Confessions of a Horseshoer

The First Horse

8 The First Horse I put a shoe on my first horse at horseshoeing school. We students were all excited to finally get out of the classroom and put our hands on a live horse. We were working in pairs, each person required to put on one front and one hind shoe. The horses came from local skinflints who were willing to sacrifice the feet of their horses to inexperienced horseshoeing students in order to save the cost of a shoeing.The school charged nothing for this service, and, as I recall, that was the right price for our work. Nervous students were working on the horses who had arrived, but my partner and I still waited for ours. We wandered around criticizing everyone’s work, occasionally joined others in trying to make the first cut on the mid-summer, stone-hard feet of these first clients.It was hot and discouraging .I wondered what had possessed me to get involved in this ridiculous way of life, and I hadn’t even started yet. Heat, fear, frustration, and a sense of hopelessness all mixed together. Finally, someone pointed at an approaching truck and horse trailer racing down the narrow dirt road, careening around curves, sending clouds of dust swirling across the fields. The driver skidded to a halt in front of us, leisurely climbed out and opened up the trailer.Out flew this sweating, • The First Horse • 9 wild-eyed, black, giant of a horse, in a state of panic. He was probably 17 hands high. Our horse. My palms are getting sweaty even as I write this some 37 years after the fact. My partner and I gaped at this animal as he snorted and plunged against the rope that the owner eventually tied him with.Then we gaped at each other.The instructor was saying something about this being an interesting case. Yes. I went first. I picked up a front foot and got thrown about six feet forward. I still can’t figure out how he did that. And I can’t figure out how I ever got a shoe on that foot, but I did. I remember nothing about it, except that it took me something like 2 ½ hours to get my two shoes on, and that he kicked me in the leg with his hind foot. My partner started on the other hind foot, but by the time he got to the front foot, the horse had had enough. He’d been standing there, a nervous wreck, for about four hours, and he was through with the whole business.As soon as anyone touched this last leg,he kicked out violently.By this time,all the other students had finished their horses, and having become sated with watching the violence, had gone home—probably to reconsider the direction their lives were taking. Remaining were my partner and I, the owner, and the two instructors who reluctantly concluded that we would all be there until the horse died if they waited for us to get a shoe on that last foot. So the instructors took over. Failing miserably to secure a hold on the leg, the head instructor, who consistently and tenaciously had advocated that the shoer should never get angry or strike a horse in any way, started to yell, curse, and kick the horse in the belly. Nothing worked. My partner and I, from ten feet away, were enormously but quietly 10 • Confessions of a Horseshoer • amused. Eventually the two instructors tied the foot up off the ground, and while one instructor hung from the horse by a lip chain, a very painful control device, the other managed to get that last shoe on.The horse owner, having enjoyed the entire spectacle,contentedly drove off with his horse into the dark,leaving the four of us to stare after him,two of us doing our best to hide the smiles that would have endangered our lives had they been seen. ...