About Us

Ginette has been around horses for most of her life. She rode at riding schools during her childhood but stopped at about the age of 16. Once married she talked her new husband into going on a horse drawn carriage holiday which lit her passion for horses once again.

Several months later a 16 year old shetland arrived with a harness and trap! Another pony soon followed and she did much of her training with Clare Wigmore in Salisbury. She took part in carriage driving competitions around the south of England and eventually competed at national level. She always did well in competition as her pon4y really excelled in the dressage and cones phases of competition, and the cross country was always a challenge for a small pony!

One year she decided to have a go at showing, and in true Ginette style decided to start off her showing career at Windsor Great Park at the Annual British Driving Society Show where she was placed second in a rather large class of 18 entrants.

As her pony was quite small she decided that she needed to 'go up a size' if she was to compete further. On her quest to find the perfect driving pony she was introduced to the Icelandic Horse and is now the proud owner of 3 of them! In 2007 she went back to driving but for the last 12 years has ridden her horses, mainly hacking but coaching her daughter in endurance and Icelandic competition (her daughter has represented Great Britain twice in the Youth Cup for Icelandic Horses, in Germany and Sweden). She has cared for other peoples horses for many years, and has raised foals.

Ginette keeps her horses as naturally as possible, and is always willing to learn new ways of doing things. She has attended numerous TTEAM courses, is a Reiki practitioner and has done training in Photon Therapy. All her horses are barefoot and she has attended several Peter Laidley clinics, which is where she met Tracey and Neil. Ginette is always on a quest to to improve her knowledge in any way that she can!

Neil has been a horse rider and owner for 27 years. Primarily self-taught, his interest now is in classical dressage and getting his horse Ru sound enough to confound the expert sceptics and come back in to full work.

Neil was handed a rasp by his farrier and told to keep his laminitic pony's feet 'looking like that'. 20 years later a horse called Rupert and some gentle persuasion from Tracey convinced Neil that barefoot was a serious option.

He then met a hoof bloke called Peter Laidely who inspired him to carry on with his barefoot journey and training.

Neil's role in Barefoot Basics is to trim his own and Tracey's horses, plus a few friends, and to moan about the increasingly difficult cases that Tracey keeps finding to fix, while secretly relishing the challenge.

Tracey has been a horse rider and owner for 33 years. She started her riding career at the age of four by being plonked on a pony at a dubious riding school and going out for a hack on a lead rein. From then on it was a choice between ballet lessons and riding lessons, and the riding lessons won!! When she was 17 she left school, got herself a job and bought herself a horse, which quickly grew into a small herd. Several ponies were taken in for rehab and re-selling, but she quickly realised that letting them go was harder than sorting them out.

She has competed in a wide range of disciplines at a local level, particularly enjoying working hunter and cross country, she has also done quite a lot of in-hand showing, but gave up when the ponies were wearing more make up than the handlers.

Her horse owning and riding significantly changed in 2000 when she went on a riding holiday in Portugal, this was a classical dressage holiday on beautiful Lusitano and Lusitano/Arab cross stallions and geldings. From then on she was hooked on the classical way of training and riding and has attended five clinics with Marji Armstrong. Over the last couple of years her training has been with Peter Maddison-Greenwell of El Caballo de Espana, she is the organiser of the Hartley Wintney monthly clinics in the South.

Her interest in Barefoot began with an addiction to Internet forums, a book by Pete Ramey and a horse called Ru. Always a bit of a rebel, when the vet and farrier advised that Ru should be shot, she decided that there had to be something else out there.

She believes in a holistic approach to horse keeping and barefoot is a part of this. Her horses have been her teachers along the years, and she wishes she knew then what she does now!!

As part of her interest in continuing her barefoot training, she organises the Peter Laidely Hoof Care clinics in Berkshire.

Her role in Barefoot Basics is to look after the website, source the ingredients for our products and provide Neil and Ginette with a constant stream of horses for them to fix up.

She is about to start an Essential Oil Therapy and Kineseology course, which she hopes will help the horses in her care. Ginette is currently training her up to be her driving groom, but she gets a little bit scared standing on the back if they go faster than a walk!