Consider the Horse Shoe

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

I got a call last night as I drove home, and Dan the Farrier was indeed going to come on Saturday morning.

Why does this make me so happy? Because my horses haven't had their feet trimmed in about four months, and I normally try to do them every 8 weeks or so. In fact, they have not been trimmed since the the farrier's infant child was about to be born. The child is about 15 weeks old now, so you can do the math. Let's just say that the farrier's been offline a bit these past weeks.

Horses with untrimmed feet can get unhealthy. There is a saying: No foot, no horse. Frankly, there are a lot of sayings about horses, all centered around their frailties. So, my horses got trimmed today. For the non-horse folks, here's how a farrier appointment goes...

The farrier makes an appointment with you, and you agree upon a time.

The day arrives, and you say a little prayer that the farrier doesn't have some other situation going on and has to cancel your appointment. You already know that he is going to delay your appointment for zero to six hours. However, the amount of the delay is absolutely random, so don't be so bold as to think you can run an errand while you wait. As soon as you leave the farm, the farrier is guaranteed to arrive.

When the farrier arrives, you both go on back to the place where the horses hang out. When you have a proper, well -organized farm, that spot is your barn. You will have already gathered the horses up, and they have been waiting in their stalls for the farrier. When you have a operation like mine, they are all still lollygagging in the pasture, eating and socializing...

At my farm, you pick a nice flat spot with no mud. For us, that's the asphalt in front of the pool house that is actually my feed room and one of my husband's six storage areas. Excepting that spot is all taken up with a big pile of gravel, the tractor, piles of hoses with leaks in them, and a bunch of other things that really don't belong there. So, plan B is to set up on the patch of asphalt that surrounds the campground dump station and the dumpster.

Did I mention that I do actually have a barn, with a nice cross tie area? The reason I don't ever seem to use it for its intended purpose varies. Today, I didn't feel like braving the two foot tall grass surrounding it. Did I mention that the tractor is parked on the asphalt in front of the pool house because it is getting worked on? No tractor, no bush hog. No bush hog, the grass around the barn grows two feet tall. Everything to do with farms can be reduced to cause and effect, stated in the simplest negative terms.

The farrier sets up his tools - a rolling stand with tools, nails, and useful farrier stuff, and a stationary stand that is a pedestal to hold the horse's foot for certain critical operations.

At that point, you actually start working on horses. You go to the pasture, put the halter on somebody, and haul them over to the work area. Even picking who goes first has some complexity. Farrier work is very strenuous, and you usually need to figure out how to load balance the effort. You don't want to trim two misbehaving horses in a row, and you don't want to save the tough ones for last, either. It is nothing short of a choreography... and all of the dancers weigh over 1000 lbs.

Today, it was complicated by the fact that my back was out, and I am a wincing question mark. I decided that I needed backup - so I drafted my 13 year old son. He has a decent way with the horses, but he hasn't had to do this job yet. Time to learn, I reckon.

So, we are all set up, and time to begin the ballet. I walk to the pasture, and gratefully everyone is standing there at the gate, looking at me with interest. On a bad day, they will be REALLY scattered around, hiding from me in various corners of the pasture.

I grab Lilah, who has feet that look like pieces of jigsaw puzzle. She needs a trim so bad that I have been losing sleep over her feet. She is happy to be caught, and we walk together. Well, she walks. I limp and crab scuttle.

The farrier is a good horseman, and he knows my crew. He gives her a reassuring pat, and she recognizes him. I stand at her head, keeping her still while he works, one foot at a time. First, scrape all the mud and loose hoof shards off the sole of the foot. Then a trim of the "frog" and sole. Then the nippers come out, and the long pieces of hoof get chopped away, toe and heel. Then the big rasp, and the rough edges get smoothed off and shaped back into the oval shape that you think of when you consider a horse shoe. Then it's up on the stand for more shaping with the rasp. Then a buffing with the sander block to smooth the cuticle. Then a coat of hoof sealant.

Then you do that 3 more times. A good trim takes around 30 minutes, when the horse cooperates. When the horse does not cooperate.... well, it can take 1:30, or you can call it quits whenever you've all had enough. Hopefully the blood shed is minor. I've seen a farrier quit after two feet on a bad day. I've heard stories of farriers getting stomped. One guy, who was shoeing in a washstand area constructed of concrete block, took a kick. He went into the wall, and from there to intensive care. I'm not sure he's in the business anymore.

How does a typical horse not cooperate? Assuming that the horse is not a baby, or an unhandled horse (these two cases are bigtime exceptions, and worth a separate dissertation) the favorite is to just refuse to give you their foot. Every farrier knows about 10 tricks to get a horse to hand over the foot, but begging for cooperation in this area gets annoying. As a farrier in Texas once muttered to me, "Can you bring me a BROKE one next time?" "Broke", in horse parlance, means trained to the point of knowing is expected, and if not being totally in favor of it, at least being cooperative. "Green broke" means, "Very likely will have no reactions resulting in the death of one or more of the participants." The "no death" probability is asymptotic to zero, BTW.

So, now you have the foot, so what other monkeyshines can occur? The horse can decide to snatch the foot away from the farrier. This is usually done when the farrier is actually working with his wickedly sharp hoof knife, where the moving hoof manages to smack the knife somewhere into the farrier's upper body.

The horse can decide that standing on three legs, which he does in the pasture all day long, is too fatiguing. He will lean on the farrier, using him to support his weight. Finally, the horse can decide to move while the farrier is holding his foot. Yes, they can walk, and run, on three legs, about as fast as they move using four. The farrier has to move with them, or drop the foot. To drop the foot is to admit defeat for this round, and go back to negotiating the return of the foot.

Fortunately for my farrier, my horses only manage to pull one of these tactics once or twice per trimming session. I get compliments from him on their manners, which I hope are not actually well-veiled sarcasm. How did this come about? Well, my horses know that I can and will kick their asses if they screw around with the farrier. As far as they are concerned, I am bigger than them. It helps that I have raised 4 of the 6 from babies. But the baby stories are for later.

Lilah got her trim, then Viola, then Talia, then Lilly, and finally Preacher. My son held the heads for the last two - they are dead broke (see, if you've been reading, now you can talk just like a horseman - "Dead broke" means very dependable for the task at hand, and highly unlikely to kill anyone during the operation). My son looks at their eyes. He remarks that Talia is bored sh-tless with this whole situation, and is wishing she could be somewhere else. My son is becoming a pretty good horseman.

Twenty feet, all shaped like horse shoes again. No blood shed.

Happy Happy Joy Joy!