06/01/2023
Safety working with horses
When I was breaking & training a lot of horses, I only had 3 hard & fast rules for myself, the horses & my clients
1 - Safety first
2 - Safety first
3 - Safety first
I used to give a simple analogy to my clients/students;
If I asked u to go to the shop & get me a drink in my car, Would u do it?
To which they all said yes.
But what if I told u the brakes didn’t work very well, the steering was terrible & the accelerator often got stuck on & u couldn’t stop the car?
To which they all said no!
Yet this is how so many of their horses went, yet they happily got on them every day with any &/or all of the above issues.
In the hoof care industry I see the very same thing with hoof care providers working with horses that have bad manners & are often quite dangerous.
Several times I’ve seen videos of farriers demonstrating how to work with unruly horses with one farrier commenting that ‘the pain only lasts until it stops’ or similar.
My advice is not to work on these horses!
Nobody is going to pay ur medical bills, pay u for time away from work, look after ur family, compensate u for the extra aches & pains as u get older.
Even if u charge $150 more, how far will that get u if ur forced to have 6 weeks off with a broken arm or similar?!
The onus is on the owner to provide a safe work environment. If the horse needs training, take it to a trainer.
When I was starting horses under saddle, I shod pretty much all of them as for me it was part of the process & we used to ride the horses out in the bush quite a lot (incl tge gallopers, dressage horses etc)
We have had someone comment that ‘a good farrier will get the job done, no matter the horse’
What a load of crap!!!
A few others tell me that it’s our job to shoe horses & we can’t be picky about tge ones we work with.
Wanna bet!
I’ve been in the horse game for 30yrs, have started around 2000 horses under saddle in several countries around the world, worked with countless re education horses & shod them for 20yrs
In all that time I have not sustained a major injury. The reason being, I have 3 hard & fast rules
1 - Safety
2 - Safety
3 - Safety
Once I get my small video camera set up (nxt cple weeks) I will b doing a video on safe handling of horses for hoof care. Cause if it keeps one person a little safer out there it will be well worth the effort!
