A Horse Kick Followup - My Personal Experience
Mar. 17th 2008When I first started my horse shoeing career I apprenticed for slightly over a year and was on a shoeing job in Gilroy California at Savanah Farms. The horse being shod was a very beautiful bay halter show horse – an Arab gelding. And I do happen to be an Arab fan.
We had the horse is cross ties and I had gotten both front feet done and finished, both rear shoes are put on but needing to finish rasping. While shoeing this horse it remained in the cross ties like a statue, never moving a muscle. It was Beautiful and magnificent looking. I had been working on this horse for about 40 minutes at this point and I was just saying to my self “oh boy, he’s being perfect all horses should be just like this horse”. I had just put his rear foot on the finishing stand as I was saying this. As I bent over to pick up the rasp to finish his foot and right as I was thinking how perfect he was he NAILED ME! Like being shot by cannon! Full power kick dead center my knee.
Everything went in slow motion for me. The kick actually happened in probably thousands of a second but to me it was as if the kick came from clear across the room but I was frozen and couldn’t move. The slow motion experience is a strange one and my first experience with it. Had I not been bending over to pick up the rasp and lifted the foot of my leg off the ground my leg would have been broken completely in two. Since my foot was “Off” the ground the kick “Blew” my leg out from under me backwards instead of breaking in two like a chicken leg.
There was not one mark on the front of my knee but the whole back side of my leg turned black and blue. My knee had been hyper-extended seriously. In the same manner you would break a chicken wing in two before eating it. Of course my knee swelled the size of a grapefruit. Thankfully nothing broken but lots of pain and I have high tolerance to pain.
The message implied here? This horse lied in wait for me, this horse stands motionless luring you in, drawing you close, and right when you think things are the most perfect he strikes with wild abandon and devastating power. The same day before we were done the horse kicked the farrier I was apprenticing with and did break his leg – right at the knee, a quick rush to the hospital “he’s in shock” and a bolt through the knee later and we’re on our way home not knowing what in the world hit us.
The long and short of this, it took me a full year before I could do a full body weight squat on my knee. Every time I would try to squat down it felt as though my knee was full of fluid and would bind up and if forced I knew something would be damaged. It was a year of constant testing my knee and exercising it to see how far I could squat before one day I finally got into a full bottom position with the knee – Only to find when I tried to stand up and extend the knee it would lock up before I even got several inches to stand up. I’d have to stop and massage the side of my knee and until I’d get a very loud audible POP out of the side of my knee before I could stand.
Then about another year of popping before I could treat my leg as something I was hopeful would return to normal function. All the while during this process I still needed to make a living shoeing horses, and needless to say all one had to do while I was under it shoeing was to sneeze and I’d find myself peeling myself off the rafters , my nerves and the fear were intense. The shook nerves I had lasted about six months. Today I sometimes forget which leg was kicked.
I got lucky.
I hope my friend, my new client, who is lying in the hospital due to a kick can say the same thing one day.
God bless.
Author Bio: John Silveira, Farrier, Aikido practitioner, spiritualist, born and raised in San Mateo California the bay area. For information on his shoeing method and the 100% track record just go to http://Care4Horses.com and leave contact information.
thank you and remember to Care4Horses
Tags: farrier, feet, gymkana, horses.equestrian, lameness, navicular, riding, roping, saddle, shoe, shoes, vets