01/10/2026
Three horses. Three different circumstances. Three individual barefoot feet. 🤎🐴
One thing I love about barefoot trimming is that we aren’t trying to make every hoof look identical. These are three horses I regularly maintain, and each hoof tells a different story.
Horse 1 is in work and lives in a large paddock with plenty of movement and varied surfaces, including grass, dry dirt and access to dam water.
Horse 2 has ringbone and has taught me so much about listening to the hoof rather than chasing visual symmetry. When I first started trimming her, she had a noticeable twist through her limb as she walked, from the foot towards the knee.
Since maintaining her feet and only taking what the hoof tells me it’s ready to give, that twisting has significantly reduced. You may notice her heels aren’t perfectly even, and that’s intentional. I’m not going to remove healthy structure simply to make a hoof look symmetrical.
Her comfort and movement have improved considerably, the twisting is now much harder to spot, and she’s even comfortably returned to some groundwork. 🤎
Horse 3 is out of work and lives in a very dry paddock, predominantly grass with no dam water or alternative substrate. You can see how differently the sole and frog present compared with Horse 1.
A hoof doesn’t exist in isolation. Workload, movement, pathology, conformation, environment and terrain all influence the foot in front of us.
My job isn’t to force every hoof into the same shape. It’s to read the individual hoof, preserve the structures the horse needs and continually reassess how they respond.
Sometimes the most important part of a trim is knowing what NOT to take.
It’s about the horse above the hoof.
Sienna
Cutting Edge Hoof Trimming
“Born Bare. Refined Better.”
