Boneheaded manuevers

I burned the ends of my fingers yesterday.  My index finger, middle finger, and ring finger on my right hand across the distal palmar aspect of each, to be exact.  It was pretty stupid.  I was trying to demonstrate to one of the new people how to hold a forepunch that he was working on.  Somehow, I didn't connect the fact that he was not touching it to the fact that it was still hot.  I mean, it wasn't glowing or anything like that so it didn't look hot.  So, like a total bonehead, I reached out and started to grab the thing.  Thankfully, I was wearing my gloves or I would have seared the hell out of my palm, too.  I jerked my hand away pretty fast, so the damage wasn't too severe.  Just a nice blister across those three fingers.  The barn has a great first aid kit, mind you.  I slathered my fingers in burn gel pretty quick and slapped band-aids across the three fingers.  The moral of the story is that just because it's not glowing doean't mean it's not searing hot.  lol!

In other news, I've had really good days in shoeing recently.  I got my two basic front shoes approved, so now I'm working on forging a pair of basic hind shoes.  I've been able to stay under the horses longer, so I've been getting a lot more done in one go.  And I'm getting quite good at fitting shoes to feet and top dressing the hooves.  I still have some problems driving the nails, but I'm improving.  And I think I'm getting a good feel for how much hoof to trim off, so that's a good thing too.  Overall, I can tell I've improved.  Now I just have to put all of it together and get my endurance up so I can stay under a horse long enough to do more than one foot.

We had some real asshole horses today.  A Tennessee Walker stud that was trying to impress the ladies, a mare that didn't want her back feet done, a pair of paints that wouldn't behave, just a hell of a selection today.  We got them done, but some folks got shoved around today.  Jade had to go to the doctor, but part of that was because he's also a bull rider and had gotten bucked from a bull on Sunday and hurt his ribs.  He was the one that worked on the mare with the hind foot issues.  I did one of her front feet and she was fidgety for that.  But she just out and out didn't want her hinds done.  She shoved Jade around pretty hard and his ribs were really hurting him tonight, so last I heard he was heading for a doctor.  I'm guessing he gets Vicodin...

I know some of you wanted pictures, so I'll put a few up here.  Today's photos are of the barn where we do all the shoeing and forge work, the pair of shoes I made that got approved, and what happens to someone's hand when they accidentally hit it with a hammer.  The close up of the anvil is the one I specifically use.  We each have one that we pick out for our own personal use for the duration of our course. 

So there you have it.  This is where I spend my days, from 9 am until 4 pm basically.  As usual, if there's something you'd like to see or know more about, let me know and I'll try and get to it. 

This is me, signing off.