Vaughn Kenney, a farrier from Grande Prairie, Alberta, likes shoeing horses whose legs are coated in mud about as well as the next guy — in other words, not at all.

But Kenney also is a realist. He knows that no matter how often you ask a horse owner to make sure a horse’s legs are cleaned up a little for you when you arrive for a hoof-care appointment, there are going to be times when you’re presented with a horse whose legs look like they’ve just come from the swamp.

So Kenney has come up with a way to help his clients help him.

“I’ve made a tool to deal with the problem of having to handle wet and muddy feet and legs,” he says. “It is a simple design, yet works very well.”

The tool consists of two triangular, heavy plastic scrapers attached by a soft cord. The scrapers have a convex, a concave and a straight side that conform to the various planes and shapes that make up a horse’s leg. One side of each scraper is serrated and the other is smooth.

Kenny says the scrapers are used to loosen dry, hardened mud that cakes the legs. Once that is done, you take a scraper in each hand and use them as handles. You press the soft cord that joins them against the horse’s leg and push downward, stripping away the remaining dried mud and manure. Kenny says the tool will strip wet mud away in…