Waiting for the Farrier

Thursday was farrier day. I called dibs on the first spots in the day as I had to go straight from the barn to work. They were originally scheduled to arrive for 10:30, but when I woke up this morning there was a message that they were running about a half hour late. I was up and ready to go, so I figured I would head out and find something to do with the kids while we were waiting.

I had gotten my clipper blades sharpened a couple of weeks ago, so after putting the blades back onto the clippers I thought I would keep them out and do a quick trim of the goat hair that shows up on their chins with their winter coats.

Phantom was, as per usual, perfect for clipping. I have been known to ground tie her for body clipping, so it's obviously no big deal to her.

Waiting for the farrier to arrive. And for treats to appear.

Cisco has been clipped once. By clipped, I mean I trimmed his fetlocks with the clippers this summer, since that was the only hairy part on his body in July when I made my first attempt at using the clippers on him (I had worked a couple of times with the clippers on desensitizing him to the sound near his body before this). He was very good that day, but he hasn't been too happy about them up by his ears. Not scared, just not happy.

Today I started with doing the hair under his jaw, and he was very good about that. So I thought I'd push my luck and try to do his bridle path.

Which went about as well as I figured it would. I've been working on a "head down" command with him, and he's generally pretty good about it. I press down on his crest a few inches ahead of his withers, and he drops his head and neck.

I pressed on his neck, brought the clippers up towards his ears, and he turned into a giraffe. I tried a couple more times and got the same result.

So I grabbed some treats.

Same idea. Press on his neck, bring the clippers up. But this time, when he dropped his head, the clippers turned off , I clucked and he got a treat. He figured this out very quickly - he got the treat reward and the removal of the offending object only when he dropped his head. As I said earlier, he wasn't scared of the sound, he just didn't like it. So I knew I could push it a bit.

I didn't get his bridle path clipped. I stopped after he gave me a few of the right responses in a row. Hopefully after a couple more sessions I won't have any more issues. And then I can work on desensitizing him to the much noisier body clippers. Because he's going to have to get nekkid around Christmas when I start riding again after their upcoming 6 week vacation.

Phantom got her winter shoes on when the farrier arrived. It's pretty discouraging to think that it's time to put the snow pads and borium on already, but her next reset won't be until early December. The chances of us having snow by that date are pretty high. Like, you can be 99.9% sure that we'll have snow on the ground. Thankfully I actually thought of this on the drive home from the barn the night before. And actually knew where her shoes and pads from last year were. And actually put them in the car before I went into the house because I knew I would forget them in the morning. So it didn't cost me anything extra.