Confessions of a Horseshoer

More Injuries and Violence

115 More Injuries and Violence (Why Horseshoers Are Always Late) The horse owner told me she wouldn’t be able to meet me, but that the horse would be tied to the pasture fence. At this point, I should have been suspicious: this was a disasterprone customer. Her horse was well behaved and a delight to shoe, but the owner was dangerous to be around. She invariably knocked over things that scared hell out of every horse in the vicinity, or ran her car into a ditch, or left a gate open for all the horses to escape . . . things like that. One time she only hurt herself. She had forgotten to catch her horse for me, and we had to drive my truck up to the top of a hill where we caught him. She should have ridden him down the hill, but chose instead to pull him beside the truck, while she sat in the cab holding his lead rope in her hand. She hoped the horse would come with us. I recommended against this. All went well until the girl enthusiastically stuck her arm out the window to wave at someone. She waved it right in her horse’s face.The horse, of course, freaked out and pulled back. Instead of letting go of the rope, the girl held on as it sang through her hand.When the pain finally broke through to her disorganized mind, she let go. I stopped the truck and 116 • Confessions of a Horseshoer • told her to open her hand so I could see the extent of the damage. She wouldn’t open it. Half an hour later, I was able to convince her to open it, both of us expecting a half-inchdeep bloody groove through the middle of her palm. The damage was minimal, however, and I patched it up with my ever-ready first aid kit. Not that it matters in the long run, but all of this cost me an extra hour and caused me to be an hour late to my next appointment where the owner petulantly asked me why it was that horseshoers were always late. Back to the story.As I said,I should have been suspicious. When I got to the stable, I could immediately see her horse. It was the horse tied to the fence, the fence torn down by the horse who was tied to it not by the usual halter and lead rope but by a lasso tied around his neck, a lasso that had tightened and was strangling the horse.Ten or fifteen other horses were standing right there so fascinated by the spectacle that they didn’t notice the fence was broken down and that they all could have escaped. The choking horse was wild-eyed and standing with all four feet spread out, desperately trying to breathe. I didn’t know how long this had been going on. I cautiously approached the horse, talking in what I thought was a soothing voice in hope of calming him down. But soothing voices don’t have much of a calming effect on a horse who is strangling to death. I don’t think he even knew I was there. The rope was so tight that the only way to free him would be to cut the rope, but each time I got close, the horse broke into another wild frenzy, further tightening the rope around his neck.The other horses were enthralled. So was Michael, the fourteen-year-old developmentally disabled boy I had brought along as a favor to his parents. • More Injuries and Violence • 117 They wanted him to enjoy a day in the country with some lovely horses and farm animals and a friendly horseshoer as a guide. Michael was unusual. Completely deaf and mostly blind, his main joy in life was to sit with his face almost pressed against a TV screen and watch fights,car wrecks,and other scenes of violence at which he screamed and shouted with delight, throwing himself around the room, shouting and yelling and knocking things over, then running back to press against the TV again, as if to recharge his batteries. Michael was standing next to me as I approached the desperate horse and immediately realized he was about to experience the high point of his life of watching violence.The first time the horse jerked violently and went...