Backyard Genius: These boots are made for horse healing

Gary Wood with a pair of the healing boots developed in his Helensville workshop. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Every year at Mystery Creek a new array of weird and wonderful things is on show in the inventions section.

It's a tyre-kicker's paradise, and the inventors are in hog heaven, too. The Fieldays are the closest they've got to a national champs; a chance to get a little hard-earned recognition. Which they deserve, if only for effort. And sometimes for outcome.

As one long-time inventor put it, "No company has ever invented anything. It's always been an individual. People say 3M invented such and such.

"It wasn't 3M, it was Bob Smith at desk 3B. Individual invention is the heart of innovation.

"And just because someone's not involved with a large company or university research centre, so what?"

Gary Wood endorses that sentiment. A Fieldays regular, he's had his own funding frustrations. "The year I applied for an Enterprise Award 11 were granted and now only two companies are left. I've struggled and struggled and it frustrates me to see the waste.

"The Government gave $100 million last year and 60 or 70 per cent went to applications where the parent company is in Australia or the United States."

A lesser man might have chucked it in. Not Gary. Partly because he can't help himself. "Some of it comes from short arms, long pockets, I suppose. I don't buy anything. I usually make it."

That includes things such as the Splax, his wood-splitting axe with a curved cutting edge and non-jamming head. Or the Eeze-Grab, for pulling out fence standards. Or the Eeze-Boom spray system "made up with stuff you get at The Warehouse".

Yes, you're right. Gary does like things "eeze". And simple.

"They've got to be simple. I'm a firm believer in not making things difficult when they could be easy."

In one case, that stick-to-the-basics philosophy (plus some generous help from local firm Gulf Rubber) has paid off. Gary's most successful invention is a livestock product called Hoofeeze (this time pronounced "ease"). And, sure enough, "it had to be easy to use for people and kind and simple for the animal, too".

Especially since it'll probably be in pain when it's fitted. Because Hoofeeze "is a boot you can put the treatments in for a hoof. The human equivalent would be a Band-Aid for a cut finger or a hurt foot. We're selling quite a few of these. They're doing really well. We're getting orders from the UK."

Hooves crossed, there'll be even bigger orders soon, not least because Gary is launching a new product, sired by Hoofeeze, but targeting a completely different market.

It's the Riding Boot, a kind of equine open sandal, and "it's got the potential to be humungous. There's an enormous move in the horsey world to take the shoes off horses and let them go barefoot".

But such liberation can't happen overnight.

Tender hooves need time to harden and, until they do, "the horses will need something when they go out riding".

Gary hopes that will be his boot.