New horse, long feet, very little human handling....

......equals an interesting, but long trim. Took about 3 hours instead of half an hour.

Meet Boots. Boots is a 10yo Kentucky Mountain Saddle Horse that my friend Terri just imported from Canada.
He was my Firestorm's old pasture buddy for many years, (these two pics are from then...see Storm in the left corner? :) ) before Storm was imported into the US as well. During his ten years, he lived mostly the life of a mustang...He got to roam many acres of the northern Canadian bush with little human handling beyond a hoof trim now and then or getting haltered or food thrown out for him in winter, etc. He learned to take good care of himself and watch out for predators (makes him a bit jumpy, LOL), and just be a horse. This is good in many ways, but it does make for a horse that is wary of humans and their "strange" environments, behaviors, objects and so on. He will make a good horse in the long run, but it is not like working with or training a horse that has been hand raised for ten years.

When Boots arrived off the truck (what a rig! We had to meet it at the local Park and Ride as it was not going to fit down Terri's driveway and get turned around), his feet were pretty long.


















His owner has knee problems of late, so couldn't do any trimming on him, and he'd been in the lower pasture playing "guard horse" to the youngsters, instead of out in the rocky bush where his feet could wear down naturally.
So first things first, I set out to trim his feet. The trim itself was not too difficult, but since this horse had not been handled much, and then only by his owner, whom he trusted, but was really the only human he knew. So what normally be a 1/2hr trim, turned into a 3 hr training session of desensitization (esp his back end, which he was VERY protective of) and learning that human handling was ok and not going to hurt him. In the end, I got the job done, and once he figured out I was "ok", he stood just fine for his pedicure.












After getting him to settle and let me pick up his feet, I cleaned and inspected them.













Then out come the nippers to get the worst of the length off. He was wary of letting me stick his foot between my legs at first, so I worked with his foot in my hand instead. This is one of the reasons I like my smaller nippers, as they are easy to use one handed. The only downside, is on long feet like his, it takes several rounds of nipping to get the length down, as the hoof walls are often longer than the nipper mouth is high..





Once he settled a little more, I was able to get his leg between mine, which was good. Rasping (esp a foot like his that needed lots of work) with one hand is a major PITA and I was glad to be able to use two hands :)







And then we cleaned up the flare on the walls. Not using a stand yet, but hoping the next trim we'll graduate to that.




Before and after...the foot still needs more flare removal, but it will be done as the hoof grows down. But this is a good start :) The other front foot went much the same way.









Then I moved on to the hind feet. I had to be really careful picking them up, as he had a tendency to kick out. Not kick as in kick AT me, but he really wasn't handled much and to him, grabbing his feet meant he might die. He did get get better about it later.










Once he settled, we moved on to cleaning and nipping. On a horse like him, I start down low and let that leg be relaxed, instead of trying to put it in my lap (and a stand is too spooky right now). It is safer too, at least for me, as if he feels afraid and has to leave, he can take his foot away and do so. In my lap, he would have a harder time getting it away and possibly get us both in trouble that way...










Once he was calm and happy and felt like he wasn't going anywhere, I progressed to putting his foot on my lap. He is a short horse and I haven't had a horse that was afraid of a stand in some time! So this was quite the thigh workout, LOL...




"Hey! What are you doing back there?!"














And the almost finished hind foot... Much better than what they had looked like before.