Feet Day

 

It's been very good horse-wise for the past little bit.  We've only been out twice since I blogged last but a lot has happened.

 

Feet Day:

 

Last Saturday was feet day.  My brother came down to do their feet.  My mom and I went to the stable before him and his girlfriend just to get the horses ready.  They were supposed to give us an hour (it's a 45 minute drive to the stable) and then leave to come join us...We were waiting for over two hours with them.  That's the problem with having your brother as your farrier, he'd never be late like that for an outside client, but because I'm family it doesn't bother him, although it certainly bothers me.

 

We caught Jimmy and Artemis, and while Jimmy was getting his feet done, Artemis was out in a grass pen eating grass.  It wasn't the usual grass pen, you can see it from the barn door and it's really just a normal turn-out pen, so the electric fence is hooked up.  I went to hang out with her for a while. 

 

While I was, one of the new boarders brought his horse over, an absolutly gorgeous Polish Arabian/Egyptian Arabian (cool cross huh?) gelding over to meet Artemis.  My insanely friendly horse, who on the way to the barn, had stopped to try and meet this exact horse, was suddenly all shy and trying to hide behind me.  However, when I went over to meet the horse and his owner, she came with me.

 

He came over pretty much just to tell me how beautiful Artemis is.   I always feels like I'm bragging when I say things like that but that's what our conversation was.  He loved her and she of course played the part of the sweet, attention-loving little girl.  It was a different story when she was getting her feet done though.

 

Jimmy was great with his feet.  Artemis was horrible.  However, we at least figured out why.  She doesn't like my brother handling her feet.  If my mom or I do, she stands.  If Alex does it, she throws a fit.  So we tricked her into thinking my mom was holding her feet when it was really Alex.  Now we're going to try to get other people at the barn to start handling her feet more, since obviously other people need to be able to do them.  We already have one volunteer.

 

Socks was good until her last foot.  She has a cut on that foot and it was obviously bothering her.  She let him trim her foot and clean out her sole, and then she was done.  We didn't push it since she was telling us as clearly as she could she just couldn't have her foot up anymore.

 

And to end feet day, Jimmy attacked Artemis.  A full-blown attack.  While Socks was having her feet done, Jimmy and Artemis were in the grass turn-out pen together.  As a side note, I do want to say that they have been in together many, many times since she was born.  We put all three of the horses in together all the time, or sometimes just Socks and Artemis, or just Jimmy and Artemis.

 

I am not sure what went wrong.  My mom looked out the door at them and Jimmy was chasing Artemis around the pen.  That was, strange, but not really upsetting.  We kept watching.  He started biting her and at this point I was getting ready to intervene.  Then he chased her into the corner at the gate, turned around and started kicking her with both hind legs.  Not just once, he probably got her a good eight or ten times in the time it took me to come racing from the barn to pen, yelling at him to quit.  By the time I reached the gate he had chased her to the other end of the pen.  I grabbed Artemis' rope just in case he didn't stop when I entered the pen. 

 

Luckily Jimmy stopped as soon as I opened the gate.  He came trotting over to me and I chased him off.  He then went to my mom and she chased him off.  He stood in the corner looking like an ashamed little boy, although I'm sure he wasn't.  Artemis came right over to me and I caught her and brought her into the barn to check her over.

 

Her hair was messed up where he kicked her but she wasn't actually hurt and it hadn't broken the skin.  I walked her out but she was fine, mostly just a little scared.  We put her in the pasture and went back to Jimmy.  We checked him over to see if he had any marks but he didn't.  He was still acting like an ashamed little boy.  We put him back in his pen.

 

I still can't figure out what made him so angry.  I mean, I realize horses will be horses and get angry with each other, but driving her into the corner and kicking her like that is too much.  That's where a horse gets severely injured.  I would have been just as upset if Socks had done that to him.

 

I'm not really sure where to go from here.  I think we'll slowly introduce them to being together again, with supervision.  They definitly won't be left alone anytime soon.

 

I was going to write about both days but this is already pretty long so I'll split it into two posts.  Next time, we tried out a bitless bridle with Jimmy and we solved the mystery of the ninja horses, thanks to Socks.