My ferrier was suppose to come out this evening, to reset Simon’s shoes before I leave for a weekend of mounted games compeitition tomorrow.  But the weather is calling for rain to move in just after lunch time.  Since we do feet outside at my place, my ferrier, being the smart guy he is, rescheduled for lunchtime ahead of the rain.  Which is fine, I can slip out of work for a while and meet him.  But since I was out of work on Monday for another event, I did not rack up any extra time throughout the week to make up for it.

In comes the husband.  He has the day off work and offered to meet the ferrier for me.  I accepted this very generous offer.

Rich is a very capable guy, he is not squemish about dirt or pony slobber or anything like that, but he is not exactly equine experienced either.  And Simon is generally a very easy pony.  He stands pretty well, but he does have a tendancy to nip at his holder for attention and get a little fidgety about half way through the process.

Its been about an hour and I am waiting for the, ‘all done, it went great, that was so easy’ call.

I sure hope I still have a huband, a pony and a ferrier when this is all done.

Have you seen this photo circulating around? It is usually captioned with something along the lines of, “This is what happens when the husband helps out”. I am sure Simon looks pretty similar right now.

A few hours later…

Follow up report: I do in fact still have a husband and a pony with four freshly shod hooves and I still have a ferrier too!  Woo, success!

I asked Rich, if Alex, the ferrier, had to reprimand Simon or tell him to “knock it off” or anything.  Rich said, “no but he did have to take the treats away.”  Which made me ask, “what do you mean”.  Rich explained that when I told him there were treats in the barn if he needed them, he thought I meant he should bring the whole container with him.  So he planted the bucket, lid off, between his feet in front of Simon.  He said that it wasn’t that much of a problem for the first two feet because he kept Simon on a short leash.

I laughed pretty loudly picturing a poor drooling Simon pony, desperate for treats that were being kept just out of reach.

I am very thankful I have a husband that is willing to step up and help with pony stuff in a pinch.