This horse. I swear he knows exactly what I want from him each week and he just hands it over. Another great week for us, he had his first farrier appointment with our newfound farrier, whom we got really lucky with and really like (thanks Lucia)! I had wanted to find a barefoot farrier, because he has been barefoot his whole life and I don’t want to put shoes on him unless it gets to the point where they would really help him. The previous vet had recommended because of his ringbone to make sure he has a good breakover on his hind hooves. This will allow him to fully extend his leg when taking each step and land heel first which gives better balance and more shock absorption in the right places.
My friend, Lucia, had recently found this farrier, Iron Horse LLC., and recommended him to me and turned out to be perfect because he specializes in barefoot trimming and natural balance. Yay! He also has a degree in engineering and was explaining the laws of physics and other super smart things about how trimming affects the horse’s hooves and balance and what not. My roommate was excited about that because she is an engineer as well. So I said sounds good to me! Dayton behaved perfectly (as perfect as a stubborn mule can be). And his hooves are looking great!
So, for a while now, I have only been getting on him bareback in just his halter and letting him get used to me being up there. My thought process was I wanted him relaxed and comfortable with me being on him, without a saddle or anything, before I asked him to do anything. Most of the time I’d get on him and we would just stand there, watching the sunset, enjoying the scenery, just him feeling me on his back. He is such a sensitive and smart guy, he doesn’t quite know what to make of everything he can feel when I am on him bareback. Which is why I wanted him to be in the lead here and let me know when he was ok with all of this. And the last couple of times I have gotten on him he has been more and more relaxed. It started out with just cocking his leg and hanging his head. Then he would take a couple steps, or turn around. And tonight he walked around the round pen multiple times, with no prompting from me. (click here for video) He would walk right up to the gate like “Ok let’s go now, i’m ready.” That had been my goal for this week and what I had hoped to write about in this blog and he gave that to me. So proud of my boy. Next week I think we will test out our new hackamore bridle, try it on and see how he feels about it, pressure wise and such. Then we will get to the exciting stuff!
Stay tuned <3
~Liv