When training horses for a living I tried a few different farriers to trim or shoe the many client horses. Eventually, I found a farrier who was smart, listened, and had a passion for doing the best job he could when working with a horse's feet. My horse, Chops has two club feet and the work this guy did was fantastic. He was worth keeping around.
One day he came out to shoe a handful of client’s horses. As he was finishing the first horse, I left him to go to the paddock and catch the next horse to be trimmed. As I came around the corner I heard a commotion and saw the farrier hitting the horse under the belly with a rasp as it was pulling back with its eyes popping out of its head.
“Hey. What the f%#@?,” I screamed at him.
“He was being an egg and was leaning on me when I picked up the back foot. He needs to learn some manners,” he said.
The farrier could see steam coming out of my ears. I said, “Okay, but you are never, I repeat never, to lay a hand on any horse on this property again. If any of them are not standing quietly, give it to me to work with for a few minutes. I’ll get it in a better spot. If need be, forget about shoeing the horse today and I will work on it and get you back in a week or two when it’s okay. But you are never to lay a hand on any of the horses. And if you don’t like it you can leave now.”
The rest of the horses were finished without incident. From then on, whenever there was a problem horse he would ask me to work on it and we would get the job finished. together. He even watched me get horses ready for him and started to ask me questions and try new things himself while I watched and made suggestions. In a pretty short time, he became handy with helping difficult horses settle to be shod. He saw the value in how it helped him with other clients. We remained friends and colleagues for many years.
However, despite what you might think, this post is not about farriers and how they work with difficult horses. This post is about two important principles.
The first principle is that we are the trainers and my failure was that I let down the horse and the farrier. It was not the farrier’s job to train the horse to stand quiet and relaxed. His work is hard and dangerous and few farriers get away with not being hurt at some point in their careers. We are responsible for making certain our horses are as easy to handle as possible for the farrier, the vet, the bodyworker, the saddle fitter, the dentist, or anybody who needs to interact with them. If we do our job of preparing our horses for people like farriers and vets to work with them, then we avoid ugly and damaging incidents like the one I just described.
The second principle I want to mention is how careful we all should be when choosing somebody to handle or work with our horses. It could be a farrier, it could be a veterinarian, a bodyworker, a saddle fitter, a dentist, a commercial transporter, or the kid next door who feeds our horse when we go away for the weekend. It could be a big-name trainer or riding instructor who should know better. It could even be our other half who is trying to help out with chores.
Horses learn from experience. Good experience teaches good lessons. Bad experiences teach bad lessons. It’s because a horse’s sense of life and death is so strong and deeply ingrained that bad lessons learned from bad experiences tend to be very persistent. It often takes very many good experiences to eradicate the lesson learned from a single bad experience.
For the sake of your horse, always be very particular about those you let handle, ride, medically treat, or touch your horse. I know this is an almost impossible task for people who board their horses at a facility that often employs people with not a lot of talent or time to do the dogs-body work around the place. But if you see handling that is detrimental to your horse, you must speak up and even as a last resort relocate to another facility.
Do as much homework as possible on anybody you allow to interact with your horse. Do as much preparation as possible before you allow somebody to work with your horse. If you don’t like what you see, don’t hesitate to interrupt and stop whatever is causing the problem. I know there is a lot of pressure to let a trainer, vet, or farrier do what they do, no matter how bad the experience is for your horse. But consider that they might appreciate your help and not want to use brutal or forceful means to do their job.
Video: I really like this video and as a trainer can appreciate the message