When I was a small kid I got my first horse. It was a Shetland pony named Princess, I shared her with my sister. When I got a little older I got a bigger horse, his name was Shortie. With the horses came a need for a horse shoer. Some people call them farriers, but horse shoer is more easily understood by non horse people.
This older fellow who taught school shod my horses for years. He always said, “I’m getting too old for this your going to have to learn to do it yourself.” He taught me how to tie up a Colt’s back leg to its tail, so when it kicked it just pulled it’s own tail. He would have me pull shoes off or let me help shape them on his anvil. He was a perfectionist and it really showed up in his shoeing. Slowly, over time I became confident enough to shoe my own horse, thanks to his help.
When I went off to college I started shoeing my own all the time. I’ve always kind of been a tightwad, so instead of paying someone fifty bucks to shoe, I chose to do it myself and save the fifty bucks. I wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination in college, money was always tight.
The first box of horse shoe nails I bought were way to big for the oughts my calf roping horse wore. Needless to say there was a large learning curve that first year in college. I had cheap tools and not a lot of knowledge. I branched out trying to make extra money shoeing horses for other people, it was tough that first couple of years. I made a lot of mistakes and didn’t get called back to shoe again by a lot of clients.
I got lucky and an older horse shoer at college took me under his wing. He had more business than he wanted so he was fine letting me do some of the work. He was also a wealth of knowledge. It wasn’t long and I had all the horse shoeing business I could stand.
I’ve been shoeing horses over thirty years. Nowadays I just do ours, I don’t advertise I do it at all. My knees and feet bother me when I get under one.
I see several people get on social media and complain that their horse shoer didn’t show up or he did a bad job. There’s a couple of mistakes people always make. The first one complaining about the price or asking for a discount. A plumber or HVAC guy charges you just to show up, so keep that in mind.
Another issue is people tend to let their horse tromp the dickens out of the shoer. That’s a bad deal for the shoer because he can’t really say your horse needs a whipping or needs drugs to calm him down. It’s kind of like saying your kid is a spoiled brat. It’s just better he doesn’t say anything bad. The polite thing to do is not ever come back to do your horse again. That’s most likely why he doesn’t return your calls anymore.
If you want to keep a good horse shoer here’s a couple of tips. First pay them a little extra, a ten dollar tip or even a twenty isn’t going to bankrupt you. Another good thing to do is have cold water or Gatorade on hand and a towel to wipe the sweat off with. One of my favorite clients owned a restaurant in town. She always let me eat lunch for free at the restaurant whenever I shod her horses. Treat the horse shoer with some decency and he’ll most likely always be available. You can argue money with the bank and get mad at the school over your kid, just don’t do it to the horse shoer.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
Get Local News!
