Our First Horse

There are two very important people in your horse’s life, besides you. First is the vet; second is the farrier. As we’ve mentioned, we live in a small town, so service people are kind of scarce here. When we got Valentine, he needed to be re-shod (he had in fact thrown a shoe, and he was due for a trim anyway). We asked the former owner for his farrier’s name and number, which he gave us, but after several calls, the guy - we’ll call him G - wasn’t calling us back. So I found someone else on the Internet and made an appointment; the next day, G called. He was going to charge less, and already knew my horse, so I went ahead and canceled the first appointment.

On appointment day, we waited patiently at the appointed time of 9:00…and G came at about 10:30. He apologized, said he was already behind. We later learned that 9:00 is usually his first appointment for the day, so he must have put someone before us.

It’s been over a year now since G started shoeing our horses. That’s about 8 appointments. He has been at least an hour late for every one. It takes several calls and at least a week to get a hold of him. Here’s the thing, though - he’s a really nice guy, and in our inexpert opinion, does a good job of shoeing our horses. He’s shod Valentine for years (through 3 owners now) and puts up with his antics. So for a while, that outweighed the unreliability. But the last episode kind of overshadowed the good points. Valentine lost a shoe about 2 weeks after his last shoeing; we called G and made an appointment to replace that one shoe, and he never showed. He also never returned our calls about it. Unfortunately, we left for Phoenix shortly after and never had time to follow up.

After the first few months of spending days trying to get a hold of G for a regular appointment, we had realized that it was much easier to set the next appointment while he was there. So we had a pre-set appointment for June 19. G never showed. He didn’t return our calls for about a week; we missed that call, he left a voice mail saying he’d try again. That’s the last we’ve heard from him, despite a call a few days ago informing him that Moonshine is down to only one shoe and her other feet are all beat up.

So the day after our last call to G, we again prevailed on our best horse friend, Shari, for the name of her farrier. It only took him 2 days to call back, and his next open appointment was only a week away, so it looks like we might have a new farrier. (We’ll call him J, and let you know how it goes.)

Sorry for the rant…sometimes you just gotta rant. I’m thinking the farrier change was way overdue, but maybe you just have to put up with some BS if you find a decent farrier, especially in a small town. What do you all think?

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Well, it’s not currently “mud season,” but we appear to have made some serious headway on the mud situation. We’ll know for sure when winter comes - when it’s never warm enough outside to dry out the mud - but for now I’m cautiously optimistic. The entryway to our barn, formerly a quagmire of hoof-sucking, boot-stealing, horseshoe-swallowing mud, is a nice flat expanse of plain old dirt. The winner in this fight: SAND.

Originally, we tried two different techniques, straw and sand. We used straw exclusively in one section, sand in the other. When it became apparent that sand was having the most effect, we expanded the area in which were were using sand. Now, the best way to have done this would have been to buy a dump-truck load of sand and shovel it over the whole area; but since we didn’t know for sure it was going to work, we just periodically bought 50-pound bags of sand and put them in the worst areas. Over time, the whole barn-entry area was treated, and it is so much better. We’ll keep adding to it as winter approaches; in fact, we will probably go ahead and get that dump-truck load now that we know how effective it is, and probably expand the treatment area to include where their water trough is.

One cool thing we did, that combined mud abatement and our unabashed sentimentality: last time I went to visit my family in Arizona, I drove back here with my dad and The Kid. We stopped in the desert on our way out and filled two buckets with Arizona sand. When we got home, we spread it over the remaining muddy spot by the barn. Now our pasture has a little piece of Arizona, AND it’s helping with the mud. Yay, sand!

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As promised, here is Moonshine’s new fly mask, modeled by our very own Bill. Yes, he’s driving our truck.

Hopefully Moonshine will look as good.

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