Live To Event

13/11/2025

🤩THURSDAYS SPARE BROWNIES 🤩
GLUTEN FREE - 1 mint, 1 peanut butter, 2 fudge and 2 flake
4 £16.50, 6 £22.50 including delivery 🚚
Please message me if you need some xx

13/11/2025

Pippi is just awesome

11/11/2025

Hoping to make things clearer not start awful comments. This is not a page for nastiness, this is my page for my enjoyment and education, if you don't agree then just scroll past or leave. I'm not in this world for the arguments, I am only here to make life as good as possible for my horses and this method saved Moo's life.

Q: If P3 rotation is caused by poor hoof care, can inflammation of the laminae still happen due to poor gut health or diet?

This is one of the most common and valid questions we hear from owners - and it’s an important one to clarify.

Our message has never been that horses can’t have metabolic issues, or that digestion and diet don’t affect their overall health. The point is that laminitis (as the world defines it) has been catastrophically misinterpreted.

If all a “wonky metabolism” did was make a horse a bit footy, then under no circumstances would we see the epidemic of rotation, pe*******on, and osteonecrosis that’s leading to horses being euthanised all over the world.

Horses aren’t being put to sleep because they’re “footy.” They’re being lost because of hoof capsule divergence (HCD) - imbalance and deformation caused by incorrect hoof care - but that’s still being called laminitis.

Even if metabolism somehow made the laminae mildly inflamed, it wouldn’t tear or detach them, because we can now see that tearing and divergence are physical distortions, not chemical ones. The inflammation wouldn’t (and doesn’t) create separation on its own. The only consistent trigger for laminar tearing and capsule divergence is hoof imbalance.

And here’s the crucial part:

👉 There is no concrete evidence - not in research papers, not in field practice - that laminae become inflamed by anything other than distortion caused by HCD. No one, anywhere, has ever taken true baseline and sequential hoof measurements before claiming “metabolic laminitis.” Without that data, any metabolic conclusion is meaningless, because the hoof variable - the single biggest factor - was never controlled.

Science turned away from the hoof because the hoof was complex, hard to measure, and not easily quantifiable. Instead, researchers turned to the blood, tissues and chemicals, because these can be measured in a lab. But that doesn’t make it the cause. The first rule of science is to reduce variables, yet no study on metabolic laminitis has ever controlled for hoof balance, trim type, or capsule distortion.

Even more revealing, no metabolic study properly examined the hind feet or even compared both fronts. Blood (hormone imbalance) affects the whole body, yet supposed “metabolic” damage shows up differently between feet. That alone disproves the uniform systemic cause theory, because blood isn't choosy.

So when people worry that we’re “missing the inflammation,” we can confidently say:

👉 We’re not missing it, we’ve just correctly identified it. The inflammation is a symptom of hoof capsule divergence (HCD), not a separate "disease". The true epidemic isn’t dietary, it’s hoof-care-driven pathology mislabelled as laminitis.

And this is where real change must begin.

For every horse said to be suffering from “diet-related hoof issues,” the first step must be a critical, professional assessment of the hoof capsule by people who actually know how to do that. A quick glance from an owner, vet, or hoof care provider saying “that looks okay” simply isn’t good enough anymore.

Horses aren’t being lost because of grass or sugar, they’re being lost because of rotation, pe*******on, and osteonecrosis, all of which stem from HCD, not diet. Yet the world has been conditioned to fear “laminitis” rather than question the hoof care practices that actually cause these outcomes.

If we keep calling every foot with even a slightly incorrect P3 position "laminitis" - eg. higher palmar angles than natural ground-parallel, with or without visible separation on x-ray - then we will never truly understand what’s happening. Those subtle positional changes are early signs of imbalance, not metabolic disease.

Until we start measuring, tracking, and interpreting the hoof capsule correctly, the myth of “dietary laminitis” will keep distracting us from the real, fixable cause: hoof capsule divergence (HCD).

And when we fix that - we can tell you that everyone will stop freaking out about "that dreadful disease laminitis" because horses will stop losing their lives and being put down. They will survive. Isn't that what we all want?

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I will do a full "how did we get into this mess?" article, regards why academic research pivoted to looking at the blood and away from the hoof, in the next few days. That will be another long one.



HM.

If you are still confused by this and have a horse with rotation, pe*******on and/or osteonecrosis, please join our free rehab group and start learning about balance: The Phoenix Way: Path 2 Hoof Health

And... watch the hundred plus hours of free videos here: https://www.youtube.com/

07/11/2025

06/11/2025

Only one week left to order your Brownie Advent Calendars!
Link in comments

06/11/2025

Just a little bit of sunbathing ❤️❤️❤️

02/11/2025

A lovely pootle around the block this morning 🌅 Met lots of fabulous people to chat to aswell 🤩 and Moo got to stop at the apple box twice 😂

23/10/2025

We can all learn a lot from this

How have you been conditioned to be around horses? 🐴

My dad had no involvement with horses in his life until I became interested, he has been around them a little over the years, I even got him on one once (which he hated and got off after 2 minutes of walking 😅). Since I moved the horses home over the last couple of years he has become much more involved in caring for them. What I find so interesting is how he naturally behaves around the horses having not been indoctrinated into the industry at all. His only experiences are working around our settled herd mostly with the horses loose and at liberty. He has not been exposed to chronically stressed horses who aren’t having their needs met.

He hasn’t done a lot of leading with the horses, because of our setup he used to just bring them in one at a time with no headcollars on with some treats in his pocket and they would all willingly oblige and understand the routine.

Now we are at a place where headcollars are required to take the horses through the farmyard it is interesting to see how different his instincts are when leading to what most of us have conditioned into us. There is absolutely no urge in him to back the horses up, if they pull or veer towards a certain direction he tends to go with them like you would a dog wanting to investigate. What I find the most interesting is that when he is trying to guide or correct them, he is so gentle. He has such a healthy respect for them there is nothing in him that even considers yanking or pulling them harshly or shouting at them. In return the horses are very safe and gentle around him.

I was trying to figure out why it seemed so unusual to me that his instincts weren’t to try and dominate and assert himself. I’ve realised its because from the start most of us are told we have to be so firm and perhaps even rough with horses to keep them under control. Its certainly what was around me all of the time when I first started learning about horses.

My dad’s only influence with horses has been me, and these days the way I behave around my horses is very different to years gone by. I rarely “catch” them to do anything within their living space, they are comfortable with what we ask of them and therefore safe to be around. They come and go as they please and they associate people with nice things happening.

In the past I was a drill sergeant, my first instinct around any horse was to back them out of my space and chase/shove them away if they tried to engage or happened to step towards me without me asking them to. I didn’t even really think about it, its just what I did out of habit. If a horse didn’t like something I was doing I would keep doing it until they gave in. My horses didn’t enjoy hanging out with me very much and when given the choice would leave as they expected me to hassle them.

I don’t really put a lot of importance into “personal space” with my horses anymore, sure I ask my horses to move a little if they’re in the way, but I enter their space sometimes and other times they enter mine, it is no problem. If I don’t want them to in that moment I simply quietly ask them not to or I disengage with them, I don’t need to push them around and make them stand to attention. When I first meet a horse now I see if they want to engage with me, I don’t insist on it and I don’t feel entitled to their bodies. This has kept me safer than any of my old “teach the horse to respect you” training ever did, because the horses feel safe around me and I also don’t put them in situations that set them up to fail.

We can absolutely teach boundaries and leading positions without having the horse feel like the space around us is lava and if they dare to slip into it they’ll be met with a flag/stick/rope waved up into their face.

Its interesting how often I meet new clients and they apologise for their horse engaging with them by perhaps nuzzling or nudging them while we’re chatting because they’ve been told by others that it is so rude. I have to explain it is absolutely fine, it is not rude and the horse is just feeling frustrated or anxious, perhaps we step away and stay out of their space while we chat. We’re all so indoctrinated into thinking any sort of interaction not on our terms is rude and dangerous, its not. It is completely normal for horses to interact with their environment and not stand like robots.

Our habits can be so hard to break, especially when they come from a place of worry about being out of control or hurt, but we can’t expect our horses to be relaxed and feel safe around us if every step out of line is met with a harsh correction.

Have a think about this next time you’re leading your horse. How aware are you of what you’re doing? If your horse stops to look at something, do you just pull or do you perhaps yank sharply to get their attention? Could you maybe pause with them and leave slack in the rope and give them a moment? When they’re ready could you invite them to walk on with you with the gentlest pressure you can and release for one step? Can you recognise when you’re feeling stressed or frustrated around your horse and stop and take a deep breath before you react?

The more consistently gentle and predictable we are around our horses, the safer they will feel around us and the softer and safer they will be to handle. Don’t just train for compliance, consider how your horse is feeling always. The more we train with the horse’s emotional state in mind, which means considering the horse’s needs outside of the training too, the less we ever need to “get into it” with horses.

If you have any stories of becoming softer and changing your perspective with your horses I'd love to hear them. 🐴

Pictured is my dad doing some quiet training getting Dan used to going in a stable again after 10 years of living out.

21/10/2025

Good god 😲😲😲😲😲 Think they do one in menopause size........

18/10/2025

Can you guess who this is?

18/10/2025

Pippi's first pony party 🥳 What a fabulous pony I have. A true delight 🤩❤️🤩❤️

16/10/2025

A few snaps from this morning 🌅