Founder - What if your founder specialist is working with you and your farrier / trimmer remotely?
by Keith Seeley

The same practices mentioned above are valid for this situation as well. Keep logs, take pictures, note all details, and inform of any and all changes. When working remotely, it is vitally important to have good, clear, frequent communications. Without it, you’re working in the dark and your specialist likely believes that no news is good news. It is even more important to take precise pictures, capture all details in your logs and everyone involved with the horse must be in harmony with one another for the remote site assistance to work. Everyone’s input is important, be it the vet, farrier or the owner. Egos must be set aside and everyone must remember the purpose of everyone coming together is for the common good of the horse. Egos have no place here, only logic and attention to details. Oh, and an open mind always helps.

There will likely be consultation fees involved with working remotely with a specialist. This is a necessary evil of doing this type of job. Think of it like a help desk specialist working with you remotely to fix your computer. Working with a founder specialist is really no different. So, we apologize up front for this necessary evil. But thank you for understanding.

It is always a good idea to have your founder specialist pay a personal visit to you and your horse. The whole team should schedule to meet up at the barn and discuss the case, review any recent x-rays and evaluate the progress. It’s one thing for you to provide detailed logs, pictures and perhaps even movie pictures for the specialist to review, but it is quite another to get to meet everyone in person, scope out the situation first hand and even perform the work himself so that the rest of the team can see first hand what is trying to be achieved with the trim protocol. Again, there will be fees for performing this type of work, so keep that in mind. Don’t break the bank, but if you can, try to budget for it. The additional knowledge that can be gained by everyone working together side by side will be well worth the investment.