Such a Sucker...

So I'm pretty sure that anyone who knows me knows I'm a HUGE sucker when it comes to my horses. Even though it's taken me a long time to figure out just how tightly wrapped around their little hooves I am, Cole didn't take long to catch onto the game. In fact, less than a week after his homecoming, he'd already realized that I'll pretty much do anything for my horses.

On Thursday, I was very excited to have Doug (our farrier) out to put some sweet new kicks on Cole. He got the Air Jordans of the horse world- front shoes with pour-in-pads because he needed a little extra sole on one of his front feet.

New shoes and new bell boots!

Also a new fly mask!

Well, it turns out that Cole doesn't like Air Jordans much. I think he's much more of a basic Converse All Star guy- by Saturday he was pathetically lame, and by Monday we had pulled his left front shoe off. The awkward death-smelling grey goo in his hoof pack today also hints that he might of popped an abcess on top of having a hot nail, but either way, he was pretty upset about his swanky new shoes.

In the time between having the vet out on Saturday and the farrier coming on Monday, I ended up icing his feet both Saturday and Sunday. While it seems normal to me to ice whatever's hot, my dad walked in on Sunday and couldn't get over how silly it was that Cole was getting both his front feet soaked in buckets of ice. (As a side note, and an extra reason why I'm a sucker- my dad was at the barn to help me resurface/redo the mats in Cole's stall.)

I don't see it when I look in the mirror, but the horses sure seem to think I have sucker boldly written across my forehead. And, well, I really can't disagree. On the bright side, Cole seemed much happier and sounder today, and Riley pretended to be a very sound, wonderful dressage pony. Tomorrow we'll have to see if Riley told Cole about the trick where you pretend to be sound one day and lame the next, but hopefully he doesn't like Cole enough yet to share his best secrets.