Wind Dixie

Ty had a farrier appointment yesterday, and thank goodness. Last time I had come home I was incredibly upset to see how bad of shape his feet were in. My mom, who is not a horse-person whatsoever but certainly tries her best, said she would place a phone call into our regular farrier who had been unable to shoe Ty over the past three shoeings due to a back injury.

I rode him first to get him good and tired, but unfortunately the wind was excessively strong and the time I had to work with him was short. He did well considering the circumstances, so I knew when to call it quits. As we were walking back from the outdoor ring, I dropped my cellphone. I jumped off, picked it up, and preceded to walk him back to the barn in hand. All of a sudden the wind picked up to an incredibly strong gust. Ty went nuts.

He reared up.
I yanked him down.
He tried cantering with me in hand.
I pulled on the reins and jabbed my elbow into his chest.
That calmed him down slightly, but he started jigging.
I repeated the process.
He calmed down.

At this point he was walking calmly with his head low. My farrier had only seen him at the point when he was walking relaxed next to me, so he figured I had really tired him out!

The farrier appointment did not go exactly as I had hoped, mainly because I was right about how awful his feet were. The last farrier had just messed them up. Put nail holes in random places, and had essentially eliminated enough of his hoof wall in the back to prevent us from sticking on the regular shoes he was getting. We had to give Ty regular aluminum ones instead (at least it was in the back and not the front where navicular is present).

When I let Ty go out into the field he ran off snorting and neighing like crazy. He's definitely the kind of horse that needs work six out of the seven days.