Ugh, I think I'm coming down with a cold or a sinus infection or a massive allergy attack or something. Not sure yet, but I woke up this morning and could only breathe out of one side of my nose. Slight sinus headache and some congestion in the nasal area. And phlegm. BUT! Despite this, I was out in the barn with everyone else today, acquiring new bruises on my arms. All week I've had two feet, fronts Monday through Wednesday, hinds yesterday and today. And every time the horse tries to take a foot away from me, I end up with new bruises. I have a pretty big bruise on the inside of my left thigh, about 3 inches by 3 inches, where a mare on Wednesday pulled me around. Today's horse decided I needed a new array of bruising on the underside of my left arm from where he drove his hock repeatedly into my arm while trying to take his foot away. So yeah. Some new aches and pains.
The upside to all this is that I'm getting better at my skills and competance, which means I'm also getting somewhat faster at what I'm doing. The work is hard and physically demanding, but I'm seeing an improvement. Which means that if I can see it, it must be fairly significant. Now I just have to improve on my forge skills. I'm working on drawing clips on shoes. What's a clip, you might ask? It's a triangular protrusion hammered at a roughly 90 degree angle from the metal of the shoe. Typically, shoes with clips have one clip at the very toe of the shoe for fronts or two clips at the front of the quarters on a hind shoe. To make these, you take a shoe, put a dent in it with either a bob punch tool or a cross pein hammer, and then draw out the metal into a triangle by hammering the dent against the anvil. When the shoe is put on, the clip stays against the outside of the hoof wall and helps keep the hoof protected better as well as helping to keep the shoe on and in place better.
Mind you, clips are applied through hot shoeing, which I got a chance to do yesterday. All I can say is don't inhale the smoke that comes off the foot...yuck! Just like it sounds, the shoe is hot when you first apply it to the foot, so the hoof is burned. This provides a better seat for the shoe when it's applied. Stinks like burning hair, though, and the smoke permeates your clothes worse than cigarette smoke. After the shoe is burned on, it's taken and dunked in the water trough before we actually nail it on. So there's no risk of burning ourselves while nailing it on. You just have to be careful while you're setting the shoe. It doesn't hurt the horse, but it's a little uncomfortable to have something that hot on the bottom of your foot. It would be like heating up a paperclip and putting it against the top of your fingernail for a moment. Eventually it would burn through, but you only hold it in place long enough to get a good seat for the shoe. Maybe 10 seconds or so.
This one's going to be a little shorter than previous posts. A little extra sleep tonight will be good for me and make tomorrow easier.
This is me, signing off.
No comments:
Post a Comment