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Hello, my name is Sally Hugg I live in the Concow Lake area of Butte County, California, with my husband Fred. We share our home on 10 acres with 4 horses, cats, and assorted chickens. For over 30 years I have owned and worked with horses in a variety of activities, both professionally and as a amateur rider. My experiences include working as a licensed exercise rider in Santa Rosa, as a groom at the US Park Service Mounted Police stables in San Francisco, retraining race horses for new careers, and starting young horses under saddle. During the late '70's early '80's I lived in San Francisco and competed on an off-track TB in NATRC and AERC endurance riding, in addition to local shows. In 1984 I purchased a young Arabian stallion named "Poladin" (aka "Cakes") to race on the county fair circuit. However, our move from the Bay Area to Butte County made that endeavor impractical, so he competed in AERC rides for several years, later learning dressage and jumping. I also enjoy riding hunters, and spent a few years learning the finer points of riding courses from Brian Bodarke at Brookhaven Farm in Chico, on my homebred TB mare, "Annie". The last couple of years I have been riding with a local hunt during the winter months on my trusty Arab, "Cakes", now approaching his 25th birthday. My latest project is training my young TB gelding, "Robo Cop", to become my next field hunter. |
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For most of my lifetime, I kept my horses shod, firmly
believing that was the best way to care for them. Around 2001
I became interested in trying barefoot hoof care with my three horses. At
first, the transition from shoes was a frustrating experience. I went
through several years of trial and error, trying to find a way to maintain
my horses' hooves that would allow me to ride them comfortably on the
mountain trails surrounding my home. Much of the methods that I read about
involved trimming to conform to a certain ideal hoof shape and seemed to
focus on constantly trimming bars and sole, regardless of whether that left
the horse sound or not. As much as I trimmed and rasped away, I was having
limited success with achieving the tough, all terrain hooves that I wanted
my horses to have. Finally, I decided to try a different approach that left
normal, healthy sole and bars largely intact, and allowing the horses to
tell me where they felt comfortable in terms of heel height, rather than
trimming to a "one size fits all" standard. It worked - the hooves
ultimately became stronger. Instead of carving away to produce a text book
"perfect" hoof, I looked at what would keep that horse comfortable and
functioning in the "real" world, while still working towards correcting
flares, contracted or underrun heels, and other hoof problems. My mission:
No more sore barefoot horses! I am a member of Pacific Hoof Care Professionals. At this time I have a busy natural hoof care practice which is limited to Butte County. |
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Photo courtesy of Jane White |
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