Repeat Offender

Henry

...I love this horse, and Trakehners as you now know are clever and cunning.  They are sharp and light on their feet, they can tip toe and pirouette.  They spin, side step and do fancy Prix StGeorge dressage maneovers in their field.  So is it any surprise they are also very good at shifting shoes...however strongly they are attached!?

Farriers have scratched their chins in amazement at the level of cunning Trakehners will adopt to get a shoe off in fact.

...but Henry takes it to a new level.

He'd get the Gold medal for shoe-shifting if it were an Olympic sport.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm sure they don't lose them more often than is to be expected, its supremely muddy and wet everywhere, and galloping around - which isn't optional at WW -  is a risky strategy if you want all shoes kept on.

But Henry can twist them too, which is a task in itself!

Poor farrier Dean.

Henry is a repeat offender, and look at the twist in that shoe by Lemmy, even the cat can't understand it!

TCJpart101 Shoes

LOST SHOES:

Trakehners, I don't have to tell you, are amazing: agile, athletic, clever, beautiful, stunning, graceful, persuasive....all those things and more....


....but what they also do that no other breed seems to be able to match in sheer cunning, is get their shoes off.

Thank goodness there's something you can do with the recovered shoes, see previous December Yuletide blogs.

Here, once Steve has pulled up in his van, Tom positions himself in the yard, exactly where Steve shoes him, without any encouragement or persuasion  (I haven't put him here), and waits.  Tom knows exactly what to do, he is a clever boy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Steve tells us that in all his many years as a farrier, shoeing everything from Shetlands to Shires, he has never known a pair who get their shoes off as Tom & Henry do!

 

 

Their white feet are the culprits every time.  This could of course be a coincidence but the evidence to the contrary here at WW is convincing otherwise.

 

The shoes, once Steve has them on his anvil, are always twisted, and it's this he can't fathom.  Tom and Henry are only shod on the front, so they can't be overreaching to get them off, so how do they do it?  answer: they're Trakehners and very, very clever.

 

This is Tom having his shoe put back on.

 

 



...all very neat, Tom is immediately happier.