Our Story
Born From One Horse: The Story of HUSK
From two scars on one much-loved horse to the polo fields of Argentina, HUSK is a story of science, chance encounters, British craftsmanship and one founder’s
determination to challenge the way we think about equine leg protection.
There are two white scars on the backs of Tia’s legs. They are small, but for HUSK founder Louise, they have carried an important message for more than 20 years. In many ways, they are where HUSK began.
Two decades ago, Louise turned her horse Tia out wearing a pair of
thin, perforated neoprene brushing boots. Like so many owners, she believed she was doing the right thing. She was trying to protect her horse’s legs.
Instead, Tia reacted to the combination of sweat and the material against her skin. Her skin became compromised and she subsequently developed lymphangitis. It was an experience Louise has never forgotten.
“Twenty years later, Tia still reminds me of the mistake I made
through lack of awareness,” she says. “She has two white scars on the backs of her legs. I thought I was protecting my horse. I didn’t understand that what I was putting around her legs could potentially create another problem.”
For Louise, those scars became a reason to start asking questions.
And those questions would eventually become HUSK.
Looking at horse protection differently
Louise had spent 13 years working in the medical industry, an experience that had taught her to question materials, claims and product performance rather than simply accept them at face value.
After what happened to Tia, she began applying that same mindset to equine lower-leg protection.
What was actually beneficial to a horse What should owners be trying to avoid What happened beneath a boot during exercise? How important were heat, weight and breathability? What role did compression and impact protection play? And were the claims being made about equestrian products always
supported by meaningful research?
The more Louise investigated, the more questions she had.
She wanted something lightweight and breathable for Tia — protection designed around the needs of the horse rather than simply around what had traditionally been available.
She couldn’t find it. So she decided to make it herself.
One pair of boots — and an order for 50
There was no business plan. No ambition to enter international polo. No expectation that this would become a British equestrian brand.
Louise simply wanted one pair of boots for Tia.
She had found innovative technical fabrics and developed ideas for a very different style of boot, but UK manufacturers at the time were largely unreceptive to the concept. Eventually she found a manufacturer in China willing to try. There was just one catch. To order the one pair she needed for Tia, Louise had to buy 50
pairs. So she did.
“The first boots weren’t perfect,”
Louise remembers. “But they did the job I needed them to do for Tia.”
With 49 other pairs sitting around, she began selling them to friends and through Facebook, simply hoping to recover some of the money she had spent creating Tia’s boots.
Then a message arrived that would change everything.
An Unexpected Introduction to Polo
A UK polo player had come across the boots. He was interested in the amount of tack — and therefore weight — that riders put onto horses, and he was also concerned about heat. He wanted to try Louise’s boots. He loved them. Through him, word began spreading among the Argentine polo community.
Then one day Louise received a call.
A major figure in polo wanted to see the boots and meet her. She was given an address in Windsor and told to come along. So Louise climbed into the family’s clapped-out Shogun Sport, taking her mum and her two young children with her, and headed for Windsor. Nothing could have prepared her for what she found.
“We pulled up and I had never seen so many horses in one place in my
life.”
An older gentleman came out to greet her. He was wearing holey jeans and battered loafers. He introduced himself simply as Jorge. He offered Louise an Argentine mate tea and a bale of straw to sit on in the tack room, surrounded by Argentine grooms. Then he started pulling out magazines. One after another. He showed Louise articles and research he had written about the
heating of horses’ tendons. It gradually became apparent that this wasn’t simply someone with an interest in polo. Louise was sitting opposite Dr Jorge MacDonough, an international polo veterinarian who had worked within the highest levels of the sport, including with names such as La Dolfina, Ellerstina and La Irenita.
Jorge’s mission
Jorge explained that despite his qualifications, experience and position within polo, he had struggled to persuade people to listen to what he had been saying about horses’ legs and tendon heat. He believed the information mattered. And getting people to understand it had become one of his life’s missions. Jorge wanted to see polo move away from traditional bandaging towards boots — and ultimately towards lightweight, breathable protection built around principles like those Louise had begun exploring. Then he looked at her boots. He believed there was something in them. Louise was less convinced.
“I looked at these fairly basic boots I’d made for my own horse and was slightly shocked — and actually quite embarrassed,” she remembers. “They helped Tia, but international polo? Absolutely no way.”
Jorge thought otherwise. He asked whether Louise would accept his help to develop them into a boot ready for the demands of polo. Her mind immediately filled with insecurities.
“I’m a village girl with a bunch of family ponies. I remember thinking, am I really good enough to create something for a sport as high-profile and high-octane as polo?”
She said yes.
Although, as Louise recalls with a smile, Jorge didn’t leave her with much choice!
And then his son walked in…
Jorge called his son into the room, apparently assuming Louise would immediately know who he was. She didn’t. It was Pablo MacDonough, one of the most successful and celebrated players in the history of polo. Then came another famous polo name, Lucas Monteverde.
They greeted Louise with the customary kisses on the cheek and began examining the boots with curiosity.
They liked them too.
Suddenly the woman who had wanted one pair of boots for her horse was discussing equine leg protection with some of the most experienced people in international polo.
What followed wasn’t an overnight success story. It was three years of work.
Test. Change. Test
again.
Boots were trialled. Feedback came back. Changes were made. Then they were trialled again. And again. And again. The process went on for so long that Louise’s father eventually began wondering whether his daughter was being taken advantage of.
Then, three years after that first extraordinary meeting in the tack room, Louise received the news she had been waiting for.
The boots were ready.
HUSK travelled to Dubai to see them being used at the Gold Cup with Pablo and his team, Zacara. They won. It should have been one of the happiest days in the young company’s history. Instead, it became one of the most bittersweet. Because that same day came the devastating news that Jorge had died. Pablo immediately flew home to Argentina.
For Louise, the excitement of seeing years of work finally reach that stage was eclipsed by the loss of the man who had believed in it so strongly.
“There was suddenly this enormous void. Jorge had driven so much of the development and believed passionately in what we were trying to achieve. I remember thinking: what do we do now?”
A promise that had to continue
The answer came from Jorge’s family. They contacted Louise and explained that getting these boots to market — and educating riders about why they mattered — had been one of Jorge’s missions. They wanted that work to continue. Then they made a request that meant an enormous amount to Louise.
They asked whether the boots could carry the name and stud logo of La Irenita.
HUSK was honoured to say yes.
Later that year, at the Argentine Open, Jorge was remembered in an extraordinary way. His horses were brought to the field and the players of La Dolfina rode Jorge’s horses in his memory.
Each horse wore a set of HUSK boots.
Louise had never been to Argentina. Her parents had barely travelled beyond
Spain. Yet there they all were — Louise, her parents and her two young children — watching something that had started with Tia at home appear on one of polo’s greatest stages.
“It was completely mind-blowing.”
From there, the HUSK story continued. But it has never been an easy one.
Bringing HUSK home
to Britain
Having initially been forced to manufacture overseas because UK manufacturers had been reluctant to work with the designs and fabrics, Louise eventually became determined to bring HUSK production home. Experience had taught her something extremely important. When you are manufacturing technical protection for a horse’s lower leg, quality isn’t simply about how good a product looks.
It is about the craftsmanship. It is about the fabric. It is about consistency from one production run to another. And it is about knowing as much as possible about the materials being placed around one of the horse’s most vulnerable areas.
Eventually HUSK found a British manufacturing partner — a factory by the sea in Devon, just down the road from Louise.
For an independent brand so deeply connected to its roots, it felt right. The products could be made locally, in Britain, by people HUSK knew and trusted.
Then came 2024.
Losing the factory
by the sea
Amid the economic downturn of 2024, HUSK’s Devon factory closed. For a larger company, changing manufacturer might be inconvenient.
For a small independent British business producing specialist technical products, it was devastating. Years of manufacturing knowledge and established processes were suddenly disrupted. And the consequences didn’t end when the factory doors closed.
HUSK suffered greatly throughout 2025 as a result.
Production was disrupted and Louise faced the enormous task of rebuilding the company’s manufacturing supply chain while simultaneously trying to keep the business alive.
There were easier options. Manufacturing overseas again was one of them. Walking away altogether was another. Louise refused to do either.
“We’ve manufactured abroad, so I know that world and I understand what it can offer. But it also taught me how important quality and consistency are. When you’re putting something around one of the most vulnerable parts of a
horse’s body, I want to know the fabric. I want to know how it’s made. I want to know that what we use today will perform in the same way as what we use tomorrow.”
Through all the adversity, Louise remained determined that HUSK would continue to be Made in Britain. Eventually, the brand found its new manufacturing home.
A new chapter in Somerset
Today, HUSK is made in Somerset with Mulberry Stitchers. It represents much more than a change of address. After everything the business went through during 2024 and 2025, continuing British production feels like an achievement in itself.
HUSK works with British fabrics wherever possible and looks
for opportunities to upcycle materials, reducing waste and ensuring sustainability is considered as part of how products are created. For Louise, sustainability and British manufacturing aren’t marketing phrases. They are part of a much bigger question:
Can we make better choices for our horses, the people making our
products and the world around us?
What sits beneath a HUSK boot matters
As HUSK has become better known, similar-looking products and blatant copies have inevitably appeared. Louise accepts that this is part of creating something different. What concerns her more is the assumption that if two products look similar, they must be the same.
HUSK’s experience of manufacturing both abroad and in Britain has taught the company just how much variation can exist beneath the surface. A technical equestrian boot isn’t simply a shape.
The material matters. The construction matters. Consistency matters. HUSK knows the fabrics it uses and places great importance on ensuring they remain consistent. Testing and development have considered compression, impact, breathability, weight and durability. Because this isn’t simply sportswear. It is equipment being placed around the lower leg of a horse.
“At the end of the day, we’re protecting horses at one of the most vulnerable parts of their body,” Louise says. “That’s something I take incredibly seriously.”
The research that started with Tia has therefore never really stopped. And neither has the love behind it.
Science — but also something you can’t test in a laboratory
There is another side to HUSK that Louise makes no apology for. The products may be grounded in research, testing and technical fabrics, but she believes they also carry something less measurable.
Spirit.
The spirit with which they were created. The love for the horse that started everything. And the passion of Dr Jorge MacDonough, whose determination to change thinking within polo became intertwined with HUSK’s own story.
Over the years, the boots have sometimes been described as “lucky”, or as bringing good fortune.
“If you believe in that sort of thing,”
Louise says.
She does. Perhaps that is unsurprising. A product created for Tia somehow found its way to an Argentine polo
veterinarian in Windsor, through three years of development, onto the legs of
some of the world’s most extraordinary polo ponies and eventually onto the fields of Argentina.
There has always been something rather improbable about HUSK. Which may also explain one of the company’s more unusual decisions.
HUSK doesn’t put a barcode on its boots.
It is a tiny act of rebellion against turning something created with so much care into simply another mass produced commodity.
“I don’t want to damage the spirit of the creation by commoditising it,” Louise explains. “There is so much product in the world that is mass-produced with no love and no spirit behind it. I never want these to become just another product.”
Love. Science. Quality. Good intention.
Twenty years after the mistake that started everything, Tia is still part of Louise’s life. And the two white scars are still there. What has changed is what Louise knows now — and how determined she is to share it.
Her ambition for HUSK isn’t simply to sell more boots. It is to encourage the equestrian world to think more deeply
about what we put on our horses and why.
To ask about heat. To consider weight. To understand materials. To question claims. To look for meaningful research. And, above all, to remember that equipment should exist for the benefit of the horse wearing it.
That conviction has survived far more than Louise could have imagined when she ordered those first 50 pairs. It survived three years of development. The loss of Jorge. The enormous leap from family ponies to international polo.
The loss of HUSK’s beloved factory by the sea in Devon. The economic downturn. An extraordinarily difficult 2025. The challenge of rebuilding British manufacturing. And the arrival of imitators. HUSK is still here.
Still researching. Still questioning. Still developing. And still making in Britain.
“My absolute goal is to share what we’ve learnt and embed these passions within the equestrian world for the betterment of the horse and, ultimately, the sport as a whole,” says Louise.
“These products come with love, science, quality and good intention. They come with our spirit and passion, and with the spirit and passion of Jorge too.”
“I love them as much today as I did when we started — probably even more.”
And it is impossible to tell the story of HUSK without returning to the horse who started it all.
Tia.
A much loved family horse for whom her owner couldn’t find the protection she believed she needed. One mistake Louise never wanted to make again.
And two white scars that, 20 years later, still quietly remind her why HUSK exists.
For the horse. Always.
