Alicia Mitchell AANHCP Certified Practitioner Natural Hoof Care for the South East of England. Tel: 07912601604

As you may have guessed I have always had an interest of and a love for horses. I started riding at 5 yrs old and have been besotted ever since.

I first became interested in natural horsemanship by default when my step mother rescued an Arab stallion who came to us in quite a state. We lived in a 3 bed semi in a small town and Vesubion lived in the back garden whilst he recouperated, much to the neighbours amusement, and my amazement.

I would spend hours in his stable reading stories to him and grooming him. For a girl of 11 it was a dream come true.
When the time came to turn Vesubion out in the paddock he would look for and follow me. If I ran, stopped, turned, rested then he would do the same, those are memories that I treasure and marked the beginning of my contract with the horse.

So when Monty Roberts book came out 10years later I decided to follow his methods of horse training and learn about Join-Up as this was the way things had been with Vesubio.
I completed Montys course with Kelly Marks in 98 and went on to travel with the Join-Up Team in 2000/2001 in both the USA and in Europe.

So thank you Monty for openig the door that so many have now walked through.

However I'm not a horse 'trainer' at heart and whilst at Flag is Up Farm my attention was drawn to the Mustang sanctuary down the road.

I volunteered some spare time at Return to Freedom American Wild Horse Sanctuary and whilst I was there I whitnessed something that blew me away. It may sound obvious but ~ the horses were healthy!!
I had never met self maintaining horses before. Infact I had spent my entire life worrying about them and if I was doing a good enough job taking care of them.
To meet horses that had never been looked after, by anyone, confused, surprised and inspired me. How could such a thing be possible?
I had to learn more........

I came home and continued my work as a groom but this time with a mission, and as fate would have it I found the perfect job running a barefoot hunt yard in Dorset.
Sarah and Micheal Bell and their three wonderful girls gave me the prefect opportunity to apply my ideas and to be brave about what I had whitnessed in the mustangs.
It was an incredibly enducating time. Sarah has her own website dedicated to their unique yard and helping others to implement Successful-Natural-Horse Care. It's well worth a visit.

Taking ten horses of varying breeds and backgrounds barefoot was an incredibly trying time.

We had a vague idea about the type of trim we needed but had yet to learn about the calatogue of other factors that we would come across.

Needless to say we learnt as we went bringing in specialists and educating ourselves. It was by no means a smooth ride.
When we found something that worked we stuck to it.
I was so amazed at how the horses benefited and the knock on effect it had in their overall health,

I soon became a real bearfoot supporter and decided to look into becoming trained. By now I was totally convinced, it made sense, I wanted to reach more horses and spread the word.

The only books that made sense to me and spoke of the mustangs and their profound offering as model for the sustainable care of domestic horses world wide, I found in the words of Jaime Jackson namely The Horse Owners Guide to Natural Hoof Care.

I decided to go self employed and get out there where I could reach more horses.

I had no idea what exactly I was going to do but I knew it involved natural horse care.
It was a daunting prospect though, I was leaving a fantastic job, the best one I had ever had infact for an uncertain and an untrodded path.
I decided to apply to do the AANHCP training which required travel to the states, I had no cash but "where there is a will there is a way" it hapened anyway!
That was in 2005 and I have been trimming horses ever since.