I Got To Break In My Unused Tools

As I was driving down the highway to the barn on Monday evening, I saw a car ahead of me going the opposite direction that was driving really fast down a service road. "What an idiot" I thought. My next thought was "I didn't know there was a service road there". Then I saw the fence boards go flying through the air. 

Yep, he went through the ditch and the fence at a pretty high speed. As I drove past the little car had a whole bunch of smoke coming from somewhere on it, but it was white smoke so I figured nothing was on fire. This is the same highway that two people were killed on less than three weeks ago. People are idiots.

This ditch is at the barn - full of water. Maybe the ditch he drove through had a similar amount of water and that was why his car was smoking. 

My plan for the night was to ride Phantom. It was going to be an easy ride as I was expecting to be pretty sore. 

We toodled around at a walk for 10 minutes before I picked up a trot. Phantom has been starting pretty shuffly at the trot but she started to move a bit more forward maybe a half lap around. Then she coughed, so I said whoa so that she could come back to walk in case there was going to be more coughs. She did a weird little stumble behind but kept walking.I thought to myself, "she didn't grab a shoe with that stumble, did she? Nah, it was a nothing stumble." So we changed direction and picked up a trot again.

About 5 steps in she started head bobbing. I hopped off and picked up her left front. 

Yeah. She had grabbed her shoe. And it was hanging on by one nail.

I twisted it back into position so that she wouldn't stand on a clip and enlisted someone to hold her so I could run to my trailer and grab my tools.

I bought an inexpensive set of shoe pulls and a rasp about five years ago after having to pull Phantom's very twisted shoe off with a claw hammer and fencing pliers on Canada Day (while wearing shorts). I rushed out the very next day to grab tools in case it ever happened again. I've never had to use them so far.

After pulling that shoe off with the wrong tools, I watched a Youtube video to see how you are actually supposed to do it. 

I remembered that I had to rasp off the clinch before trying to pull the shoe off. I don't know how good a job I did of it because the last nail was above the clip and I kept rasping the clip instead of the clinch. But the shoe came off without too much work and thankfully Phantom put up with my awkward efforts.

 So Phantom got herself out of work yet again.

Farrier day is next Wednesday so she'll have to wait until then to get it put back on. I have hoof boots that I can slap on that foot but I don't think that they fit her as well as they used to so we'll probably be stuck with just walking. It's going to be pretty wet for the next week (woke up to pouring rain this morning, wasn't supposed to start raining until tonight) so hopefully her foot doesn't break apart too much.

Then, to top off my night, when I was throwing out some extra hay I stepped in a hidden puddle of muck water and got a soaker in my running shoe.

I should've stayed home.