At the 2013 International Hoof Care Summit, I attended a talk by Daisy Bicking of Daisy Haven Farm.  In her talk she showed how she has had an over 90% success rate at treating founder.   At the conference I decided that I needed to find out more about her methods and so asked about workshops.

In early May, I attended a 5 day workshop at Daisy Haven Farm on hoof deformation.  In this workshop, 60 cadaver hooves were x-rayed, and then after Daisy did a demonstration of her method of hoof mapping, we chose a hoof to work on.  After we did our trim, the hooves were re-x-rayed and in the afternoon we got together and did a critique of each other’s trims.  It was an eye opening thing to see how much could be taken off a foot before you got into the sensitive part of the foot.  On the third day, Paige Poss, one of the early barefoot trimmers did a dissection of several of the feet that had been trimmed, giving the attendees a much better feel for how the hoof is constructed.  On the forth day of the workshop, we went to a local horse rescue and attended to some of the horses there, and had a further chance to have our work critiqued by Daisy.   The last day was on how to apply composite shoes for more severe cases of founder.

It was an incredible learning experience that has given me a number of new tools to use in the treatment of founder and hoof deformation in general, and I feel has taken my skills to a new level.  An added benefit of the workshop is that I was invited to a closed Facebook group of students that have been to Daisy’s workshops, which has given me access to over 90 farriers and veterinarians with which I can discuss difficult and unusual cases.

For those on Facebook, a number of photos from the workshop are available here.