Manicure Day

It was farrier day at the barn so I skipped out of work early to get there in time. The barn owner already had Axel in a stall (standing quietly I might add, yay Axel). Cody was having his usual fit in the pasture. The farrier was just about done with Danny so I brought Cody in to get trimmed. He, of course, stood like a champ for the trim, he always does. Cody always gets these purple/pink/red spots on his hooves so I asked about them. Come to find out they are bruises but the farrier said he and his farrier cohorts haven't figured out exactly the cause. Originally they thought they were coming from the coronary band and moving down but evidence suggests that's not the case. So the best they can figure in their discussions is that the bruises come from the sole of the foot and travel out the wall. Interesting stuff. I really like this farrier, he asks what kind of work the horse does and how often and looks at the hooves to decide how to trim. I put Cody in a stall so Axel could get trimmed. It's a good time to practice being in a stall, which they both seem to handle well if there's other horses nearby. Alone in the barn might be a different story but alone in the pasture is difficult already.

Axel behaved fairly well, he gets a little antsy but nothing horrible. I turned him out while Cody had a minor fit. It was too nice out to go home and the barn was now empty so Cody and I worked on some groundwork for a while. He wasn't paying total attention being lunged, he got better with the turns, okay at the bending, and he wasn't thrilled with backing up. I had his attention at this point so I grabbed a lunge whip and tried a bit more lunging and more turns. I wanted to put away the whip so I dropped the lead and told him to "stand." And from there we worked on ground tying for quite a while. He was getting the picture and staying put or correcting himself with just a verbal cue. After some back and forth I was able to get about half the arena length away from him to put away the whip while he stood and watched. He actually stayed almost entirely concentrated on me with only a few glances out the door at the other horses. I let him off the hook, as it were, and went to grab the short lead rope and an apple. Following my unwritten rules I led Cody (at liberty) to the far end of the arena to give him his treat and clip on the leadrope. He got a little pushy after his apple, he really wanted to get back out the pasture and knew the apple must mean the end of our work. So we backed up from the far end of the arena to the gate. There was a little work involved in that but we made it and cody came back down to earth to listen to me. We backed out the barn door as usual and grazed for a while in the yard.

I did a little groundwork with Axel just in the pasture and it was almost as if he remembered some of our previous work, believe it or not! We did our turns pretty okay considering he was really more interested in grazing. That was about all we worked on, I checked for ticks and called it a night. I'm starting to think Axel might be gaining some weight. I hope he's not eating Cody's food, Cody needs to gain weight not Axel!