Hello Anna Marciniak
Today I decided to use the method on trimming Rosie’s feet. Rosie has very crooked hooves. She was given to me when she was rescued and she had hooves that looked like clown shoes.
I had farriers that have given up on her, so I decided I needed to learn to trim. What a journey! She feels much better in herself and walks and sometimes trotts around but her feet are so compressed it is not funny.
I am in a special hoof trimming group and we had a video call for 3 hours this morning and it felt that it would be good to try and groove her hooves.
So this is what I decided to do today, groove one of her hooves and see how she goes with it.
The exercise: I set everything up for the trim. To trim her feet I need to allow 2 to 3 hours with lots of breaks in between for me as well as her. Today it was “just” grooving one hoof, so I doubted I would be the whole time of the exercise.
But the time flew away, I noticed that making a break to relax every 3 minutes was much easier on me and her, even though when I made a break before, I would stroke her, massage her but this time it felt she could enjoy it more and so did I. The intensity which I normally have when trimming was less. The grooving was something new for me so I took it ever so slow and careful.
She showed me that she has some release by not wanting to lift the hoof I was trimming after I did one groove. This is always a good sign I find that she wants to stand on that foot, there must be a release. I did not find a better idea to help her lifting the foot than the one I already developed by gently swaying her body and ask for the foot when it had the least amount of weight on it.
I am happy with the trim and hope she will find more release over the next couple of days.
The Worst / Best phases did not really vary much today.
I am hoping to catch up with you really soon now. 
Anna Marciniak Hello Petra Webstein, I think it’s a fantastic idea to trim your own horses. I am also very happy that you use the help of more experienced people, from time to time you can try to invite someone to see how you trim and to support you with his/her experience. From what you wrote, I can see that this may be a difficult case, but with patience, slowness and support of more experienced people I am confident that you are on the right path to support your horse. I also agree that trimming is not the best exercise for practicing the WORST/BEST techniques, however dividing everything into small bits – as you have noticed – can help a lot ❤️
Petra Webstein Yes, I agree that trimming might not be the best exercise however the situation called for this trim and the time restriction bundled it together so to speak. Still there were some good experiences from this, so for this time I am happy to have done it.
