Shoe pulling fail

Being able to pull a shoe is, in my opinion, a skill that any able bodied horse person should know how to do because inevitably there will be that time when you've got a shoe half on, half off that needs to come off now and could potentially cause damage if left until the farrier can get there.  Really, it's easy, well in theory at least. What I do is first rasp the clinches off, then I pull the shoe off a little to loosen the nails, give it a pound which frees the nails from the shoe allowing me to pull the nails out individually.  Once only two, maybe three nails remain I can simply pull the shoe off the rest of the way.  It takes me about 15 minutes per foot as the strength (and thus efficiency) of a farrier I have not.

Never before have I NOT been able to get a shoe off, until Cash.  Granted, in the past the horses I've worked on have always been good about their feet, or were at a point where they had become good with their feet and would happily stand patiently still while I did my business.  Cash, however, does not dig the farrier or anything to do with farrier work.  The first time my farrier ever trimmed his feet he danced around like a jumping jack on puppet strings, screaming his head off because he was not with his buddies.  This elicited the muttered comment from the farrier of "I bet you had a margarita to get your feet done on the track".  Over the past 10 months or so he's gotten worlds better, but still requires a firm hand and he will still squirm and jump from time to time.

I got as far as getting the clinches rasped off (and to my farrier's credit, his to date have been the toughest clinches to get off of any shoe I've pulled!  They were in there good), but as soon as I got his leg in between my knees and started working on that shoe it didn't take long for Cash to figure out what was going on.  I quickly gave up on my endeavor when A) he started leaning incessantly on me to the point of almost loosing his balance and B) when that didn't work he started fidgeting and jumping around, attempting to yank his foot away.... UGH.  He got a good reprimand for that, and then, since Baby K was starting to fuss (she hangs out in the heated tack room office and I carry a baby monitor to listen to her), I decided to give my farrier a call instead.  He'll swing by on the 8th when he's in this part of town and pull the shoes for me. 

Beautiful Colorado snow - a main reason for getting rid of the shoes! I hate ice balls...