HoofNexus

A lady had a neighbor who was renting a property next to her and this fella had a horse penned up in his backyard with junk from cars, old washing machines, refrigerators etc. He was a nasty piece of work that was renting this place and no one seemed able to get rid of him. This lady had watched this fella be abusive to the horse and was repulsed by what she saw. Things like offering him a carrot across a fence line and if he didn’t take it exactly the way they wanted him to they’d reach out and smack him in the head.

Having taken as much as she could she called me out to take a look at the horse to see if I thought there was anything I could do for him to gentle him, calm him down and get him to trust again. He certainly didn’t want to have anything to do with people but he wasn’t mean…he didn’t charge me or try to get at me. If I was aggressive and invading his space he’d try more to get away than to hurt me though nipping and kicking out at were in his repertoire but it was all defense.

I told her I thought he could be helped and she made some deal with the guy and he became hers. The first thing I needed to do was trim his feet, which through neglect, were in horrible shape. That required a lot of working with him to get him to stand still long enough for me to lift his leg and trim a little, let him go, bring him in, lift his hoof and trim a little more. Even though he’d stand for me and let me trim his feet, catching him up was always work and when I’d take the halter off at the end of the trim, he’d bolt across the pasture and tell me from a distance that he didn’t think much of what I was doing. The work was slow because I only worked with him once or twice a month. But eventually things got easier and he stopped bolting.

He got to a point where it seemed safe enough for a vet to be around him and the owner had him gelded. Once he was healed from that he came to my farm and I spent a month working him every day, teaching him the basics of whoa and go, left and right, walk and trot. This clip is at the end of the month when the owner came out to see how he was doing and possibly have a ride on him. I think he did beautifully.