A: Many times, you can give the customer instructions for helping its feet, such as keeping the horse in overnight or applying thrush medication. But the client may not always follow through.

I find at the barns that have help, you need to go to those people, too. Oftentimes, you may tell the customer what needs to be done, but they forget to tell their help the instructions. Or the customer tells the help, but they explain the details incorrectly. Usually you’ll find that the help is only going to do what they’re told or what they’ve been shown by the owner. You should go to the help directly for what you want done for the horse.

Show the help what they need to do and explain when they should do it. Hopefully by doing so, you will get the message across and improve the likelihood that these instructions get carried out.

— Mike Landolifi, Sparr, Fla.

Relate To Them

A: You can’t just explain to clients how to take care of feet in these cases. I find that clients need to see results before they will change. Unfortunately, they won’t run out there and take thrush medicine, pick the foot up and spray it just because you tell them, “This is what you need to…