Why I Switched to the Both Winners Hoof Pick

I used to keep a plain steel hoof pick on a string by the barn door, and for years that was plenty. Juniper is a 14-year-old Quarter Horse mare, easygoing on the trail, and picking out her feet takes about four minutes on dry ground. Then the rain started, the paddock turned to soup, and four minutes turned into twenty.

Here is what those twenty minutes looked like. I would lift a hoof, dig the hook into packed mud, and pull out a wedge that came free in heavy chunks. The mud still packed around the frog needed a brush. My brush lived in the tack room. So I would set the hoof down, walk to the tack room, walk back, lift the hoof again, and by the third foot Juni had shifted her weight twice and I was on one knee in the wet, wondering why I do this before coffee. I work part time doing the books at a family-owned feed store and I do my own barn chores around three kids and a long list of other people's schedules, so I am particular about anything that adds steps.

The BOTH WINNERS hoof pick came to me sideways. A woman who works the counter at the feed store set one on my desk and told me to try it. It is a hoof pick with a brush on the back end and a soft-touch handle. I took it home mostly to be polite, and it sat in my truck for a week.

The first thing I noticed was the handle. It is a soft grip, and on a cold morning that matters more than I expected. Bare steel is fine in July and miserable in January. The second thing I noticed was that I stopped walking to the tack room.

The pick end is metal, reinforced with steel for a strong hook, which is the part that matters when you are working at packed clay. It has held up through a wet spring of digging at concrete-hard mud. The brush on the other end is what actually changed my routine: dig, brush, done, on the same hoof, without setting it down.

Two honest notes before I go further. First, this is a hoof pick, not a treatment. If your horse has a deep crack, an abscess, or a smell coming out of a hoof that you do not like, put the tool down and call your farrier or your vet, because that is their job and not mine. Second, the pick is small, about six inches long and light enough to lose, so I keep it in one spot by the door and I put it back. That part is on me, not on the tool.

Dig, brush, done, on the same hoof, without setting it down. That is the whole change, and it is the reason the other pick is still hanging on its string.

Over a full wet season I stopped thinking about it, which is the highest praise I can give a barn tool. It is the thing I reach for on autopilot, the way you reach for the same coffee mug in the dark. When a hoof is packed hard, the steel hook starts the job and the brush finishes it. The listing says it is multi-use for cleaning around the home or stable, and I have used the brush end to knock dried mud off a bucket rim and out of the grooves in the trailer mat, which my knees appreciate.

The grip is the part I did not expect to care about. My hands do not work the way they did at 30, and a handle that does not bite back means I finish faster and complain less. Juni stands better for it too, mostly because I am not dropping her foot and picking it back up every thirty seconds. If you have ever had a mare lean on you halfway through a hind hoof, you know why that matters.

What I did not love: the brush side needs knocking out now and then, and a packed, wet brush does not do much until you clean it. If you are used to a long-handled pick, this will feel small in your hand at first. It took me a couple of weeks to stop noticing the size.

It also rides in the trailer now, tucked in the pocket by the door, so a hoof that packs up at a trailhead gets dealt with before we load. That has saved me a mess in the aisle at home more than once. The BOTH WINNERS pick is the one that gets used; the old steel one is still on its string, and I notice it less every month.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to pick feet every day, not just before a ride, because the mud you leave in overnight is the mud that sets up like concrete by morning. I would tell you to keep your pick where your hands already go, because a tool in the tack room is a tool you will skip. I would tell you that the two-in-one design is not a gimmick; it is the difference between finishing a hoof and finishing half a hoof, twice. And I would tell you that no pick, mine included, fixes a hoof problem. It clears the dirt so you can see what is actually going on down there, and then you call someone who knows more than you do. The BOTH WINNERS pick is the one I hand to people when they ask, and it is the one I would buy again.