Sunday PM we met Nick Vincent, an experienced equine podiatrist who is also passionate about safety.
We spent the first hour in the classroom to ensure we fully understood safety and how it needs to be applied in the environment we will be working in, including creating a safe environment and looking after yourself physically by ensuring we know how to hold a horses hoof for trimming. When we moved out to the yard, this also became a little test of fitness where we had to hold the squatting pose for 2 minutes..
After giving us a demonstration on the lovely Renee (who was also due a trim so we got to see how the farrier holds are used in practice) we moved on to practicing on Esther and Darcy (who we met yesterday).
I've been used to using the hold for the front legs and a half hold on the hinds for doing my own ponies but the full hold on the hinds took a bit of getting used to but by the end of the day I was feeling more confident about it..
Now its all about practice, practice, practice plus getting fitter in time for Trim 2 (in October) but before that, we have the laminitis module back in Anglesey in September to look forward too.
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