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Home > Articles > Giving Horses Their Feet Back
Giving Horses Their Feet Back
"This past Wednesday has marked in my mind a striking example
of what it means to expose ignorance and become engrossed
in continual thought about giving horses their feet back".
by Dr. Tomas Teskey, D.V.M.
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At a scheduled visit, with a very well-known farrier in my part of
the world, I arrived at the guest ranch housing 80 horses and thanked
the farrier for meeting with me to discuss our plans to try a new
trimming method on five or six horses at the ranch. We had
previously agreed to meet and "go over the trim" as desired by the
owner of the ranch--a wonderful woman with some insight and common
sense--I had done a dissection for her AND this particular farrier,
along with at least thirty other onlookers earlier this year.
I was unable to direct our meeting in the right direction, as I was
immediately bombarded by the farrier with direct questions about the
shoeing being done on the ranch: "...so if I nail a steel shoe on to
one of those horses out there, you think I'm hurting that horse...?",
he asked pointedly. Instead of asking him which type of damage he
would like to talk about, whether it be white line separation,
cracks, laminitis, navicular pain, dropped sole, contracted feet, bar
abcesses or thrush, I calmly said "yes". He turned to the owner
standing there with us and said "I quit", turned tail, walked to his
truck and drove away. If my tongue and lower lip wouldn't have been
on the ground, I guess I would have yelled at him to "get back over
here and discuss this like a man", but after being told later that he
has had several problems in the past with dishing out physical
violence, I suppose his getting away may have been OK!
Well, we were
all astounded, mostly me, that a 47 year-old man would walk away from
a discussion with a 34 year-old veterinarian, (and an account earning
him $35,000 per year), but once again I soon learned that these
theatrics really weren't unexpected...the man has historically been
short-fused. Though he called within an hour to apologize to the
owner for the "mix-up", he was unsuccessful in re-acquiring his job.
It's been several days now, and after visits with some folks like you
and others in the local horse world, I've reached a better
understanding of what we are meeting with every day we talk about the
horses we are trying to help.
This coming Wednesday, my team and I are meeting with the owner and
wranglers at the ranch to have another type of discussion: how to
get eighty horses out of shoes and on their way to better health and
longer lives. I've been all-consumed by this for the past few days
and am putting all of my positive energy in to this meeting. Though
I'll be mildly devastated if I am unable to propagate a change on
this ranch, I feel I have reached a new level of committment to share
with folks in the world what I feel they all ready know to be true--
that horses can walk on their own feet.
Tomas G. Teskey D.V.M was born in Fort
Collins, CO as his father was finishing veterinary school. He was then brough
back to the Dugas ranch in central Arizona where his family homesteaded in 1887.
He grew up with the animals and four brothers and sisters, and was off to college
in Prescott and then Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He then headed
back to his birthplace in Fort Collins to attend veterinary school at Colorado
State University with a new bride. Dr. Teskey and his wife came back to Arizona in
1995 with three daughters, and had one more daughter in 1997. He has been practicing
in the same county in Arizona since that time, and mostly working on horses and
other livestock. Dr. Teskey has attended both a two-day clinic and a 10-day groom
course of Martha's, and is working on implementing the Whole Horse Trim into
his practice as much as possible.
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