Chomping away at the bit: passion for horses leads to innovative Sudbury-based product.(SUDBURY)

Whether Zoe Brooks is speaking as a designer or a renowned medical lab quality control expert, the Sudbury entrepreneur says business is all about the basics.

"It's the same in either field, really, as you can only rush forward once you understand the core ideas," says the inventor of the Nurtural Bitless Bridle.

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"Otherwise, you'll never progress and you'll keep making the exact same mistakes."

Brooks was training a once-docile horse on her 500-acre Whitefish farm until she developed an intolerance to the bit. It led Brooks to search for alternatives, but the results were disappointing. Most bitless offerings were either replete with design flaws or provided insufficient control over the animal.

However, an Internet marketing workshop passing through town motivated her to craft her own design and thus her own company. After founding Nurtural Horse with her sister Marilyn, she began working with a Mennonite bridle-maker in southern Ontario to develop her idea.

Following endless experimentations, she refined the bitless bridle to include a cross-over stabilizer for the rein strap and a rubber-lined noseband.

Three years later, Brooks has seen consistent profits with growing international interest.

More than 44 tack stores across Canada now carry the product, with distributors in the United States, United Kingdom, and France.

Individual orders have been shipped to places like Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries where Brooks has traveled in her "other life" as an online teacher for the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey to deliver keynote speeches on medical lab quality control.

Tales of satisfied customers regularly pour in, from an Arizona state ranger who uses the bridle during horseback crowd control events, to a riding school in France which has converted entirely to the use of Brooks' creation.

With rising global interest comes the risk of being copied, leading to a Canadian patent for the Nurtural Bitless Bridle. Worldwide and American patents are also in the works.

One of the bigger stumbling blocks is that the use of a bit has been quite literally written into the rulebook, and is often mandated for competitive riding.

This entrenched mentality of the necessity of bits, built over a millenia of horsemanship, is something Brooks constantly struggles with. Still, the growing global movement towards "natural horsemanship," with an emphasis on causing the minimum amount of pain to the creature, is giving hope to Brooks.

"We're helping to end the reign of Attila the Hun."

In the meantime, Brooks is applying her good fortunes to various causes close to her heart, including donating one of her bridles to an Irish woman who used it on her horse as she rode across India to raise funds for abused animals.

In fact, it's this kind of back-and-forth support with the horse-riding community that's provided Brooks with some of her drive to succeed.

"That's cool to hear that you're helping people to make a difference," she says. "It's heart-warming, and the reward in this business really is in the messages, the thank yous, and the knowledge that you've helped."

By NICK STEWART

Northern Ontario Business

www.nurturalhorse.com

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