Falling Apart or Coming Together

2026 appears to be a big year me! Through nobody's fault but my own I managed to single-handedly run my two businesses into the ground and land myself in world of financial pain. Looking back out over the wreckage I see so many moments where I could have done differently, behaved differently, but I chose to keep burying my head in the sand until one day I was so far behind on my commitments that I packed up the ute and drove away. So begins a new chapter of my life.

I don't consider myself a bad person but it seems sometimes that when it comes to finances you're either in the right or in the wrong, and I am in the wrong. My ambition got the better of me, I over-extended and at the same time lost the fire to keep on going. The challenges outweighed the rewards. Perhaps I fall nicely into the category of "burnt out" trying to keep up by sleeping less, not eating well because it slowed me down. I found ways to distract myself from the impending doom,the inevitable failure I could see looming on the horizon.

The money dried up but the demands didn't. I had to start prioritising me, choosing to let go of the worry, the guilt and shame of letting everyone else down so I could eat well, keep my energy up, and keep the ute on the road. For the first time in a long time, I was dead broke! At one point having just $20 in the bank with no certainty of when the next load of cash would come in, or from where.

The day I packed up the ute and drove off I went to the only place I could think of, a horse sanctuary near Narrogin that I had started volunteering at around 2021/2022. The owner allowed me to camp out. Fortunately the ute was prepared for decent off-grid living so I didn't need much, just somewhere to roll out the swag and access to water. I had the space to lick my wounds while being able to care for the horses I have been working with for the past several years.

It was here, at the sanctuary, that my journey into trimming began. I didn't come out here with the intention to trim, I just wanted somewhere I could escape to regularly, away from the city and my business, to spend time with horses. It was on my second visit to the sanctuary that the owner put a rasp in my hand and so it begun.

My Horse Journey

My horse story began later in life than most in my mid-late 20s living and traveling abroad. Starting in Bude, Cornwall where I started caring for a cheeky New Forrest Pony named Rupert, a retired Thoroughbred named Red, and a couple of Welshies. I started learning to ride here, how to feed them, halter them, tack them up. I made mistakes, learnt fast and fell deeply for horses finding ever more resources for learning about them. The owner didn't want me riding on my own but was happy for me to take Rupert for walks through the narrow country lanes which I enjoyed immensely. Without knowing what I was doing then, I would "test" his responsiveness to me. Walking with him, then I'd jog for a bit and he would trot alongside me. I'd come to an abrupt stop and he would stop next to me. He was paying attention and I enjoyed just being with him.

My time in England came to an end, and so did what I could learn about horses in Bude. I found a riding/agistment centre in Portugal, north of Faro in Loule looking for live-in volunteers. Here I had more opportunities to ride a wider range of horses with the owner and her guests. Everyday I helped muck out the stalls, turned out the horses, groom and tack them up ready for whatever the day was to bring. It was here that I experienced a canter for the first time, jumped, swam, learnt more about general horse care. Mostly a traditional English style of horsemanship which I was starting to distinguish from other approaches through my never-ending reading of all things equestrian.

From Loule I ventured north into the Alentejo, to a small town that I remember being called Santa Clara but I can't seem to find it so I must have had the name wrong. I was one of three people in the town that spoke English, and the only native English speaker. Here I lived with a Dutch woman deeply immersed in a more Western style of natural horsemanship. Bridles and bits were replaced with rope halters and neck ropes, petit English saddles replace with chunky Western saddles.

The gap between Santa Clara and the sanctuary near Narrogin was about 5 years. In that time I had little to do with horses. When I got back to Perth around 27 I went to Uni to study sustainability and started my business growing microgreens straight out of that. I had little time for horses and they slowly crept beyond the periphery of my life.

I'm not sure what brought them back into frame, but I found myself wanting to be around them again, so I looked up the sanctuary, reached out and we find ourselves back to the rasp being put into my hand and the beginning of my journey into trimming.

Alan taught me all he knew, his approach. I filled in the gaps from books, my own research and experiments grounded in observation with the herd. None of the horses had particularly bad hooves which gave me a lot of freedom. I was able to try things and see them change over the next 2-4 weeks and then try something else to see the affect. If I missed something, or didn't take enough off I was able to catch it quickly and correct it. I was able to see how the hooves changed through the seasons, how they differed in the wet to the dry.

Overall I would describe my approach as conservative, aiming to only remove what you would expect to have been removed naturally if they had the terrain and lifestyle of the wild/native horses that inspire the barefoot approach.

Falling Apart

Since packing up the ute and driving away I have had a lot of time to reflect and think about how I got myself to where I am currently. The decisions made,the decisions avoided. I still have the moments that the guilt and shame overwhelm me, but there are also the moment where I realise that I am perhaps exactly where I need to be, perhaps even where I deeply wanted to be.

There was a lot of unhappiness and loneliness in the last few years of my business. I kept on going largely pushed by the business I had built and the commitments I had made to others, my customers and clients. In a way the business had started to run me, rather than me running the business. I'm not stoked with how it all went down but I often wonder if it was necessary, needed, for me to make the change and to gain new insight about me and business.

As everything was crumbling and I started letting the people closest to me know what was happening, someone said to me that they hoped I found my footing soon. I went over this sentiment a lot, pondering if I had really lost my footing, or if perhaps I was finding it. Perhaps I had lost it long ago and this transition was actually me finding it again. Maybe my life wasn't actually falling apart, maybe it was coming together into something new, something better.

Coming Together

In October this year, 2026, I will be furthering my trimming education with a formal 12-month training with Australian Certified Equine Hoof Practitioners (ACEHP). My hope is to trim full-time and be surrounded by the horse world, to help and support horses as it seems they have helped me. Since first being handed that rasp, my curiosity and interest in not only the hoof but whole horse care has continued to grow.

I have some pieces to pick up, some wrongs to right which will come in time but for now I am happy with where I find myself and this new path and perspective. I'm entrepreneurial at heart, equipped with new insights and experiences that will no doubt prove useful in this new direction. I have a much better feel for the type of life and business I want and how to do it. I have new people in my life that have allowed me to open up, rekindling parts of me that I thought had died off long ago.

I'll be sharing this new journey here more as an open journal, a creative outlet. As I continue to learn and uncover lessons about horses, myself and life in general I will capture them in written form.

For now I'll sign off, I have horses to feed!