Jinx ... you owe me a new shoeing

I've never been overly superstitious, though my husband may disagree with me. I do, however, become really superstitious when it comes to horses. There are things that I either won't say (even if a vet directly asks me) or won't say without knocking on wood or crossing my fingers.

These include: s/he has never colicked, never been lame and never refused a fence. (Any absolute statement is a surefire way to test destiny.)

You can bet, as soon as you say these things, they happen. I'm not sure if it is a real "jinxing," since horses are so accident prone that these things are likely to happen despite me saying it or not.

Case and point: Last Tuesday, I was talking to a young girl via the internet with her own hoof issues. We were discussing cadence and setting back the shoe so the horse has adequate heel foundation to travel across.

I think some of you may know by now that I believe that if you fix the cadence, forging shouldn't be an issue. Being the smart alack that I am, I sent the young girl a picture of Buttercup's setback shoe, just asking to get ripped off by the back hooves, and wrote: "Guess how many times she's pulled off her shoe due to forging? Zero."

I'm not going to make excuses as to my blatant jinxing. I know better. You just don't say things like that and expect to come out to the barn later with a perfectly shod horse.

And I didn't.

That very morning as I was bragging about my wonderfully shod horse (wonderful in terms of rehabilitation, not in terms of perfection), Buttercup was busy tearing it up in a muddy pasture with all of her girlfriends. Good-bye, left front shoe and parts of her left front hoof.

Three days of stall rest passed before I could get her over to my farrier. We repaired her hoof with bondo, and decided to put two bell boots per hoof. Luckily, the damage hasn't completely undone all of our rehab work.

If the cadence was fixed, how did this happen?

I can only assume that the combination of her airs above ground and a slick pasture led her to interfere (Buttercup tends to interfere on the backside of fences even when her hooves are healthy) and rip off the shoe.

Also, with the wet conditions, it seems that Buttercup's infection has flared up again. So, I'll be soaking in lysol more regularly. Not sure if the infection made the hoof more crumbly and prone to letting the shoe rip off, but it can't hurt to nip that in the bud.

You'd think I'd learn not to say things that'll jinx me after 20 years around horses.