The Farrier Is NOT Your Friend

When the farrier comes, run. 

Whether your feet are getting trimmed, hammered, or burned, the first thing you should do is run when you know that the farrier is there for you. 

If you are in the pasture, be prepared for two things: your owner coming to bring you to the farrier or the farrier himself coming to catch you.

Now, when your owner comes to catch you for this dirty job and does not bring food, we recommend performing the pasture chase (as explained in an earlier blog post). If there is a bucket of feed swinging from your owner’s hand, stop what you are doing and go eat the feed--even if it means having your hooves messed with. 

If the farrier comes to catch you, we very highly recommend performing the pasture chase, whether feed is in the picture or not. 

Eventually, humans usually do win and will capture you. When this happens, you have two choices: standing perfectly still while the farrier does his work (meaning that it will be over quickly) or not standing still even for a second (meaning that it will take twice, if not three times as long, but the farrier will wish he was never born). 

If you choose to stand like an angel and let the farrier mess with your hooves, our only piece of advice is, well, to stand there perfectly still. 

Caddy demonstrates how to stand like an angel to get it over with quickly.

If you choose to hop all over the place making it extremely difficult and stressful for the farrier, we have one good piece of advice: You don’t need all four legs to move. If the farrier is holding one of them, by all means hop around on the other three! 

That's our two bits!