Feel for the Farriers

The farrier came out yesterday to shoe my leased horse, who apparently had never worn shoes before. He trimmed her up fine the other week-too well guess because she was lame and ouchy for pretty much the entire week, so we thought, ah ha, shoes will fix that!

He came out and it even started a fiasco. I had tied her up in the front corrall and taken her best friend horse out to the ring to ride. I cut my ride short (was wearing the wrong shoes due to laziness) and found dear lease horse roaming free in front of the pasture. The farrier and I caught her and tied her up so he could commence shoeing.

We chatted a bit, the horse seemed quite concerned about the nailing sensation into her feet, but is a calm horse, so we didn't worry. She was looking for reasons to spook though, and when some kids ran past, she leapt to the side and knocked the farrier's hoof stand over. That was ok, she was a bit worried.

Foot number one was done, time for foot number two. Her patience, as a horse, was worn completely thin. The farrier's patience, although vast in quantity, also wore thin. She leapt about, causing an absolute ruckus. His dog came racing to the rescue to 'discipline' the bad horse, working my horse up even further. Finally everything calmed down, the farrier pulled the bent nail and started on nail #2. Horse has another full on freakout, leaps into the farrier, knocks him over, his box of supplies, the hoof stand, everything goes flying. The farrier loses more patience, and has a hammer and a loud voice. Horse gets the point, dog leaps into action, it is very chaotic again.

Ok, calmed down, farrier removes nail #2 and goes to put nail #3 in. Horse loses it again, smacks straight into farrier, steps on his foot, makes him absolutely roar with anger. It is very terrifying for all involved. Horse finally calms down, and lets him remove bent nail #3 and put nail #4 on. There are 7 nails in a shoe. Jesus.

Luckily horse gets the point and everyone escapes relatively unscathed. I asked the farrier if they were this bad all the time, he says, "If they were, I would have gotten out of this business a looong time ago." I get the point. He then asks if she has had shoes before. Nope, not to my knowledge. "Explains a lot," he says.

Horse trots out sound, we breathe a big sigh of relief. I wouldn't want to be a farrier, man that is one tough job.