Let me just say that I have had horses that were easy to trim & shoe, OK to trim (I keep mine barefoot here), mostly OK to trim, and unreliably OK to trim.\u00a0\u00a0 Then came Tigger.\u00a0 And, once I had him, Rags, who is only now willing to give a hoof (the fronts anyway) and doesn’t think he should have to stand still once someone’s holding it.\u00a0 Tigger is eleven now, and Rags is still five or maybe six.\u00a0\u00a0 I have had, on the whole, farriers I got along with quite well, and who kept whatever equine I had healthy in its hooves.\u00a0 The hardest hooves were Kuincey’s…a bay mare with four coal black ones, and, as her farrier said ‘Hooves like hockey pucks.”\u00a0 Never cracked, never chipped, no problems.\u00a0\u00a0 The worst hooves were in two chestnuts, each with some white feet, and another chestnut with narrow, thin-walled and thin-soled feet.\u00a0 In terms of behavior, Mac was probably the worst before Tigger.<\/p>\n
Tigger, as you probably know by now, comes of extremely “hot” breeding and had a rough time as\u00a0 young horse–scars to prove it.\u00a0 He never had a person, and he was trained fairly late and somewhat harshly in a way that led to carrying himself hollow-backed and head high, pulled in so tight that it scarred his tongue.\u00a0 He is anxious, sometimes truly fearful, and reactive many things.\u00a0 He’s better than he was, but not yet fully attached.\u00a0 The accident last fall, when he severely damaged his back at the SI joint, left him in pain a lot.\u00a0 So…working on his feet has been difficult.\u00a0 For him as much as for farriers.\u00a0 If he’s not in pain, and the farrier doesn’t scare him, he’s actually reasonably good, but he and my former (very good) farrier did not hit it off the first time, and I knew the man had serious health problems and was hoping to retire soon.\u00a0 Finding the right farrier for a very hot Arabian (not all are this hot)\u00a0 who distrusts people isn’t easy.\u00a0 I now have Jaime Rodriguez, who is large, calm, and slow-moving.\u00a0 Last time, Tigger acted up some but not as much as some of his other clients. Today Jaime suggested doing them both outside in the 30 x 40 foot north barn lot.\u00a0 It was clear, warm, with a tiny breeze.\u00a0 So he did Tigger first.\u00a0\u00a0 And it was as if Tigger became another horse.\u00a0 He gave his feet.\u00a0 He stood still (mostly, until the last hind leg which put all the back end weight on the damaged-but-nearly-healed side.\u00a0 And he didn’t fight, really, just took the leg back when he wanted to stand on all fours briefly.<\/p>\n
Rags was a bit bratty, but not bad either.\u00a0 Both trims were very nice, and the horses are moving well afterwards.\u00a0 So Dies Irae turned into Dies Pacem, for the owner.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let me just say that I have had horses that were easy to trim & shoe, OK to trim (I keep mine barefoot here), mostly OK to trim, and unreliably OK to trim.\u00a0\u00a0 Then came Tigger.\u00a0 And, once I had him, Rags, who is only now willing to give a hoof (the fronts anyway) and Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}