On a Swiss Army knife, there are many useful gadgets. Most of them are logical and people know just what they are, such as the magnifying glass, or the scissors, or the corkscrew, etc. As well as several different blades and hooks.
But then there’s the “thing for getting stones out of a horse’s hooves”. Absolutely everyone knows that that is what that little spike is for - but they don’t know what its name is, and more than likely they’ve never had to dig a stone out of a horse’s hoof with it.
My question is - what is it called? And does anybody really use it for that?
An actual hoof pick is a pretty rare thing in a Swiss Army Knife. Its the bottom blade. What you are decribing is the punch/reamer. Which is useful if you want to punch and/or ream a small hole in a piece of leather.
It seems to me that this proves my point - a lot of people still don’t know what is what and which is which, or what the ‘hoof pick’ on a swiss army knife actually looks like.
If it’s the straight thing that isn’t a knife blade but more of an overgrown toothpick looking thing that’s not a “hoof pick” (which, by the way, is the proper term for the “thing to pry stuff out of a horse’s hoof”) but usually called a punch or an awl.
However, if one was hypothetically riding one’s horse and said horse was in need of hoof picking you could, if you were careful, use that device as a hoof pick if you really needed to… but I’d recommend using a real hoof pick, over anything with a real edge or real point.
In the past I’ve used fingers and blunt sticks for on-trail hoof cleaning. The formal hoof pick is best, but it’s not the only solution. Like I said, a key point is to avoid hurting the soft parts of the horse’s foot.
