Farrier Exam

Hi Everyone,
So the famed and dreaded exam with the stud farrier Martin Leahy is over for the class of 2010! Every year the stories start of how previous years freaked out and stressed over what he was going to ask. Martin gives lectures throughout the year, starting with basic handling skills up to bone structure, conformation and conformational defects. I think the main reasons that everyone gets stressed each year is that Marin has a certain manner about him. Dont get me wrong, he is a lovely man and fantastic farrier (Master Farrier to be exact). He just has a way, he is quiet and understated and goes about explaining things in a very philisophical manner. He wants things explained in a basic way, basic english. Its weird, but in an examination atmosphere he is quite intimidating. Not everyone felt that way obviously, but the majority generally do.
Today the exam started at 7.30am, we were examined for 15 minutes individually, in alphabetical order. The questions he asked turned out to be not that horrendous! I went in at 9.30am, and he had laid out the bones in the leg from below the knee. The bones included the cannon, the two splint bones, the long paster bone, short pastern bone, coffin bone, sesamoids and navicular. We just had to arrange them in the right order. Then he had a hoof and asked us to name as many parts of it as we could, and then he had a hoof split in half and asked the same thing. Then Martin had laid out about 20 shoes and asked us to pick out the ones we knew and what they were used for. Then we had to go through all the forge and farrier tools and describe what they were used for. He then asked me to collect the tools needed for taking off a shoe, and we went out to the pony and I had to show how to take a shoe off. Then he asked what problems could be found in what areas, such as curb, thoroughpin, splints, sidebone, ringbone etc etc. And that was it. I got a bit nervous at the start, because he never lets you know if you are right or wrong while your explaining things, but on the whole I think I did ok....
So tomorrow is the main major exam, 40% of our total marks come from this exam. 11am is D-Day! What the 5 months have been leading up to! Shall update tomorrow!
Hope all is well!
Courtney
P.S Weather has been lovely, actually got to wear shorts and tshirt to work this afternoon!