Holly met Lana, full name (Lightning Lana), in early spring of 2001, when Lana was 3. She was shopping for her first horse, and her her trainer had some mares for sale she had obtained from her breeder from the Badlands area of MN/MT,  who had a legendary stallion named Thunder, that Holly was familiar with.  Lana was his daughter, which made her the daughter of Lighting and Thunder, (a divine sign she was special).  She brought her home to her newly built farm in August of 2001 and was looking very forward to a lifetime of adventures.  

 

Everything went great until the winter of 2003, when Lana was 5. She suddenly came to a full stop when Holly asked her to trot, refusing to take any more steps. 

​She called the vet out, and the vet said she had contracted heels, and other than that, he could not find anything else wrong with her.  He said he was not sure why she stopped, but gave specifics on how to trim her feet involving egg bar shoes with pads for me to give to the farrier.   

​This lasted a short while as the trimmer was leaving her too long, causing her to trip and the shoes perpetually came off.  The entire thing was a nightmare.   She called a chiropractor, and she eventually got her back into the swing of things once they got back out onto the trail, so she thought.  She started using chiropractors for the long term, thinking her horse was just very sensitive and needed to be adjusted regularly.   ​​​Holly endured that trimmer as long as she could and eventually called someone else,  and so on and so on and so on for the next ten years....

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Throughout the next 9 years Lana did everything Holly asked her to do, albeit sometimes Holly would have issues with her "sucking back" when she asked her to extend the trot in her dressage lessons,  (this is completely obvious to her now, that it was because her front feet hurt,  but back then it wasn't),  and she would notice her rocking back when standing under the barn eaves. Once again Holly did not know the cause of these things, because when under saddle, she seemed normal, except for that sucking back thing in the dressage lessons once in awhile.  They took jumping lessons twice a week and were very active together, trail riding weekly for 2 hours at the walk trot and gallop, etc.

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Holly switched trimmers again in about 2011ish, when Lana was 14, and that's when things really went to you know where.  (She didn't realize the correlation then, but it is crystal clear now).  After an Eventing competition Lana was lame for 2 weeks.  Holly was devastated. This was the first time Lana had ever been actually lame. She brought it up to her trimmer, and he went into a long dissertation about how the hairline should be at 30 degrees, and the coffin bone should sit level, and that's about all that Holly could even understand, as it didn't make any sense and sounded like Greek to Holly.

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She was not happy with his answers, so she switched trimmers again, this time finding a wonderful woman named, Jamie.  Jamie was following a woman named, "Linda Harris" from Kansas, who called her teachings, "The Happy Hoof."  Jamie also seemed to be talking Greek at first, but she spent a whopping hour and a half to trim Lana's feet, (compared to 15 minutes with the previous trimmer), and she was measuring out everything very carefully before trimming.  

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in 2015, when Lana was 18, Holly had been working with Jamie for about two years,  when due to a divorce she was forced to leave her farm and find a place to go with her 2 horses and 4 barn cats, and for the most part, temporaritly shut down her decorative painting business.   ​She literally had no idea what she was going to do, when at this exact same time, Lana started breaking down. She came up very lame on the front right at the end of a trail ride, causing Holly to abort riding her at all.  She had no money, no income coming in,  no place to live and she had to somehow find the answers for Lana in the middle of all that, and to top it off a year after she had to leave her farm, Jamie was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, and died a few months later.  

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Holly was completely devastated at the loss of her great friend, Jamie as well as her beloved trimmer. No one except Jamie, (including Holly), had an understanding of where she left off. 

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No one could tell Holly exactly what was causing her horse to be lame.  Over the years she had had regular visits from the chiropractor/accupuncturist/veterinarian, lameness exams from 2 lameness specialists, body workers, energy workers, massage therapists, and 5 different farriers, and not one of them ever said they were sure the issues were being caused by something specific. Except for the one vet who said she had Navicular, (the type caused from arthritis of the Navicular bone), but we'll get to that.

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After Jamie died, she hired yet another trimmer/farrier.  She didn't improve, and in fact she was now un-rideable for 90% of the time and staying lame for a week after Holly tried riding her, which she tried to see if that would help her to improve, as she was still wondering what was wrong with her.  

 

​Holly decided to take her to another lameness vet, and this time made an appointment at the U of M with a lameness specialist.  He put her through her paces and didn't find anything else wrong with her (as usual), except he said she had Navicular.  He got that partially right. She DID have pain under her navicular bone, (Holly knows now, looking back on it), except the X rays didn't show any Navicular as he was describing (which was a honeycombing of the Navicular bone caused by arthritis), but he stuck with his diagnosis anyway, and told me to put her out to pasture with shoes on and ride her lightly,  and that she would only be doing downhill from there. 

 

​The entire time he was speaking it was all Holly could do not to scream, "I THINK NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  She knew that was incorrect.  BUT once again, he didn't know what he didn't know.  And what he didn't know was TACT, (then called "The Happy Hoof).

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Holly hauled Lana back home and thought and thought about what to do next. Life looked pretty bleak.  Her soulmate was in pain, and she could not help her, despite trying for three whole years to find out what was causing her lameness.  She was completely alone with no one to give her any answers.  She had been to all corners of the MPLS metro and still had nothing but unanswered questions. 

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In a desperate attempt to find someone to help her, she remembered "that woman from Kansas" named, "Linda Harris," and she looked to see if she could find her on Facebook, as she remembered Jamie said she was following her through a Facebook page. She found someone with the name Linda Harris from Kansas posting about horses and left her a message.  Initially she received no reply, and Holly didn't really know what to think, but at the time, she was so overwhelmed with life after the divorce, moving six times from 2015-2019, and starting a new business as a psychic/medium/intuitive wellness coach that she just threw that idea to the wind and kept going, hoping some time off would enable whatever was wrong with Lana to heal.

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Seven months later, Linda answered!!!!!  Holly was so surprised!  Linda said she had just seen the message and was very sad to hear of Jamie's passing.  She told Holly about her new Facebook Group, and asked her to send her some pictures of Lana's feet for her to look at. Upon seeing the photos, Linda started barking out orders to Holly, telling her what tools to buy and how to map out Lana's foot.  Holly was like, "wwwhhhaatt?"  She had no idea what was going on, but she followed the written instructions Linda sent her on how to mark up the foot, and instructed her to send pictures after doing so.  Holly then started doing some trimming in between when the trimmer came, and started working with the trimmer to follow Linda's instructions.

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Soon, the time came when Holly felt she was ready to take over trimming on her own, and since then, she has been the only person to trim both of her horses' feet. That was in early 2017.  

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Lana began to improve as Holly's knowledge grew, along with Linda's knowledge, as she was in the process of fully discovering the true foot of the horse and was passing on this information to her Cooperative Members.  They changed the name to "The Anatomically Correct Trim," and soon 100's of people were posting regularly, and we were all seeing positive results with our horses.  

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Lana became mostly sound again and Holly could resume riding her.  It was magical to be back on her back!  But there would still be times when she would be off on the front right again, and Holly thought, "this can't be from her feet, as I am fixing her feet!" So she was very confused, wondering if it was her knee, or possibly a meridian/nerve thing going on.  She was working regularly with a chiropractor/acuppunturist, trying to peel away all the layers to what was going on. She went round and round off and on for another 2 years, until September of 2021 when Lana suddenly went REALLY lame. Holly was crushed!  

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THIS was the turning point for Holly and Lana.  Holly was bound and determined to figure out once and for all WHAT was going on!!  She once again conferred with her Mentor, Linda, who conveyed that I needed to be doing some of the new things she had been discovering and having success with. 

 

Holly decided to make up her mind once and for all that the only thing wrong with this horse was her feet, and she took full responsibility finding out what was causing Lana's pain.  She started trying some new things, and  low and behold, after eight long years of on again off again lameness issues, Lana was staying sound most of the time!

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Holly was ecstatic!!  Lana continued to improve, and just one year later,  Holly and Lana, (now 25),  went on an eight day trip out to Lana's heart place where she was born,  by Medora ND in the badlands.  She never took a lame step the entire trip, and despite being the oldest of the three horses, she led the pack on the way back from the hardest trail we had ever ridden, (that was by accident), and the other riders had to ask her to slow to a walk so they could catch their breath!  ​​