involves that whole body, the nerve system, the feedback all the way through the blood flow, the lymph flow. Everything is just like everything's so connected, the fascia and just a small touch. It's a good story. I'll give you a present. There's good friends of ours in Bulgaria. They've got this ⁓ amazing setup with a track system and we know them quite well. taught the husband to trim and we went there one time.
go and help them and they brought one horse out and he sometimes throws his feet really odd and he throws really unbalanced because his body goes unbalanced very quickly and he threw his feet and they were really unbalanced and he went along and relished and said can you just get them feet balanced for me and he was laying and I went and trimmed him but I'm absolutely spot on with the balance and then we lunched him again and he was even worse.
He was crippled looking and I was thinking, Oh my goodness, husband and the wife were glaring at me going, what have you done? And I'm thinking, I don't know what I've done because I've done balance it and then relics is laughing ahead of us. So, and why are you laughing at me? What, what, what do you know that I don't know? And she went along, didn't do any needles or anything. Just did a little bit of manipulation. I can't remember if it was on the neck or on the back of something. I was just a small amount. then.
put the horse on the lunge again, this horse started running, kicking, jumping and throwing itself around, bucking, absolute. And the whole thing is this internet connection between what you do with a hood and what you do with a body. You get somebody that specializes in one thing, you need other people to get something back to normal and get it back right. Cause we're dealing with a lot of broken horses a lot of the time because they haven't had a start. They should have had, you know?
I think that's, that's such a good point is it really takes a team and fortunately now we've got the ability to learn things online and start to develop our own eye, but having experts come in like you or somebody that's been doing it for many, many years, like body work or acupuncture or whatever it might be, maybe even nutrition. And they're looking even at the horse's blood work to see what does this particular horse need? those things are so important now for the average.
horse owner that has their horses at home, what heaping techniques like care in the, you know, in the yard and that sort of thing. What do you see being the most beneficial for our horses? Definitely movement and getting them out in the fresh air. Again, something that's hugely overlooked is once we look at a stable, they fail air basically. And do you think about what happens to the lungs?
If take the skin and the lungs, the skin is an extension of the lungs or the lungs is an extension of the skin. It's all interconnected. So when you look at the skin, it's all tied into the mouth, which goes into the stomach and all the rest. So all this airways, if the inside of the lungs are affected by dust, let's say, then you're going to have skin conditions appear because you've created an immune problem or a disturbance to the health.
Getting that fresh air coming in through. if you have to have them stay. Yeah. Really it would irk me to see a horse stable now, but if you had to do that, then make sure there is fresh air blowing through. Make sure you haven't got people sweeping lots of dust around. If they're going to do that, get your horse out of there while that's happening to get things, you know, you have to start thinking about, can I, would I live in this environment for more than an hour?
You know, because when you walk through some stables, you can smell the staleness in the air, the urine, pee, that's going to affect your lungs. So think about having fresh air.
movement, fresh air, look at them species appropriate food, how they break down fibres. Everything just ties in as we've been saying. You can't just separate off one thing, but you can turn around and say, let's make a step towards this. It may only be a small step, but if people make a small step, then that's what I want to try and help and encourage because we need to, instead of shouting at people and saying...
or you shouldn't do that. can't do it. You have to give them alternatives to things. So you have to turn around and well, if you can do this a little bit, then they'll go, that made a difference. What if I do that? And then they start looking for a different place to keep the horse. And then things change. And it's only because we start getting new information that we can start changing. You can work with the information you have and try and make it better.
All humans, not if you call yourself a professional, whatever you are, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to get things wrong, but you're there because you want to try your best for the animals. And the more experience you've had, the more things you see go wrong, the more things you can make right. So we should stop judging other people and going, okay, let's see, what can we learn from this person? How can we take this thought? What can we use?
You know, having this fair that you've got is a brilliant idea because you've got so many different people and they're all going to have lots of little different ideas and be a little light bulb moment from this person and from that person. And that's really wonderful because that brings communities together and horses really need it. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because, you know, so often people have this group, English, Western, whatever it is, I wear this, this costume, they wear this costume. It's really about the horse. It should be about the horse.
And we wanna bring everybody together and even the keeping of our horses and the environment that they're in, oftentimes people are just choosing what's easy for us or for the people. They say, well, it's easy when there's a nice barn with a lounge and the horses inside, it's easy to get, they stay clean. And it's the opposite of what a horse really needs. They need to go out and get dirty and they'll get some nicks and some scratches and that's okay.
And if people could understand that what the horse needs, it's movement, space, other friends to kick up their heels. And if they do that, there's so much calmer and better with us. Listen, another little story, I'm quite good with these stories. I was in Germany one time doing a clinic with a friend, a couple of trimmers, one was Gudrun Bukhoff in Canada, she's German, and then another couple of people, and we came together and did this clinic.
And it was a beautiful setting, nice woodland, all flat, all sand everywhere. And then had this big stables and all the horses were in stable. Right. And we could look out and what they'd do is they'd have all these grooms and they'd take the horse out, brush it all off. Put the rugs on it, put the tack on it, take it out, walk it for 10, 15 minutes. So it'd be warmed up a little bit, then a little bit of trotting. And so they did a bit of canter and then it would have to cool it down.
and put it back in the box, go to the next one. So there's about four or five different people doing this and they were doing, and they had this perfect system where there was tracks, sand tracks. And I was thinking, put them outside. And it was, and they all had shoes on and they're all on the sand. They weren't, the feet weren't working, they weren't moving. And it was just like, and you could see what the feed was. It was just like bags of food that was compressed and from
different things and it might have been better or worse than others, but it, it, just has backed feed with bits of hay weighed out. So it couldn't keep that gut working. So everything was about cajun. Now they, outside the stables and I've seen this in lots of stables, there's these bottles of purples for spraying the feet or they had something else similar. So they'd always try and be combating.
infections and stuff going on because the horses don't move, their feet don't move, they don't actually function properly. They start getting diseases. If you don't use it, you lose it. Same with the muscles. They haven't worked so hard just to have these horses walking, trotting and doing a bit of canter. Now if they turned them out and had them running around, one had cut down the vet bills by a huge amount. They'd cut down on the
chiropractors and the physios because the horses were moving, their muscles were not working. So it's a little bit about, but this is the way everyone's kept. Well, we've kept from a certain period of time they started doing that. But if you look back in history, and you start looking at the Xenophon and things like that, how he looked at his boss's moves to keep his army moving. Yeah. So what we think is new and exciting has been
done before, then it's been forgotten about because someone's come on with the next new idea. Right. So it's the old world. this time in your life, Nick, do you do straight, um, only bare, bare hooves or do you still shoe? No, I gave up shoeing about 24 years ago. think 2006 I gave up shoeing. don't. What I notice with, you look at like an older horse.
that has had shoes its whole life versus an older, an old horse that's been barefoot its whole life. And I noticed how clean the legs are on that horse that's been barefoot. You know, they wear shoes and you see ringbone and side bone, you see lumps and bumps and you see that horse standing over in the knee or you see like, know, that horse has had so much time with shoes and imbalance and possibly being sore. So now it's asymmetrical, its movements off.
And I look at the bear hoof horses that are old and they look solid. They're not as swaybacked. They're, they're, just look all around better. And I, I just, to me, it's really obvious. I do feel that now more English disciplines are going bear, bear hoof. I see, I think a lot of disciplines all around the world, uh, are going bear hoof. I just had something popped in my mind and it went out again.
In Namibia, for example, there's feral horse groups there, about 180 horses. Now some of them have got really funky looking feet and they've got twists in the joints and so the hooves are shaped in a certain way, but they're still perfectly worn. The limbs are still clean. Now there are imbalances there, but they're even them out because they're miles to do on very harsh terrain. If they survive...
to get older, then you can see the strength in the hooves, even in, let's say, hereditary problems that they've got. But I think like you, think you see the strengths there. You see, we all look for that perfect hoof. And I've got some pictures of some wonderfully perfect hooves, but that's not reality. Reality is that every minute of the day, as we said before, that
hoof and that horse is compensating. its body, if it gets a little bit tight, it'll show up in the hoof. And then you have to get rid of that pain in there. It moves. So, but if you have it barefoot and have it done as best as you can, you've got a better chance of having a horse for longer and sounder. for sure. And I think for so many people that transition going from shoes to barefoot, bare hoof, it can be hard.
It can be really hard on worse and they don't fully commit to it. And I think they don't understand a full hoof cycle is amazing. And so they're trying to get it in the short term and it, really grow, you really grow a good hoof. so trimming helps facilitate that growth, that proper growth, but like people, if they could hang in there or maybe use hoof boots, ⁓ I've used, I've used like poly like poly like, like almost like shoes where you would glue it on there.
to transition to transition and if people can hang in there you can get pretty much all horses to go bear hoof eventually. Yeah, I think this thing is is you couldn't either go with a boot side or you can get a small sand area and create a small sand area so they can get themselves comfortable on a daily basis because the thing is the boots are great and they've been so helpful on pads and if you quite have to change and move around with it because once you get a boot and a pad it's not
just that it doesn't just stop there. You have to check and see if that pad's still working after a week or two. Does it need a bit of change? How can we trim this? How can we move this? It's simple stuff, but you have to give yourself time. What I tend to do is we were in Spain at a horse and human event quite a years ago. Me and my relatives were doing presentations. Part of my presentation, I've got everyone in the room to take the shoes and socks off.
And we led them hand in hand, about a hundred of them. Oh, it felt like a hundred, but it was a lot. And we walked all the way around the area. There was gravel, there was concrete, there was grass, was just some slopes and there was some sand. And we walked them all the way around there. just every so often, just close your eyes a little bit. Don't fall over. just, this is something we really have forgotten about is feel. When I've got students and I'm teaching it.
They have to close their eyes and feel the hoops, feel for weaknesses, feel for strengths. whole thing is just like, once you start getting a little bit of feel back, when you sat on a horse and you bide, there was a, um, Dorrance, Bill Dorrance about feel. He's as a book and he puts about feel and there's a small chapter in the beginning somewhere and it really hits the nail on the head.
It's something you have to do. You have to feel, you have to get this and just shut everything else off and feel. Once you get that idea then you start going, I might have to wait a little bit longer. If you're all unsure just take your shoes and socks off and go off and walk over some rough stones. See how you're there. You might need a little bit of soft grass or bit of sand first for a while. Toughen up a bit. In the summer I run barefoot.
I do about 10 kilometres a day. I'm 65 this year. So if I can do it, you know, who shouldn't be able to do it. But it's the same with the horse. You have to be patient. You have to let healing happen. You know, you've had shoes on, you've had a false impression on the ground. The body's had a false impression. When you take them shoes off, all that muscle that's built up to support or open the gate, the effect of the shoe drops off. It has to reform and reestablish itself.
That's going to take you several months. Yeah. You know, people forget, yeah, they forget the tissues, the soft tissues, the fascia, the tightness. Everything has to relax and move and then it has to rebuild. We have to take time. We have to think about what are we doing? definitely. Cool. It's really, it's cool that you run barefoot. That's really, you know, you can, you can understand, you're going to have a greater understanding of.
the horse because you run barefoot. You know, that's, that's pretty cool. I try anyway. That's that's, that's super cool. I know you've got a couple of presentations here in the fair. Um, one of them is hoof wear patterns. Do you talk to that just a little bit and give people a little preview of what you're going to present? Hey, well, hoof wear patterns is
talked about previously a little bit is that, is how you can actually understand how your horse is moving, where it feels discomfort. So when we make the patterns, we take each individual hoof, we note down the strengths, the weaknesses, blocks, the aids, and, and we put them down on the schematic. So we have each hoof individually put down on the schematic. And then from that schematic, you can, then you put arrows, which show
the main course of direction and then you put crosses where the horse is finding it hard to step through because there's blocks or imbalance. So when you mark them down and then you look at all four feet together, then your eyes start opening up. But you start going, is that really how my horse is moving? And yes, it is. It's exactly how your horse is moving. Now you get a lot of machines out there that will say, oh, well, the horse is loading this way or that way.
And they're okay for walk and trot, but they don't make it for canter gallop. They don't make it for squishing the tail. don't, they don't give you that whole story. Your horse's hoof, when it's on its own without metal put on it, it can tell you exactly what the horse is doing, how it's feeling. And you can change how the horse moves. So when you look at different wear patterns, you can actually affect changes in that horse. So on one horse.
I'm not sure if it's in that video, but there's one horse where, where patterns where it doesn't wear the quarters at all, two horses actually. the horse was on a track system, just a track system, just moved around. It just wore its toes and heels, very balanced, but it wore them. And then six weeks later after I trimmed it and then six weeks later I came back, but I told the lady, you have to circle and lunge these horses from side to side.
move them around, loose school them, everything else you can possibly do to get them moving just instead of a square straight lines all the time. Gone so she did. Six weeks later there was no blocks on that hoof because she got the horses moving more dynamically. So that just shows you can affect changes. So that's what the hoof wear pattern is about in a nutshell is what you can tell about your own horse.
And when you understand it, you can then talk to your vet, your body worker, your physio, your farry, your hoof care practitioner or Mrs. Miggins down the shop. You know, you can explain to them how your horse is, you know? That's neat. It takes something that is seemingly complex, you know, understanding, not a lot of one individual hoof, but all of them and the interplay of them. But you come up with a way, with the schematics of
allowing people to be able to see and observe what's going on in the foot and make recordings of it. And then now for them to see the whole picture, it's something that maybe, you know, as a whole is complicated, but actually it's very simple because you've broken it down in a way that is easily understood. And when you teach people, when you teach them this, when they're actually doing their own bosses and they can do the schematics and do it every week, every second week or every month.
or every so often, and they can tell if they're actually helping the horse or hindering it. So when you go along and say, think that this needs to, this is a way of saying, yeah, this is correct. This is where you should take a bit more off. The horse is almost talking to you if you start listening and looking and feeling. That is so cool.
that is cool. And then you alluded to this earlier too and talked a little bit about it, but your other presentation is on equine naturalization. if you want to just talk a little bit to that presentation. Well, this goes back to me from the very start of being with horses. It's any animal you have or own, you have to understand what makes that animal tick to make it the most healthy. So if we can start understanding what
that horse actually really needs. It probably doesn't need us as humans, that's first thing. But we've got them because we love them, we want to ride them, we want to do things. But we have to think about what's going to make them happy. How can we make them more settled in their mind? Because if they're happy in their mind, they're more physically happy, so therefore more healthy. Same is with humans.
If we put you in the toilet and sat you in the toilet and said, will bring you food and every so often we'll take you out and walk you around for a little bit of you in a nice garden. And you go, that's great. That's fantastic for a minute, an hour, a week, a day, a month, know, accumulation of that stress. So when we look at stress in an animal, stress or any animal is probably the worst thing that can make you ill.
because it attacks your mind. If it attacks your mind, it brings you into depression. Now, because, you know, we see the horse standing there, we sometimes see the vices, sometimes there's moving, weaving like this or bobbing, biting or kicking, banging. There are all vices, they're telling you this horse is not mentally stable. It's not happy. It's not something funny. It's just mentally not right there. So if we see somebody down the street and they're swaying and banging their head like this,
We know there's something wrong with it. The other horse knows there's something wrong with it. So if you put one, the stabled horse out and put it out with a herd of animals that have been running around absolutely fine itself, they will probably not want to know it because they'll go, this isn't a real horse. It might do eventually and integrate eventually, but there's certain things that it's got to learn and the other ones have got to teach it.
What we've got to is try and think, right, what can we physically do to make this horse's life and whole lifestyle better? So it's healthier because it's about health, mental and physical. And so that's what FQI naturalization is, to encourage people from the very start, from birth to full grown, to have a healthy animal. So it's that mental and physical and you can't separate them because if you, if you look at
Most horses, mean, so many studies out there that they'll tell you that it's not good to be confined. And now we're not prey animals as such, but we're not quite predators either. But if we caged in or hemmed in, I mean, look at COVID, people hemmed in for a year, maybe two years sometimes. That's nothing. That's a real nothing compared with what we do to animals, birds in cages, horses. I'm not saying you...
Not to do that. It's not my place to do that. But if we're going to, then we have to think what can we do? This is what we want. So this becomes our responsibility, not somebody else's mate down the pub or whatever. It's your responsibility. You're the one with the horse. You're the one that's decided to take it on. So you have to make the best you can with what you've got and then try and input that. So you have with
the funding you have available to you or the facilities you have. So if somebody says, I can't do anything. Well, get a wire brush, start scrubbing the feet. Would that really make a change? Yeah, it'll make a change. Get the horse, take it out, move it more. It'll make a change. know, there's always something you can do. Yeah. And the thing is, is look for people who have made changes, look for groups online.
They've made like track system groups, go and see what they're doing. They're very innovative. I mean, it's not just me. There's lots and lots of people out there that have read like Pandit Paradise and then they've gone and moved to different tracks. don't quite like how that's worded. So we'll make our own. That's fine. Doesn't matter. The horse is moving. It's getting out there. Whoever it is, but look at ideas. mean, some of the places that put them streams and they include the stream in their walkway.
horses can go and splash around now you think is that safe well if the horse gets hot where's it going to cool down that quickest through its hooves you know so you can go and stand in the stream it can lose heat very quickly if it wants to if it has a flare up and too much green grass which is going to be very destructive to it it can go and stand in the stream help get rid of the inflammation get different types of varieties of plants if it can't grow where you are go and get some
with different things. Lots of these groups out there on the internet that are now reopening this whole thing up and giving lots of information. People are daft enough, they always get me to come out to wherever they are and I'll do a clinic and help them that way. know, but we're all, the only people reason we're here is to try and help people and help for us because we want to make that change. Cause that's the passion that drives us really. Exactly.
And that's the whole reason for the fair. And that's why you're here at the fair because your mission is the same or similar to ours. And I think as a collective, you know, if we keep learning and growing and learning and growing and taking in other perspectives and listening to our horses and seeing what they need, we're really going to start seeing
a lot of changes coming through for horses in a really good way, which is our hope. think there's so many good people out there and they really want to see changes. And I think we have to just sit back sometimes and listen to them and go, okay, don't agree with everything that this person says, but that's quite good. I'll have that bit, you know? To your horse, use it and see how it works. They'll tell you. Exactly. Well, Nick, thanks for spending so much time with us. like I said, I can go from.
keep you all day, but I know I can't do that. Where can people find more information about you? Well, they look on our website, VNT Equine Services website, look us on Facebook under Nick Hill or VNT Equine Services, and then just send me a message if you really want to. If you want to do clinics or want me to go and do clinics somewhere, send me message and say, because
I like traveling. I like going and seeing places, doing different things. And if you're watching this on the FAIR website, you can scroll down to the bottom of Nick's page, his bio page, and you'll find all of his links there as well. And I think that's, that's it. Thank you so much, Nick. Appreciate you. problem at all. Pleasure.
