When you own a horse, your horse's behavior is a DIRECT reflection on you. Right or wrong that's the way it is. People look at the way your horse acts as a direct result of your training. If your horse acts wonderfully around strangers and caregivers, it means you must be wonderful. And if he is a jerk, well...
Our trimmer/farrier showed up today to give the mustangs a trim for the summer, and put shoes on our daughter's horse, Estes. He had a MAJOR case of tendonitis in his right wrist, and of course he is right handed, so he brought up an apprentice/partner to work on our horses.
Juanita's horses, Jesse and Washoe were just fine. They both stood for their trims with a minimum of muss or fuss. Estes was getting shoes put on, and was a little twitchy when the shoes were going on, but that's kind of understandable. I mean, nailing an iron bar to your foot? How would YOU feel.
Then we have Ranger. Each time the farrier comes up, I hold my breath. The first time that he worked on Ranger... wasn't real good. The phrase "Double-tap" was used. Ranger took offense to having his foot manhandled, and kicked the poor guy twice in his thigh before you could say "ouchohmygodouchohmygod". That ended his day, and I sent him home with a couple of beers. It was about 6 months later before he came back to work on our guys again. That time, it went okay. Ranger wasn't happy about it, but he put up with it. Our horse shoe'r said he HAD to come work on Ranger again, because he had never failed with a horse before, and he had to keep his record clean. He figured he hadn't failed with Ranger now. It had just taken a while to finish him up...
Today, Ranger stood like a rock star. No, a "rock star" would have been jumping around a lot and making all kinds of noise. Ranger just stood there. Licking his lips and letting me scratch his head. Dead calm.
My horse behaved well. On this day, I am not a jerk.
Awesome.
Bill
So my horse was the bad one? Sad.
ReplyDeleteAt least she hasn't kicked him in years. Whew.
When Estes was one of our line horses at the livery we ran, the farrier would always drug her before working on her. Not now, so you must not be a jerk either!
DeleteBill
Estes was not bad by any stretch of the imagination; she wiggled and twitched a little when the 'strange' farrier was tapping the nails into the shoe - she could easily have taken his head off! In fact, Anton kept telling him to 'watch that back foot'. The other guy just replied, "So, you're telling me is not to get my face so close to my work?!" I think even Estes giggled hearing that one.
DeleteMom
It's always a huge relief when the farrier doesn't get hurt under your horse! My Appy gelding used to used to like to run his lips over the guy's back when he was doing his front feet. If whoever holding him wasn't paying attention, lips soon turned to teeth...the farrier got nipped a time or two. OOPS!
ReplyDeleteYep, been there, done that. My gelding gets mouthy when he gets bored, but yesterday he was a champ.
DeleteBC
we have been doing our own trimming now for the last two years - its a tag team between me and mike LOL as he trims, I file in between trims...it seems to work well as the big guy is totally used to us just picking up his feet at random and start filing away...
ReplyDeleteWe would love to be able to do that - and made the attempt. So far, neither of us is agile enough - or strong enough - to handle the file properly for their strong mustang hooves! Fortunately, our guys get the 'formal trim and balance' at the beginning of the season, and checked at the end. That's all they ever need. In fact, neither of my horses needed anything done to their back feet and just a smoothing off of the front. Ranger, however, needed a good deal taken off all four feet, but it was even; no out of balance. We are sooo lucky with their feet. We do live on hard rock here, and just riding them often seems to keep things going well.
DeleteBionic Cowgirl
Ha ha! I guess it just means no one is 100% wonderful or 100% a jerk. We just have good days and bad days.
ReplyDeleteMy two older horses are great for the shoer. They stand patiently at the hitching post like parked like cars while I stand around trying to look busy.
ReplyDeleteCan't say the same for the young one. Sigh...two out of three isn't bad...is it?
Wait a minute... My word verification on my last comment was "Captain Todasses". What do make of that? I thought they were supposed to filter out the random bad words.
ReplyDelete"Captain Todasses"... sounds like a new super-hero. ;)
DeleteBill