CHANGING TIMES AND LANGUAGE
Life for the farrier is a constant tug of war.
A client phones to book a horse in for hoof care and I am told in conversation that the horse is 17 hands high, has an eight inch wide hoof, wears a seven foot six inch rug, weighs 450 kilos and has a four foot eight inch girth.
The next one has minis, their height is measured in centimetres not hands, so now I know how far my knees are off the ground and their vital statistics all seem to be metric.
Then someone is on the phone with a lameness issue, describing the horse’s legs as being the left front or right front or the left hind and the right hind, so before we can begin to understand each other, I have to ask the question, ‘are you standing looking at the horse or are you going the same way as the horse’ - it really makes a difference when resolving a lameness issue.
What happened to the standard where every horse and pony was described in hands high? Plus we have always described their legs as being the near fore, off fore, … Continue Reading ››