Boot Scoot 'N'---Part of Our Team            

Our program is multifaceted and we have no paid staff. Everything that we do is done by volunteers. On rare occasions we have to reach out to professionals for service and products that we cannot produce in house. I work hard to keep those occasions to a minimum, but there are times when I run into situations way beyond my field of expertise.

 Daddy is a trained farrier and blacksmith. I have never made shoes and it has likely been nearly fifty years since I have put a shoe on a horse. All of our horses are barefooted, and we use trimming techniques rooted in the teachings of Pete Ramey. This summer Audrey and I participated successfully in the Old Dominion Endurance event and are getting ready to go out this week to the Iron Mountain Endurance event. 

 Such events require safe, reliable hoof protection, and that is where Morgan Reid came in. She is a firefighter, a farrier and Hampton Roads Scoot Boot Dealer. I knew nothing about hoof boots except that we had a very short deadline coming up to get well fitted hoof protection on the horses. Other options fell through before I heard of Morgan Reid and Scoot Boots. She came out, explained the boots and fitted the horses for a set. It turns out that Colonial Spanish horses have another trait that separates them from many modern horses. Holland was born wild on Shackleford Island and has incredible hooves, but those hooves are small compared to most modern breeds. Joey is a gaited Choctaw and his gaitedness has had an effect on the overall shape of his back hooves. The hooves are not defective, but they are not typical of what one would find on a Quarter horse. Morgan put in a rush order to get boots that would fit Joey and came out early to get them on him. 

The boots took us through the Old Dominion event where we came in around the middle of the pack, successfully completing a fifty-five-mile ride on horses who had never before seen a mountain on trails that were so rocky that until doing so, I did not think any horse could trot on. Morgan wanted to know how the boots worked for us and even though we completed the ride with the boots still intact, she wanted to try another style boot on Joey to seek an even better fit. She did so at her own suggestion at no extra cost. She made another trip out last week to upgrade the boots to make them even more secure. Again, at no extra cost. 

 The Scoot Boot product is great. Morgan Reid is a skilled professional. Those two things matter. But there is something about this experience that matters more than either of these things to our program. She was more than simply a vendor. She was more than simply a skilled professional. She became part of the team of people who make things happen at Mill Swamp Indian Horses. It is often, and accurately, said that there are no other programs with the scope and breadth of what we do at the horse lot. That is true because we have so many people who go the extra mile to make everything possible. Morgan Reid and Boot Scoot 'N' went that extra mile for us. You can find her facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093720715080