Two days ago the horses were scheduled to get their feet trimmed. Now despite all their quirks they both are absolutely model citizens when the farrier comes. They know that you don’t pull your foot away or try to put your foot down when the farrier is holding your foot. That day they were both in the arena so we decided to work on them there.
I put a halter on Prize and the farrier started on her. Spirit was standing loose on Prize’s left side seemingly minding his own business. But then the farrier went to Prize’s right hind leg. As she started working on the foot on Spirit ever so smoothly reached over and gave Prize’s left hip a nudge. It wasn’t hard enough to knock her over (even though he could have done that). It looked like just enough to maybe knock her off balance and force her to put her foot down. Since the farrier couldn’t see Spirit push Prize, she would get in trouble for being squirmy while he looked on like a picture of innocence.
It didn’t work. Prize has good balance and I saw him do it. She didn’t move and I gave Spirit a talking-to. He looked at me totally blankly like he would never dream of doing something that bad. The farrier loves Spirit (mostly because he’s bad) so she gave him extra scratches and sweet talking since he got yelled at.
