Friday, 1 May 2015

Nice outweighs the nitwits...

...with a lovely conversation yesterday with a very enthusiastic and switched-on vet who was not only delighted to refer a horse here because he'd heard such good things about us but had also been planning to read up on rehab even before he'd spoken to me and was looking forward to following the horse he referred and learning more - brilliant!
Not only that but I have had 2 more requests this week to help with veterinary research, which I am only too happy to oblige. Its so encouraging that more and more vet students (and their supervisors) are motivated to find out more about barefoot rehabilitation and how hooves function. 

This interest from the next generation of vets (as well as increasing numbers of the current generation of vets) is incredibly exciting and should make an enormous difference to horses and their owners in the next few years.
Positives like this make it easy to put in perspective the (inevitably still common) comments which abound when barefoot is mentioned. Today's classic (which is one of those "if I had a pound for every time..." clangers) was the priceless and time-honoured triple-whammy of misconception: "My vet isn't against barefoot but just feels good feet have been bred out of today's horses and anyway my horse can't go barefoot because he is so sore when he loses a shoe."

Thank goodness "her" ill-informed vet is increasingly in the minority.

4 comments:

Maureen Webb said...

My Vet pronounced the improvement of my horse's feet as "Spectacular".
He had been barefoot in a pasture for 7 years, but never trimmed. As there was no hard ground, his feet were awful - shrunken heels, wizened frog, long toes, under-run heels, sheared heels, deep central sulcus like a bum-crack and thrush in it.
After 3 months of walking in-hand on tarmac, deep pea gravel 'loafing' area and my own 'Thrush Beater' concoction, he now has super feet and my Vet was more than willing to listen!!

nuri said...

Yay for open-mindedness and enlightenment... More power to you!

cptrayes said...

This is such great news. Well done Nic.

C.

AmandaB said...

Really positive stuff I'm so glad to hear this