About Us Trimming Farriers Ron Aalders' Findings Martin Kenny'sFindings
Ron Aalders, Amsterdam, Holland
Ron Aalders, born January 1962, grew up in a small town near Amsterdam, Netherlands. Today he lives in the Nederlands with his wife, and has earned his reputation as a world class internationally renowned horseshoer, innovative, hard working, humble and highly respected by his peers.
As a young boy, Ron Aalders grew up around horses as long as he can remember. At 13 years of age, you could find him cleaning stalls, grooming horses, trimming his first pony and removing the odd shoe.
At 16, after just a few short weeks working for a local farrier in the Netherlands, he was offered the opportunity to ride along, observe and study with one of Netherlands's well known Standardbred harness race horseshoers. The next years proved an important educational period for Ron, mentoring with harness racers (trotters), track trainers and working with race course surfaces.
Ron Aalders was an inquisitive, talented, aspiring farrier, when he accepted an offer to further his skills while apprenticing at “Drafbaan Hilversum", one of Netherland's biggest harness race tracks. A testament to his tenacity, Ron became the “Resident Farrier” on race days, while still under apprenticeship, applying his finely honed craft and gaining the respect of the racing community as a gifted and responsible horseperson and horseshoer.
Although the average apprenticeship period in Europe is 5 years, Ron extended his apprenticeship gleaning valuable skills and knowledge for over a 10 year period shoeing part time while he simultaneously pursued a career in law, graduating with an LL.M Masters Degree.
After a few years of legal practice as a Lawyer, and Management Legal Consultant, Ron Aalders was lured back into his lifelong passion to work exclusively with horses, and made the decision to become a full time horseshoer.
Ron Aalders' initial introduction to the racing industry, years prior, had sparked his keen interest to work with performance horses. Unfortunately the Standardbred racing industry was in an economic down turn at that time so Ron diversified and began shoeing quarter horses. Western pleasure disciplines and Reining were relatively new sports in Holland at the time and few farriers understood how to shoe them for optimal performance and support. Harness race shoeing protocol was very similar in many respects to these disciplines which gave Ron the confidence to apply his skills, excelling with Reiners.
When one of his key clientele, Ruben Vandorp relocated to the United States (USA), Ron was flown in to provide the monthly farrier work. This gave him opportunities to meet great trainers and mentors in the USA like Dale Livinston, Bob Loomis and Dour Carpenter among others.
These trainers helped expand Ron’s knowledge by allowing him to study their work as trainers, explaining what they liked in a horse and why, and by sharing what they noticed when riding horses.
From this knowledge, Ron developed a much better understanding of how horses respond to changes in trimming and shoeing. It was the beginning of a more in-depth understanding of the actual relationship between anatomy and trimming/shoeing. It is one thing to recite ligaments and tendons in the equine digit. Ron was beginning to understand the integral relationship between structures of the foot as they related to performance and soundness. He quickly learned how shoeing could help or hamper performance of the equine digit. In particular, he began to see how he could improve performance directly related to his farriery work.
That led Ron Aalders into a career opportunity shoeing exclusively for Reiners for many years. Over the years he has shod Reining finalists at the major international Reining horse-shows around the world including European and Futurity Champions, AQHA and NRHA World Champions and multiple futurity champions in the States.
Ron’s passion to shoe in the performance world led to a natural progression working with laminitic cases and other hoof unsoundnesses in horses. He began studying, looking and learning, applying therapeutic horseshoeing techniques. He found that similar principals applied to optimize mechanics for both the unsound hoof and the performance hoof. When trying to increase performance the performance horseshoer looks to remove any issues that may impede performance. Similarly, the pathological foot requires aid from the farrier to remove the issues that lie in the way of soundness.
Ron began to work with veterinarians in both Europe and USA, on various different cases over the years. Laminitic cases in particular, drew his attention, perhaps because of the fact that laminitis is probably one of the few equine related problems where a farrier can make a significant contribution to a positive outcome. Veterinarians like Dr. Ric Redden/Kentucky were very supportive in Ron’s search for answers to trimming and shoeing protocol for laminitis and founder.
Today, Ron includes a range of shoeing protocols in his farriery practice, offering a variety of options and concepts dictated by the individual horses’ hoof needs be it as straight forward as an open toe shoe application or a therapeutic banana (roller) or wooden shoe package.
Aalder quotes: “Helping treat a lot of laminitic cases gives you an understanding of what I call the "Dictator" of the equine digit, the deep flexor tendon. I call it a "dictator" because if you look long and hard enough, you'll see that whatever the Deep Digital Flexor Tendon (DDFT) says, goes. Most hoof wall distortions, clubs obviously, but also long toe/low heel pathology can only be addressed successfully with a correct understanding on how the DDFT works and what it actually does during all phases of locomotion.
