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    [RC] Trimming your own horse - Linda B. Merims


    I tried to trim my own horse once out of desperation (long story).
    I discovered that five years of watching my farrier do it was
    completely useless:  I hadn't watched closely *enough*.
     
    Before one even gets to issues of getting the trim correct,
    there is a whole universe of critical technique that a farrier
    knows implicitly that you have to know, too.  The fact that
    they know it so well that that they don't even think about it
    anymore is demonstrated by the fact that Rob didn't
    mention one of these things in his otherwise excellent
    description of "how to trim a horse."
     
    The first big thing I ran into was, "How do I hold the
    horse's foot?"  A farrier runs through a whole series of
    "positions"  as he works his way around a horse where
    he holds the front and rear feet in different places to
    cut clinches, pull, trim, rasp, nail, clinch, etc.  If you havn't
    memorized how the farrier holds the foot for these
    various operations, you're going to have a dickens
    of a time.
     
    Then there's the way the farrier holds his tools.  I, too,
    was having trouble using the nipper.  (Small female with small,
    normal human weak hands.)  It wasn't until I watched the
    farrier who does my other horse (again, long story) very
    closely that I realized how he positioned the nippers
    with *both* hands (I was trying to use one hand while
    holding the hoof with the other hand), and then uses the
    butt of his hands to hold one arm of the nipper steady in
    position while he closes the fingers of both other hands
    to make the cut.  Every move that a farrier makes involves
    this subtle adeptness at using his tools correctly.
     
    Finally, there is an issue of what fighter pilots call
    "proficiency."  A farrier trims and shoes horses all day
    long, day after day, month after month, year in, year out.
    They are at a high level of "proficiency."  If all one is
    doing is trying to trim one horse every six weeks, one
    is never going to get good at it.  Adequate, maybe,
    but never *good*.
     
    Linda B. Merims
    Massachusetts, USA