Safety With Power Tools with Jim Apple - The Humble Hoof

0:00Welcome to the humble hoof podcast. My name is Alicia Harlov. This is a podcast for both horse owners and hoof care professionals offering discussions into various philosophies on the health of the hoof and soundness of your horse. Please check us out on Facebook or at the humble hoof.com. When I first got into hoof care, one of the first clinics that I did actually included the use of power tools. We used angle grinders to trim cadaver hooves. I never really adapted that into my practice. I still do what many call manual trims using nippers and a rasp and a knife. But there are a lot of people in the hoof care world that use power tools to approach their clients, horses, hoof care. Someone who is super proficient at using power tools and hoof care is Jim Apple. I've seen a lot of his videos on all different kinds of social media talking about not only the use of power tools and how they can help to improve your business, but also the safety around using these tools.

1:01I reached out to Jim to see if you would chat with me on those topics and he agreed. If you want to tell us a little bit about how you got into hoof care and your journey into that and where you are now. I didn't want to be in hoof care because that's what my dad did and my grandfather did and my grandfather and my fourth generation. But I wanted to be like a professional skateboarder and that didn't really pay a lot of money. So I thought I'd be a professional rock climber or a surfer and neither did that. But what I did find out when I was 14 that I was actually pretty good at it. And that's when I started working on horses. And as I got older I found out that hey, this gives me a little bit of money to a lot of bit of money and I can go do the things that I want and not starve to death and have money to buy food and not always ramen. So I got into it when I was 14. I turned 60 this year and I've been doing it for 45 years, 46 this year I guess and everything.

2:05So started in outside of Nashville, Tennessee and I now currently live in the Vard Beach, Florida. Wow. That's awesome. So did you learn it all as like a family business? Yeah, but back then in the 60s, 70s and 80s and stuff people didn't. There were very few people who were just horseshovers or fairies or whatever, right? So yeah, that was in addition to farming and working another job for my dad. But my grandfather, he farm full time. He worked for the government like during the depression building him. I think of him and my uncle Carl worked for the government working as a blacksmith and fairies repairing tools and shovels and pickaxes and I don't know whatever. And she and she and whatever livestock they had working during the depression. So I always thought that was pretty cool. I wanted to, like I said, I wanted to be anything other than this, but here I am all these years later.

3:06So yeah, and I love it. Yeah. And so is your business now primarily barefoot? Or do you do any shewing? I don't do any shewing. I quit shewing years ago. I was living in Connecticut at the time and working for a place called Old Sturbridge Village, where I was a full-time blacksmith there. And when I quit shewing, I had all my, that was started doing hook care in 1990, 1980, and started working at Old Sturbridge Village. Before that, I went to Kentucky Horseshoe in school, then moved up North and started working at Old Sturbridge Village. And when I quit shewing, I had all my horses and handmaids and that's sort of a big thing to people nowadays and stuff. But back then it wasn't such a big thing, but my blacksmith five days a week. And nobody knows that about me because they just look at me and say, oh, that's the barefoot guy or whatever. You know, so they have no idea that my family history or my history of working at museums.

4:06And I worked at three other, at three museums all in doing the exact same thing, dressing up in funny clothes and blacksmithing and talking to people. So all I do is barefoot now. And with some glue on here and there, but I just, I just work on backyard horses. And I'm happy with that. Yeah, and that's awesome. I mean, I grew up in Massachusetts. I saw them in Massachusetts. So I know Old Sturbridge Village, Connecticut's not too far. So that's really cool. I wonder if I ever went on a field trip and saw you like, however many years ago, that'd be so funny. Yeah, I had a gal that we were talking. She's like, oh my gosh, I remember you from when I was younger going to Old Sturbridge Village. So she says, I've got, I've got to get my pictures out. I probably have pictures of you. And which is sort of funny. But yeah, small world. Yeah. And so what made you make the switch to primarily barefoot in composites? Yeah. Well, if not prime, I don't do a lot of composites. But the switch was, and I don't have anything against shoes, plastic, metal,

5:09I don't, whatever you make them out of. You can make them out of leather. I don't care. But I had four horses at different places. And they all had shoe impackages for therapeutic and, you know, just problems. And, you know, you know, how do you, sometimes you get to the point where they say, hey, we're just, we're going to pull the shoes. And if, if, when you come back next time to do all the horses, if we still have this one, you know, you can just trim it. And so on all those four, those four different horses at four different places went back, trimmed them, went back, trimmed them, went back, and they got better. So I was thinking, well, that's weird. I'm doing everything by the book. And there's nothing wrong with doing everything by the book. But I did take notice that, that they got better. And I'm like, well, what if I hadn't done all that stuff? Maybe I could have, maybe that would have been the solution. And then I started thinking, well, maybe I was doing something wrong.

6:10So, and I just filed it away. And I moved back to Tennessee. And within days, people were calling me. And so I went out to work on the laminetic horse. It was really, really bad. Like, elf feet kind of a thing all the way around. And he says, oh, you're going to put special shoes on it. And I said, no, I want to try something different. And, and he says, okay. And I did it. I worked on that horse that got better to live like 19 years after that. And I just never looked back. But here's the funny thing. The last thing that I put shoes on was a team of oxen. Wow. So, and the first papers I ever had published was on how to, the history of oxen is a draft animal. And how to make and apply oxen shoes. That's amazing. So, but that's, yeah, I've been barefoot since 1994. Awesome. So, yeah. Yeah. And how I kind of primarily got to know who you were was through videos

7:12and posts on Facebook and TikTok and other social media. And I noticed that a lot of times you were, I mean, I, I don't use a grinder a lot where I am. But I noticed that you use a grinder on a lot of the horses that you work on. I really love how you show how calm the horses can be when you're working on them with a grinder. But also I've noticed, you know, the precautions you take and use that. And I, I would love to hear a little bit about that. Because I feel like it's becoming more and more popular to use power tools and hoof care, especially in, you know, dry environments. I went to go trim in California a few years ago for a week. And I, my wrists were killing me. So, I don't know how people do it out there. But yeah, I mean, I would love to hear, you know, how you got into using a grinder for hoof care. And then some of the precautions that you take as your, you're working with those tools. Right. So, I bought a grinder for my blacksmith shop, you know, working on metal and everything. And then I was going out to work on a laminated course and the feet.

8:13I've been working on it and just, just really struggling to take enough off the, the dorsal wall. And it was just always getting away from me. So I took an extension cord and took it there. This is in like 2000 and one or two or somewhere. I don't know. And put a flap disk on it, 36 inch flap disk. And it was like light bulb moment, right. And then, so I worked on a few horses under that, under with that thing, with the, you know, with the cord and everything. But then, you know, I came down to Florida. I didn't pick one up in years. I've been in Florida for, you know, years and years and years now. And I had a big draft horse out in the field. And no access to electricity. So I got a bought a cordless angle grinder and carried some batteries in a bucket and started trimming up that draft horse. And I'm like, man, that was easy. But I was still using a flap disk. And so, fast forward. I kept looking at these feet that people were posted on the internet,

9:16you know, on like Facebook and whatever, I'm like going, how in the heck are they getting the feet to look like that? I mean, it was just beautiful, right. And I couldn't figure it out. And my son, who works with me, like, damn, what's going on with these feet? I'm like going, I don't know. I said, they must be using some type of a sanding block or something. It's just crazy. And then, there was a guy who posted a photo of him holding a foot. And it looked like that. And in the background, it had an angle grinder. And I could see what kind of disk is that. So I called him up. And I said, hey, man, what kind of disk is on that? I'm a big call person guy. And so I call people all the time. People call me. I like that. So I said, what kind of disk is that? He says, oh, I'll hook you up. So he sends me a link. You know, five minutes later, I had ordered them in a back-and-pad. And I haven't looked back since then. And so, yeah, it was just, I didn't intend to use angle grinders all the time.

10:18And, but let me say, the reason why I was doing it was because we got a horse that we worked on. And he's got string halt. And he, I just had to figure out a way to trim him because I couldn't trim him when his leg was all locked. And so, because the owner said, hey, if you can't trim him, you know, he might not be here next time. Sort of like how I quit the shoe and chain, right? And so, got that set up, started using it. And I trimmed him on Wednesday, you know, four years later. And so, four years ago, I just went all in on it. And didn't really think that I was going to be the grinder guy kind of a thing or whatever. But, you know, I lost my wife to cancer two years ago. And she liked Vidio's. And she said I was just filling up her phone space. So she asked me to start doing social media posts. So I started filming stuff and putting it out there. And like I said, I hadn't looked back. I love it.

11:18It's so much, so much easier for me on your body. But there are things that we need to look at, like you say, and PPE is one of the things that I really, really reach about. I don't tell people what they should do. I just tell people what I do and hope that they pay attention. Yeah. And so, is that the primary way you trim now with a grinder? I have a pair of nippers. I have a lot of pairs of nippers. I got a shoe inbox in the blacksmith shop out back. And I rarely use them. So, be honest with you, if we got to use traditional tools, I tell my son to do it. But there is a difference between how your body moves when you use traditional tools and when you use power tools. So, the torque that you have, if you have a horse that just doesn't like, you know, horses respond better, in my opinion, to the angle grinder. Because they don't have the constant torque of your nip end or whatever.

12:20And I, a lot of people have contacted me and, you know, and messages or whatever and said, I think they like the vibrations. So, and they appear to. So, we're at 97, 98% of the horses that we do. We do with angle grinders. So, yeah. Wow. And so, it's, I mean, something I noticed, I have only used an angle grinder mostly to shape composite shoes when I was doing a lot of composite shoeing. And I've worked on maybe two horses with one. I feel less confident with it, so I haven't done it as much. But do you find that the angle grinder is really heavy? I mean, or do you use one that's more lightweight? Do you use one that's plugged in or does it have a battery? I know these are like kind of off topic in sense of what I wanted to ultimately talk about, but. Oh, we'll talk about it. Yeah. So, the ones that I use, I always, people ask me all the time, you know, and I've had thousands of people say, what are you using? And, and I use all the tools. I get, we live in America. So, I get them from a company called Harbor Freight.

13:20And I like them. The one that I use is their Herker Lee's brand paddle switch and cordless. And the reason why I like it is because it's paddle switch. You can let go of the paddle and it stops turning within a second or so. And it has a five-year warranty on the tool and a three-year warranty on the batteries. I mean, it's a no-brainer. You can buy two batteries, a charger, and the grinder for 150, 200 bucks or something like that. And especially if you get them on sale. But it really doesn't matter what tool you use. You know, I tell people if you have, if you already have a battery, if you're a wall person, then use the wall or whatever. But how much do they weigh? I weigh them with a battery and everything that I'm going to use. And they weigh about usually between three and 3.2 pounds. Which is really not that bad. To me, it's not. I mean, it's a lot of people, they're like, oh, they're heavy.

14:20And, you know, I use gloves. We can talk about that a little bit. But I use gloves that are grippy because I was born missing the tips of six fingers. And basically I'm missing P3 on everything but my thumb and pinkies on my hands. And so I use these grippy, grippy gloves and stuff. And I don't have a problem with it. Now, I have had some women and stuff say that their hands are too small and things like that. And so I get that. I suggest grippy gloves. But yeah, about 3.3 and 3.2 pounds for the ones. And that's across the board for everyone. I weight a bunch of them. Different brands and everything. And that's where they come in. It's fully set up and ready to go. Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound that bad. I mean, I'm sure that you have to kind of build up the muscle memory and get your arm stronger to hold that for however long. But do you find that it takes you less time? Or is it just less fatiguing on your body to use the grinder?

15:21Well, yeah. So because I'm sort of nerdy when it comes to things like this, I took and went back and watched old videos of me using traditional tools and counted the motions, the number of motions that I made from picking the foot up to finishing it one foot. And then I did that over and over and over. That's a traditional way. And then I did it the same thing from beginning to end on one foot and it cuts it by a third. But what's interesting about it is because you're holding a rasp is 14 inches usually with a handle. It takes it out to 16. So you're spreading your shoulders farther apart. An angle grinder is right in front of you and you have more fluid motions. It's not like a push pull, push pull kind of a thing. It's just glide that sucker around. So I do believe that there's less stress on your shoulders. And that's one of the things is hoof care professionals that we have problems with.

16:21You know, shoulders and stuff. So if I can eliminate that by thinking logically, then I'm going to go with logic. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is actually convincing me to try it again. I have a grinder, although in mine is like, there was a guy that used to make grinders specifically for trimming and he doesn't make them anymore. Yeah. But one of my clients happened to have one and she gave me it. And it is one that you, it's actually very light. It's one that you do plug in, which always made me a little nervous to have something that I had plugged in when I was working on the horse. But it is one of those paddle switches so that when I let go, it stops and I also liked that too. But I mean, so I've, you know, I guess I assume that a lot of people who use these power tools might not think of the different considerations when you pick up these tools. And I know that you mentioned gloves, but I would love to hear a little bit about like, what are your preparations before you start working with the horse with a grinder? What are some things you do to protect yourself?

17:21Or even protect the horse from having any kind of, you know, issues pop up? Yeah. So let's just start with how I approach a horse. So I just figured the horse is trained. Right? And, and a lot of people say, oh, my horse won't tolerate that. It'd be in a different county. And I'm like, one statistically, you're probably wrong. And I don't want argue with them. And sometimes they will. But in a fun way, I'll say, yeah, let's find out. And like I did five horses yesterday, and they never seen an angle grinder. And it was like, game on. Let's do it. They liked it. And the woman couldn't believe it. And I posted a video of it. And the five horses, when they, the angle grinder tuts, and they're like, oh, what is that? Okay. It's all good. But so I don't go up and show them the tool. I don't run it in front of them. I just, I do what I always tell people whatever you do do within 10. So I just go in like it's just an everyday thing. And they pick up on that, I think.

18:23And so that's what I do first. But before as far as trimming goes, but as far as getting ready for trimming, the first thing I do is put on a respirator. And a lot of people say, I'm claustrophobic. I don't like a respirator and all these other things. But I grew up on a working farm, like I think I said earlier. And the old guys, you know, people who had farmed and plowed and worked in the fields and all of that. When they got old, you know, a lot of times they would go to the doctor and they would doctor say, oh, you just have farmers long. And so I started thinking about things like that and looked into, you know, in doing those searches ran across silicosis, which is a lung disease. And it's actually really, really prominent in the stone countertop business. And it's from inhaling dust. So I was just wearing nothing. And then I'm like, oh, this isn't good.

19:23And then I started wearing a neckgator. And then I'm like, oh, and this isn't good. And it's better than nothing. But it's, you know, and then I got a quality respirator with cartridges, but it was black. And I looked like Kylo Ren from Star Wars or something. And then so I decided that I was going to use something because people were watching my social media. I wanted to be where people would see what I was wearing that got these big pink discs on the side. So what I finally ended up with, and then I wore safety glasses too. So we'll just talk about what I have on my head. And an ear mousse. I wear these ear protectors because they are a little bit loud. But what I ended up with a mask was from a company they called 3M. And I used their rugged comfort quick half face piece respirator. And what I like about it is the, a lot of people say,

20:23well, when I use a mask, it fogs up my glasses if you wear glasses. And I wear glasses to protect my eyes. I don't wear safety glasses. It just wears sunglasses. And I really have any problems. But I could be a little bit, a little better about that. But it discharges down. So it doesn't go up. So when you breathe out, it goes down. It doesn't go up into your glasses and fog them up. And then with what I use for that respirator, because I don't do a lot of glue and things like that, I just use a 3M cartridge particulate filter for dust. And it's the number of it's 2091p100, which means that's about as good as it's going to get for dust. And then if I was doing glue or things like that, I probably, they have a 3M has one called the 3M 6,0003. And that's for organic vapors, solvets and paint. So those fumes is what worries me about that.

21:24And that's not a long, necessarily a long problem. That's a brain problem. And, you know, taking in fumes. And I did some research on that. And my research took me to the printing industry. And it's pretty, pretty wild when you start looking and go down those rabbit holes and stuff. But yeah, so protecting my lungs is a big thing. But my son's got a full beard. And he can't get a respirator of the seal around his beard. So they make full head mass. But I have enough people make fun of me already. And so haters are going to hate kind of everything. But so like I said, it's not my favorite thing. But it's better than nothing. But I think a lot of people use the neckgators because they want to be able to talk. And I think what's more important than talking to people is showing people that we actually care about our health

22:26and we care about your health. So I have a thing that when people text me or message me on Facebook, they say, hey, what are you using? I've got files for the UK, Australia, all over the world. And I send, I source these things locally for them so they can find it. So in America, it's got all these links to everything that I personally use. And it's pretty cool because if you go across and you watch videos of people, you could just put an angle grinder, hoof care, or something like that. The majority of the people are going to be using out there are going to be using the Harbor Freight tools and stuff. And everything. It's either because I've sent them something I think or they just figured it out on their own. So it's sort of weird. 46 years ago, who would have ever thought that I would have got people to do it? So as a result of me giving that information of people,

23:27I just really felt that I need to make a statement from where I stand. And we need to protect ourselves. And because it will only get one set along. Right, exactly. And I was thinking when you mentioned that you were wearing earmuffs, and I know that that's definitely important, my right ear is basically deaf. And so I am very aware of my hearing and when things are overly loud and how I want to protect my hearing. But do you worry about not being aware of something that could be happening around you that while you're working? Or is it pretty contained like the environments that you're in? Well, the environments that I work in are, you know, sometimes it's on a good day. It's contained on a bad day. It's just normal, you know. And normal is anything can happen. So I don't think that the audible clues, I mean, yeah, I guess if I'm going to hear a dog bark

24:27or, you know, I can hear, it's just cutting out the really, really, it's cutting out of the really, really high stuff. But I don't think that it, I haven't run into a rat or had something bad happen. That doesn't mean that it couldn't. But they do make hearing protection that has noise canceling. So you can talk and it comes through. But as soon as there's anything over X amount of decibels, it'll go into protection mode. And those are fun. I've tried those, but they're pricey for people, you know. And I have a tendency sometimes to leave stuff at places. And if I leave it, it's going to be on a fence post or, you know, something like that or hanging on the fence. And, you know, it would be an expensive loss because those things can run up in the mining hundreds of dollars and everything. Right. So the ones that I use, they're like 12 bucks. So, off of Amazon.

25:28Oh, that's not bad. That's not bad. And you can use the ones that you put in your ears. So my ears are shot too. When I blacksmith, I use a lot of, I worked a lot on the horn and the anvil. And you just can't really, you can quiet, but it's still going to ring. So my left ear shot, and I'm looking into, maybe doing the hearing aid and stuff because it would be nice to not always have to say, can you say that again? Yeah. I know that feeling. Yeah. Oh, I bet you. So, you know, once again, we're trying to protect what we have. And so, and hearing is definitely one of them. I don't want to lose what more than I have. What I already have, I don't want to lose any more of it and everything. But, so gloves, you know, a lot of people just, we all, and that's another topic. You want to talk about haters and stuff.

26:28That's a good one. But, I used to use, when I first started using the angle grinder, just regular nitride gloves. Right? Because that's what I used trimming, with traditional tools. And then I'm like, going, hey, I just need to get something a little bit better. So, I started looking around, you know, at the auto park stores and different places like that. And I found these ones that have padding and rubber on the backs of them. So, I've probably bought 15 or 20 different pairs. And I've narrowed it down to two that I really, really like. And so, sooner or later, you're going to get hurt, trimming a horse. I don't care what you're doing. Sooner or later, you're going to get hurt, working, playing with the horse. You're going to fall off. If you're riding them, you're going to accidentally cut them. If you got a knife, it's just going to happen. So, if I can eliminate, myself getting cut, you know, because the angle grinder is moving at approximately 8500 rpm,

27:28you know, if the horse, if I'm trimming a back foot, because it's almost always the back foot, and the horse just sort of kicks back with his foot, a lot of people trim one handed. I rarely trim one handed. But if you've got it in one hand, the horse kicks back, it can hit your, your thumb, or your, because your holding, it's going to hit your thumb, or your forefinger, along the edge and everything. So, how do I know that can happen? Yeah. And if I hadn't had those gloves on, then probably would have been a lot worse. And what kind of gloves were they? The gloves that I personally use are from a company called Cummins. They're work gloves. And I think they're called the pro-mechanic gloves. And it's got little grippy things, sort of like, you know, I was talking about my hands and stuff earlier. They're sort of like a soccer goalie glove, or a football wide receiver glove, or whatever those guys are called. It's grippy, but it has padding on the back.

28:29And there's a nut, I like that when it's, those are from Cummins. And the another one that I have is from a company called Cool Job, and they have what's called Impact Resistant Gloves. And those really cover the backs of your hands, but they just don't, and I like the way they fit. And that's a good choice for an all-arounder for anybody because they come in small, medium, large, and extra large. I wear a large, but you would probably wear a medium, you know, and so they have a lot more range that's going to fit more people. I wear it in the, in the Cummins work gloves. My number ones, the extra largest don't fit me. So the largest fit me perfect. They fit me like a glove. But what I do on those, though, is I take UV resin and I fill in the spots that I think need extra protection. Or, you know, if I get my glue out of the fridge with a new pair of stuff

29:30and spend the dollar put a new tip on it, and I'll doctor up the gloves where it might, it rarely happens, right? But I just sort of try and get ahead of the game. I've got a scar down the back of my hand. On my left side, where a little miniature kick back on me, and it pushed, and I was using it with one hand, and it pushed my, pushed the top of my hand into the, into the grinder, and just happened in a split second. Didn't know it was going to happen. I looked down and I'm like, oh, wow, that's not good. Yeah, and I was going to ask if you've had any kind of close calls with using it. I mean, I guess this is true for any, like I've had close calls with using traditional tools, so it's not just with the power tools, but I was going to ask if there's anything that you can think of, like a situation where you had a bit of a close call. Well, I mean, so one of the, I'm just going to roll with, like one of the things that I have people tell me all the time, and I don't do it, and we can throw this in with PPE, I don't tie the tail up, and I've had that have,

30:31I've had it get caught in the, in the, in the, in the, in the desk, one time, and all the years I've been doing it, and I mean, we do, I think I did, last year, like, 2200 horses or something, right around there, with a grinder, and, and been doing that, at least that many for the past four years, but in all the time, that I've been using it, one time, and that was years ago, that it got hung up in the tail, and the horse didn't really care, and it's just like, a simple shit, and then, and then, oh, okay, just take it out. Luckily, it was a paddle switch, right? Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, so, but I think if you, you know, the problem that we have, is we don't get hurt by the horses, that we know are gonna hurt us, we get hurt by the horses that we think are gonna, perfect little angels and things like that. So, so it's,

31:31you just have to sort of, go into can get hurt in any given situation and what can you do to protect yourself? So those are the things, you know, as far as the grinder goes for the most part and then a lot of people, we talk about shoes and things like that and if anybody's watched my videos they know that in the summer a lot of times we're crops with socks and stuff and then people will give me their opinions on that and it blows up my social media and I don't even mean to do it. I just put a video up and it goes down my shoes and they, my crops and they lose their minds. But crops, wire crops worse than a pair of cowboy boots, you know, crops have foam. Cowboy boots have, you know, like two mill or whatever of leather and then rubber soles. Why is that the gold standard, you know? So I tried metatarsal boots and things like that. Area makes a really, really nice tennis shoe that I like and I wear

32:35those sometimes. But lately I've been wearing cowboy boots and I got stepped on two weeks ago and if I had the crops on them just pulled it out. Yeah, it's true, I didn't think of that. And I'm not recommending people to use crops. I'm just saying, think about what you're doing. So if you're going to hate on me, you better be perfect and if you're perfect you've already thought, you've already thought about, you've already thought about that cowboy boots are not any better than crops when it really comes down to it. But I like the ones, the problem when we wear, you know, protective shoes around horses is they're usually bulky. And so I'm more likely to trip over my foot trying to get away from a horse, you know. And how many times you answer me this, how many times you've been working on a foot and that split second, you just move it out of the way. I mean, it happens all the time. We got lightning reflexes. It's just a weirdest thing. How we, you know, you just pick, at some point in your career you learn to get your foot out from under a horse.

33:38Yeah. And I do still, I wear composite toe shoes, but I was talking to Nick Hill, I don't know a few years ago, because he wears barefoot shoes and they're like the five finger kind or whatever the toe shoes. And I was asking him how, you know, because he feels comfortable wearing them. And he said that it allows him to, he feels that he has like, you're saying better reflexes in those, because it can feel the ground better. He can, you know, he feels like he has, you can move faster with those. And I haven't tried it mostly because I get nervous, but I could see where he's coming from in the sense of, you know, if you're, if you're able to kind of like feel the ground, be in your own body position and aware of your body better than you're going to move faster. And if they're not as heavy, I mean, for sure, I say that my composite toe shoes are heavy. They're definitely not, you know, the, the lightest weight things. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the, well, you know, I was talking about the tips of my fingers. I couldn't wear those five toe shoes because I'm missing a big toe and some other

34:39chose and stuff. I was born with a thing called amniotic bands. And where these little stuff wraps around your, the tips of whatever it wraps around. In my case, it was the fingers and stuff. But yeah, I would, I wouldn't be able to fill those out like Nick. But I think that we just, really, we had to, we just had to think about it, you know, like in Florida, man, all the Florida hoof care people, the majority of them wear hey dudes. Right. And, you know, and it's just like, they're, I'm like, everybody's like, I wouldn't wear those and like, they're comfortable, you know? And like I said, I think it's just what you are comfortable with, you know? And if you are comfortable with, and what you get used to, right? How many of us we, we have a rash that we, that's our rash. That's what we're going to use, right? And we, we have our chaps. That's what we're going to use. And we have our, you know, hoof night. That's what we're always going to go back to and the same thing with shoes because, you know, I think it's that fight or flight, you know, we got

35:41we got to feel comfortable or when we're in getaway mode. Yeah. And, but, but I just think that, you know, we can't help horses. And I think that, you know, at the end of the day, I think that's what, what makes us do what we do because I don't think that we would do it if we, most of us wouldn't do it if we didn't love it. And, and, but I think that we just got to go out there and take care of ourselves because we can't help the horses if we're busted up. And, you know, a lot of times people will put on, you know, this happened to me or that happened to me, terminal horse or shielding a horse or whatever. So I decided, oh, this will be fun. So I went online and found a a medical intake form with the human facing forward and the human facing backwards. And I put dots all over there where I had, where I had scars or had been hurt, you know, like inside of my thighs from nails and, you know, on the side of my head from getting teeth kicked out. And then

36:45down at the bottom of it, I listed, I ran out of space, but I listed a bunch of stuff that it happened to me. And then at the bottom, at the top of it or at the bottom of it, it says, I'm a failure. And, but one of the things is if you don't mind, I won't talk about that. I think I'm trying to get everybody in the same room and get us all to think. And I'm really just leaning towards lift care provider. And right now that usually means somebody who's doing barefoot or composite, but that's what we all do. So I think if somebody says, I'm a failure, you know, that means that they're over in, in that room. And if we say that that we're a lift care providers or barefooters, that puts in a different room. I'm really one of the things that I've been focusing on in the past couple of years is how can we get people into the same room and start having conversations? You don't have to agree with me. I don't have to agree with you, but we can still talk. And I just think that that's a better, we don't really have any organizations. We have

37:49the AFA, which is a great organization, and we have the IAPF. And I'm on the continuing education committee with the IAPF and a lifetime member of the IAPF. It's a great organization. And we have a lot in the IAPF. We have a lot of, we have a lot of barefooters. You know, I'm going to put them in a room. We do have a lot of barefooters. But they they they we come together under that and we talk about different things. So it's I but I think if we all just say if there was an organization that got out there and had the criteria to credential or certify someone and they changed their name and they put hoof care providers in there. That would be a win for the industry. Yeah. And because it's it separates us. And and I don't I don't think it's changing. I mean, you've been in how you've been doing this for how many years? I started truing my own horse in 2015. So just over 10 years of

38:55you know, just using tools. But yeah. Okay. So 10 years, it's changed, right? Yeah. Yeah, it has. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And I think it's for the better. But sometimes you see a lot of stuff. It's like, oh, whoa, that's that's, you know, we're we're going backwards in our thinking. But I'm my one of my things is how can we all get the same same room and and you know, share information with people and get the messages out to the masses and horse owners, you know, shooters, tremors, you know, gluars, you know, it doesn't matter. The guy at the the guy at the grocery store who stocks the shelves who follows your, you know, your podcast or my videos and stuff. How can we inform them and make them know more about something that they didn't they didn't know about, you know, how can we have people come in who are the experts and open up their minds and say, Hey, I didn't know that. That was cool. I'm glad I showed up. So yeah, absolutely. And actually, I mean, I think we could talk forever and I would love to continue this conversation and

39:58do more episodes with you. My recording device is blinking saying it's low battery. So before it guys, I was wondering, you know, do you have any sort of like last minute advice for hoof care providers or horse owners when it comes to either, you know, their safety or using power tools or anything that we talked about today? Well, one thing I tell people, you can feel free to contact me through social media. And if you find my phone number calming, I'm I just started today. I work nine days a month. So Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, three days, three weeks in a row. And then I have the rest of the time off for me time. I like to fly fish and stuff. So in between all of that, you can call me and ask me, but I would say, don't be scared to try something different. You know, tradition is peer pressure from dead people. Come on, y'all, we can try different things and survive probably. But be safe about it. Just be safe about it. And so yeah. Yeah, well, I really appreciate your time. And I would love to connect again about some of the

41:00other stuff that we talked about, you know, before this call of different topics. And I really, really appreciate you being willing to share your your knowledge with other people. And I love all the posts that you do. So keep doing that. And yeah, thank you again. I appreciate it. Thanks for calling. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course. Have a good rest of your day. Yeah, you can. Bye. Bye. I always say that I'm slightly more hoof upsets than the average person. And chances are, if you're listening to a hoof care podcast, you are too. So we should probably be friends. Feel free to find me on Facebook or email me at the humblehuff at gmail.com.