A Return to Common Sense

Several years ago, after I started working with Temple Grandin at Colorado State, I was working part-time training and shoeing horses to fund my hair whorl studies; I was fortunate to find and gain the trust of the owner of a first-rate showing jumping barn in Colorado that gave me so much work that my research had the funding I needed to continue for three more years. The woman that owned the barn, I’ll call her Pat, had a very successful Grand Prix jumping stallion, and her barn was full of his babies for me to train.

One summer, her stallion was in California with her rider and trainer, preparing for the Desert Classic in Indio. She was planning a trip to see her horse compete and drop off two youngsters going into their final training for the following year’s season. She asked me to accompany her and help with driving her big trailer. We stopped at the training barn to drop the horses at the training barn, then went to Indio. When we arrived at the barn in Indio and walked in, her trainer came out of the office and said he had terrible news, her stallion was off on the left front leg and couldn’t compete the next day. The vet had been out and was unable to pin down a cause. The trainer also called a chiropractor, had a massage therapist out for bodywork, and the horse had acupuncture just that morning. Nothing was working, and the trainer pulled him from the next day’s Grand Prix event. Pat was devastated because she needed the potential prize money to keep her barn afloat.

We stayed a few days, watched one of her other horses’ shows, then packed up to leave. We dropped the stallion off at the training barn on the way back, and when we got there, she asked if I would pull and reset his shoes before I left (knowing my fee was less than the farriers in California).

I had my hand tools and went right to work. When I got to the foot on the lame leg and started to trim, I immediately noticed what farriers call a “close nail.” That’s when a horseshoe nail is too close to the white line, which is the lamina connecting the outer hoof wall and the sensitive tissue of the sole. The nail was close to the sensitive tissue but had not pierced it, which would have caused an abscess. Horses often don’t notice this as it happens, but within a day or so, the pressure from the nail pressing on the sensitive sole starts to cause pain. This minor and common mistake was the cause of the horses’ pain. When I finished trimming and resetting the shoe, being careful not to drive another nail in the immediate area of the damaged lamina, the big boy walked off soundly. I didn’t tell Pat until we were halfway through Nevada to prevent her from doing something felonious to the farrier and her trainer.

It was my first experience seeing how the industry had moved from common sense to nonsense. The farrier school I attended stressed the importance of always ruling out foot problems before shopping for alternative treatments. Revenue from the show ring and bills from three unnecessary medical and paramedical professionals (who also had follow-up appointments) were lost like a horse fart in the wind.