Funny horse shoeing story about my Great Grand father

My Great Great Grand father is where we all learned to do black smith work. He was an apprentice at the age of 13. Worked at the forge until just a few weeks before he died at the age of 93. He was a short fellow, maybe 5 ft four or five when he was young.

There was this stallion we always did the farrier work on. Big Percheron stud that was real pretty and smart. The horse would mess with you while you worked on him. It was kind of a game with the horse. He was not mean or rough. A few of his tricks: He would slowly lift his front foot up when you had it held so you could not step away from him. He would lay his head over your back and hold you down. Things like this. He was a real big "pet".

The one thing he would do is lean on you when you had his feet picked up. Not put the weight on his leg/foot. No I mean he would lean his body on you. Making you carry his weight. He was using you as a leaning post. LOL

When he would do it to me I would elbow him in the ribs hard and he would quit for a while. I noticed him doing that to Grand Dad while he was trimming the horse's hooves. Grand Dad was a real patient man. So he put up with it until he was fitting the new shoes. He usually did the front shoe first but I saw he was fitting the back shoes first. The stud started the leaning trick again. Grand Dad just reached over with the red hot shoe and warmed the stud's manhood just a little. He did not burn the horse just let him feel the heat. LMAO That sure stopped the leaning. That horse was standing real straight after that. LOL

I have done a similar thing like that many times over years. When one starts to lean on you just hold the hot shoe a few inches aways from their belly and they will straighten up. Makes me remember Great Great Grand Dad doing it to that stud everytime. Brings a smile to my face everytime too.

JD
Thanks for posting. Funny stuff. Love the hot shoe treatment. I trim horses myself and have had the leaning thing done to me many times with drafts. I side step out from under them still holding the foot up and see how far they will lean. Had a perch almost fall over one time. Joke was on him. Some of them are tricksters.
Eric

Animals are strange and have character just like we do.... I used to milk 130-150 Holstiens and most of them went with the flow and give no bother but you always had about 8-10 that either wanted to fight the system or just plain wind you up! You could see them looking at you and then they would read your mind and defy you totally. That could range from going the wrong way into the parlour, or turning round to come back in again totally clogging up the whole place!. But we had one real strange cow, who had a passion for plastic... you could be chasing them along the road to the pasture and she would spy a plastic chip bag thrown out of a car by some country loving urbanite! She would look at you and then make a dive to beat you to catch the bag. she eat loads of them over the years and of course we did not want her eating plastic, but she seemed to know this and would have actually taunted you with the bag, nosing it around so you couldn't get it and when she was nearly beat she would just swallow it!...Strange thing we never found any of them passed through her and she lived to be an old cow....figure that one?
Sam