What's going on?

I had a super nice week up in Northern California. On Thursday the 24th I flew to Sacramento where Jennifer Borchard picked me up. She drove me straight to Diane Chapek’s house. This place was crawling with horses so to speak. Diane has a soft heart and acquires a lot of Arabians that need her. Some had not even been halter broken at a pretty advanced age. Diane trimmed a few of the horses and she is doing very well. When you have that many horses that will not stand still for a farrier you have no choice but to learn how to trim.

Later on, Jennifer picked me up again and we drove to her place. She lives in a nice house with cute dogs and a nice kid and husband. What more can you ask for? Next morning we took off to trim again. This time we picked up Alicia Mosher. We had a nice QUIET ride to our meeting spot at a fire station, with Sue Laurente. There we sat, laid down, did push up’s for about 45 minutes while Sue waited on the opposite side of the building. We finally got together and took off. Sue drove and I am glad to say that she can always fall back on race car driving if she gets tired of trimming. Alicia and I got a little shaky. We did get to where we were going and Sue started to trim a pony. What Jennifer did to that pony we will not go into here but there is a picture… We spent the day up in the mountains while Sue trimmed and it was beautiful and so were Sue’s trims. I found the love of my love, a donkey that I would gladly have taken with me home. He would love the hikes we do.

Slept like a log that night. Next day Jennifer did the trimming in the morning. She proceeded to take half a hoof off on my recommendation ( help) But no harm was done to any animals this time. Jennifer trimmed some beautiful gaited horses and also battled a baby mustang, newly adopted. She won hands down with a good trim. This day we also went to Tractor supply to buy a new dog collar (John Deer) for Boomer that Jennifer modeled with the help of Alicia. Latest fashion! In the afternoon Tonya Durden trimmed and we were all fading fast looking more like zombies at the end. Tonya trimmed some endurance horses and booted them. She had done a really nice job on this mare that had foundered. Tonya is really dedicated and I hope she can put some miles on this horse.

That night we had a very nice chicken dinner at Jennifer’s house. Next morning it was Alicia’s turn to trim. One place had two very sore horses and a really nice owner that did everything to help them get better. Alicia booted the larger horse and cut out wholes in the pads so the coffin bone would be off the ground. It did not make him feel better. But when they made the pads thinner he got very comfortable. He trucked around out in the field while she trimmed the mini horse and I got a little worried he was feeling too good. The mini, named Haas had foundered and we did an aggressive trim on him. He was in Soft rides and he loves them. They were the smallest soft rides I have ever seen, EVER! Before the day was over we got to see Huckleberry. A terribly abused horse that Alicia and her friend Jackie had rescued. He initially had trashed his back legs and he was never treated making for a very crippled horse. His hind feet had been clubbed because of the injury but he is getting nicer and nicer feet thanks to good trims. That evening Sue and I drove down to Sebastopol ( Thank you Sue) and she left me off at Days Inn where I met up with Leslie Carrig, Katja Ziegenfuss and Leslie’s friend Suzy. Next two days would be a Kerry Ridgeway clinic.