Trying to Gentle And Trim My Own Donkey’s Hooves- First Steps

I’m just about done with my course by Holistic Hooves and will soon move on to 1:1 training with Megan Hensley of Holistic Hooves.  Along the way, I’m working on trimming different donkeys and figuring out where I can gain experience from experts.  I also pay attention to my own donkey’s.  I remember that one of them was wild a year ago and the other is just two years old, I’ve got more work to do gentling my donks.  One of the steps in this path is working with them enough to get them to allow you to lift their hooves for cleaning and eventual trimming.  We’re not there yet, but making headway.  Last week I worked with both donks, giving them assurance and scratches as I started to work on getting feet up and then back down….all the while with neither donkey on any sort of lead or restraint.  I was amazed to be able to get two of micki’s feet up and be able to to clean AND hold them long enough to photograph them.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t in the mood for the back legs to come up, so I only brought up the front legs.  More amazing was my work with Courtney D. Buttercup.  A year ago she was completely wild.  I brought her home from BLM Ridgecrest in late October/Nov and I’ve been working with her since.  But I’m not as consistent as I should be, so the work has been done in fits and starts, not great for the animal who needs trust and consistency to start mellowing out.  But on this day last week, I was able to get all FOUR legs up long enough to at least look at the hooves and two of the hooves stayed up long enough to get photographed and cleaned.  What a huge day that was, I’m still so stoked that we go to that point and I’m able to translate that experience and confidence into our next round of hoof cleaning and potential trimming.

Below are two of my hoof photos, marked up the same way my instructor does them, for my own study and validation.  I know what work needs to be done on the hooves, I just need to be able to keep the hoof up long enough to get that work done.

Trying to clean and trim the hooves on my own animals might be the best teacher I could find, but I would not have had the confidence or hoof knowledge without the course I’ve taken.  There’s alot more to donkey hoof trimming than it looks like in the Youtube videos and I acknowledge that I’m taking it slowly.  Trying to gentle and maintain trust with the donkey’s is important and requires more consistency and patience.  But the gentling process has not been easy or fast…and I’m not done yet.  But I also don’t mind writing about the good, bad and ugly that we’re going through with the process.  In doing this course and starting to clean and trim hooves, I’ve realized that it’s something that I could probably do to start helping to generate income for my family and I might be good at it.  So I’m going to keep getting educated by experts on donkey feet and keep helping out folks who run certain rescues.  Keep reading….I’ll keep writing-