Spring cleaning the barn

It’s a beautiful day for spring cleaning. When I mean beautiful I mean outside. Who wants to clean the house when they can be outside around the animals and cleaning up out there? Last week was the brush trimming and removing so this week it is clearing out all the unused tack in the barn.

I found a set of silver show reins in the tack room that I put up for sale on eBay a few days ago and they got sold already. I have a few other things that I will list on there in the next few days. So what am I going to do with the money? It is apparent that I don’t need more horse tack but I do need a few non-horse items.

I did stumble across this little gem of a book Horse Tradin’ by Ben Green and might pick up a copy. I have heard that it has got some very funny stories about selling and buying horses. I wonder if any of the techniques are still used today?

I do know one technique that was used as recently as 15 years ago. It is to make a healthy horse look lame. It was used by a person that did not want to sell the horse to the person who had showed up to buy the horse.  A strand of horse tail hair was tied around the fetlock of one of the front legs. The hair was hidden under the horse’s hair. The horse walked with a limp. The buyer just left. Horse was not sold.