Confessions of a Horseshoer

The Bad Job?

141 The Bad Job? I thought I had done a bad job on one particular horse I shod in Northern California. A quite pleasant lady had called to set up an appointment to shoe her mare. She said she would meet me at the pasture because she was the only one who could catch the mare. She told me the horse was easy to shoe, just hard to catch. I showed up on the appointed date and was pleased to see that the horse was, in fact, easy to shoe. I enjoyed talking with the lady, and I enjoyed shoeing her horse. I figured I had done a good job.I gave my usual suggestion to the owner that the shoeing should be done every eight weeks.With my regular customers I always pull out my appointment book and schedule the next visit, but with new customers I hesitate to do that in case they decide they don’t like my work and don’t want me back in eight weeks. I’ll wait for them to call me. I told her she should call me, or some other shoer, around that time to pull off the shoes and either trim and put new shoes on, or just trim the feet. If you leave the shoes on past eight weeks, the feet will just keep growing and the horse might go lame. She said she would call me. The eight weeks came and went and I heard nothing from the lady. I don’t like to call back my customers unless 142 • Confessions of a Horseshoer • we have a definite schedule, so I just waited a bit longer. Another month passed and I finally decided she just didn’t like the job I did, and I wrote her off as a dissatisfied customer. Six months later I got a call from her asking me to come out to remove the shoes and trim the mare. She didn’t want shoes this time. I was pleased to hear from her again, and figured she had used another shoer, didn’t like him, and was coming back to me.That was good. I asked her when would be a good time for us to meet at the horse, but she told me to just go out to the same place, catch the horse and trim her. She would mail me a check. I asked her how I was supposed to catch the horse. She said, “You won’t have any problem. The mare just stands out in one spot in that field all day.You can walk right up to her.” OK. I’ll give it a try. A few days later I drove out to the pasture and saw the mare standing out in the field like the lady said. This time, however, there was a baby about three months old standing beside her. Cautiously I walked out toward them. The mare didn’t move.If she had taken two steps away from me,I would have just left.I had seen how hard it was for the owner to catch her, and I knew if she took off I wouldn’t stand a chance of catching her in that five-acre pasture. The horse didn’t move. I approached as carefully as I could, reached out and put my halter on her. The baby had no idea what was going on. I started to lead the mare over to a fence where I could tie her, but she wouldn’t move. Then I looked at her feet. I recognized the shoes I had put on six months ago. This was a shock to me since shoes normally will fall off after three months, sometimes even before the eight weeks are up. Her feet, like elf boots, were all curled • The Bad Job? • 143 up at the toe. She didn’t move because the strain on her tendons would have seriously pained her. She would have had to walk on the backs of her heels. I didn’t know why the lady hadn’t called.Sometimes people have no concept of time and think it’s eight weeks when it’s actually two or three months. But, six months? This horse could easily have been crippled. I suspected the reason she didn’t meet me at the field was because she was embarrassed at having seriously neglected her horse...