I'd like to take a second

Denny Bryant was a hell of a man. While I never got to know him to the extent of the men and women in the farrier business in San Diego County, California, he still had an impact on my dad and I.

At one point when Dad was having an issue forging shoes, Don Reed sent him to Denny for help. Denny was also nice enough to tell me stories about different things from shoeing harness horses to his thoughts on the Buck Branaman clinic he attended. Once Denny was wearing a horse hair belt which he proudly proclaimed he had paid $20 an inch for it's production and was kind enough to laugh when I suggested that he had eighty bucks wrapped up in the deal (Denny was a slight man for those of you who didn't benefit from knowing him.) Most of all, was the day he stood watching me forge shoes at a clinic and he told me no matter what anyone else ever told me, that I belonged behind an anvil. That I fit there. That statement coming from him meant as much or more as anything I have ever been told. (Denny also laughed when I responded that I wish Homer Tosh had survived to hear him say that, but that is a story for another day.)

So as farriers do we celebrated Denny's life with a contest named in his honor. Building a replica of shoe Denny had built, a fullered harness horse hind with calks. Rightly so Jason Harmeson won the class with a pretty spot on match to the original. I gave a good effort and took second. All things considered, I'll take it.

Though I wasn't a "San Diego" guy, I still treasured Denny as many people did. A cigarette and a coffee before the clinic or a cigarette and a beer after dinner, it was always a highlight to visit and get something from him. A laugh, a though, a story.

Counting your lucky stars

It's a day like any other day, you're rushing around to get your business handled, and then it happens.

While it's not really your business why I moved out of the wilds of Agua Dulce and back to the big city (besides, it's not the point of the story), but the fact was that I had made several trips that weekend to get stuff moved out of the old place and in to the new. Between that and going about my normal business of shoeing horses, criss-crossing every major freeway in north L.A. county, I was behind and bound to catch up. Needless to say, the throttle on Ruby (the 2003 shoeing rig) was running pretty near wide open.

I had completed most of the tasks that were required of me prior to going to Oregon to work for Gordon Haight for a few days, but I was running late. I was on my way to the Flyaway, the place one goes in the San Fernando Valley if you don't care to drive to LAX, when it happened. I hit what could be considered a tremendous bump and something was wrong. I looked in the rear view mirror and could see that the shoeing body that had been attached to my truck for some 200,000 miles was, but wasn't. Realizing that I didn't want the thing to come completely off the truck, I limped it to the safest place I could, which happened to be the Flyaway parking lot. Besides, I had a plane to catch.

Ya know, 15, 20 years ago if something like this happened, I would have been having a case of the "poor Me's" but at this stage of the game, as I stood there and looked at shoeing body setting crooked on the frame (no other damage I could see), I was thankful. I was thankful that my rolling machine shop/hardware store didn't come completely off the truck, and I was thankful that it happened on a street rather than a freeway. As I reflected, I also thought, what if it had come off when I was going 65 miles an hour down the 14, or worse yet, the 5 or the 405. Nope, I was and still am pretty thankful that no one got hurt, and that the contents of my truck weren't strewn about some metropolitan thruway.

Several years ago I started telling my help that "it could be worse" when something didn't go our way, and it always could. All I can say is; the next time the Fates deal you a blow (and especially you who are younger than I) think about it. Often times it could have turned out way worse than it did, but for some reason it didn't. Count your lucky stars, shut up and drink your coffee.

A public apology to Mike McCarthy

Dear Mike:

I know that I have been one of your harshest critics since you joined the Packers, but I would like to take a moment to apologize for the things that I have said here and throughout the Internet.

I apologize for making you 3 of the 5 people I would punch in the face on facebook, for on several occasions trying to mathematically eliminate you from your job, for threatening have you sent back to Ft. Hayes State on a Trailways Bus. I apologize wanting to kick the pens you keep in the back of your hat up your ass, and for most certainly underestimating your abilities to coach a professional football team.

While I still don't think you're that great at communicating to the rest of the world, at least you get your message across to my beloved Packers.  With the odds stacked against you this year, you managed to get a team that  most of the world wrote off  in getting to the Super Bowl due to all of the injuries.

At any rate, please find it in your heart to accept this apology, because it is the best I come up with. Thanks for getting us the Halas Trophy, and for this year.  Even if you don't win the Super Bowl, true Packer fans appreciate you beating the Bears 2 out of 3 and the Vikings twice this year.

Thanksgiving

Several years ago there was a horseshoer in the greater Los Angeles area.  While I'm not certain that it was her favorite thing to do in the world, she was sure fond of saying; "If I shod horses like that, I would be out of business." 

The great thing about the Los Angeles market is that there are horses for just about everybody to shoe. I have estimated (and keep in mind that Los Angeles is a large county and several farriers come in from neighboring counties to shoe horses here) that there has to be close to 1,500 people who shoe here  I have really never needed to crack back on someone else's work in order to get it. It just kind of shows up when it does and while the economy has taken a chunk out of my business, I'm still able to shoe horses and make a living.

So, yes, here is comes. Yes, an infomercial.

I am thankful for the American Farriers Association (AFA) and the members of that organization that have helped me be as good a farrier as I can be. I can't imagine where I would be in this trade if I had not learned what I have from not only the lectures and the clinics I have attended, but from the interaction with AFA members who have so willingly shared their knowledge with me. I believe that because I have had these opportunities and I have learned from them, I don't have to resort to practices that I view as questionable in order to get work and for that I am grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving to my brothers and sisters in this business, to my many clients, and to my dear friends near and far. I have thought about many of you today and how thankful I have been to have had you in my life if even for a brief moment. I have learned from each of you.

I have lamented the fact that that every horse that has been presented to me with a suspensory issue, that was wearing barshoes, have all gotten sounder once I have been allowed to take the barshoes off. This was triggered by yet another horse that came to me with a hind limb suspensory issue that was "treated" with barshoes. The horse was so sore behind that he was a fight from the word go to the point where we had to lip chain the poor bugger to get him to stand. We reset him yesterday and he stood like a broke horse should. Amazing how good they can be when they don't hurt. Yet farriers, veterinarians and trainers still hold to the theory that the best thing for a suspensory issue is a stinking barshoe.

While I'll admit it's a stupid looking shoe and not the prettiest one I have ever made, sadly it's the only picture I have of what Big Roy Proctor called a "run down shoe." I call it a suspensory shoe. I have no idea what the French call it but thanks to Greg Gilchrist, I know that they manufacture such thing for the same purpose, so I know I'm not completely crazy. Further, for all I know, I have a 100% success rate with the thing. That is to say every horse that I have put this type of shoe on to help with a suspensory issue has gotten "better." Keeping in mind that nothing is perfect or is going to work and that part of the success of this shoe depends on proper hoof prep.

The theory behind it is that the broad toe and the tapered heels create a lower capsular angel when the hoof is loaded, thus taking the strain off of the suspesory ligaments of the lower limb. One thing Greg Gilchrist did note in our conversation about this shoe that you had the potential of irritating the coffin joint on the effected limb. I can't say that I have had that problem, but I have only applied it to two horses that have remained in work, both were horses with hind suspensory issues. Of the ones that had front suspensory issues, they were all on extended lay up, so I can't really comment to that.

A few words about your rasp

If you want to know what a new hoof rasp is good for, the answer is, well, hooves. Yep, that's about it. Dead hoof rasps, that is to say ones that aren't useful for trimming feet are good for several hand grinding applications, but a new rasp, much like horse nails, are a specific use item, so again we should be thankful that someone is willing to make them.

The hoof rasp has evolved so much over the last 15 years since Simmonds first came out with the "Big Hoof" rasp. When I started twenty something years ago, you had a choice of manufacturers, but the length was a standard 14 inches and a cutting width of about 2 inches. Now you have Save-Edge Beasts that are 17 inches long and around an inch wider. But much like everything else in this business the cost of a rasp has increased quite a bit since when I started.

A lot about your rasp's life depends on how you use it. The more you have to rasp, the fewer horses you  are going to get out of each rasp. So suffice to say the better you are at nipping a foot, the more humid your climate, and your personal views on hot fitting feet, you can lengthen the life of your rasp. Me personally, I'll get 15 to 20 horses out of a "good" rasp. At around $28.00 (tax included) I have about a buck and a half invested per horse So going with our formula that a person shoes six horses a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, your annual rasp cost is going to run between $2,800 and $3,000 a year. Keeping in mind that the more horses you do the more it costs you.

So if we back track to our $80.00 horse shod with 4 keg shoes, I think we were up to around $10.00 give or take, so with the rasp we are now around $11.00 or $12. bucks just in basic consumables needed to shoe a horse. We still haven't figured in everything else.

Off the curent topic

When speaking of new farriers, I say the last three things a person right out of shoeing school needs is a fancy truck, an acrylic gun, and a book of horses to shoe. The only thing that drives me crazier than seeing somebody fresh out of shoeing school with a fancy new shoeing rig is the fact that I won't have the cash to buy it when that person quits, and they do.

It's funny, back in the day when I was still trying to figure out who I was, I worked for this employment agency and they sent me out on this job where they were stripping the inside of a warehouse. The guy who was the foreman on the job, asked me what I was doing there, because I was no "demo man." I told him I needed the job. He said I wasn't any good at it and told me I should go find work with someone who shoes horses until I could get my own work together. The way he said it was way cruder than that, but I wasn't offended when he got his point across in that I was in his way and demolition wasn't my calling. But try dropping that on a 30 year old who just got done paying tuition, etc., on a shoeing school. They don't take it as well.

I have a lot of stories like that. People knew for whatever reason I was going to make it in this business, by the same token I now can tell a person if they are going to be a farrier a year from today after working with them once. There is something about people who are going to make it as farriers. Whether it's attitude or stubbornness, I don't know. But to use a term Arabian people use concerning horses for various disciplines, we have 'it." The "it" being the right mentality, attitude, hunger, whatever the "it" is we have it, and we know those who don't.