This guy is summering on fifteen acres of brome. He is very happy and is enjoying his temporary home.
These ponies are not my customers. The rig and ponies live near my inlaws in Missouri. Very cute, though!

Two Bit has to travel a lot of pastures, gravel roads and back country to trim and shoe horses. This road has two creeks that run across the road. If we have enough rain, I have to go around which adds about seven miles to my odometer. I had to reschedule my horses this morning. It has been thundering and raining for a few hours now. My next appointments start at four in the afternoon. Maybe the weather will blow over by then. The rain seems never ending this year. Horses that normally don't have any problems with their feet are blowing abcesses because their feet are so soft. Horse owners don't understand that they cannot ride the way they usually do when it is this wet. They have to stay off road gravel and rocky trails or put shoes on. Once they injure a foot, get tendonitis or throw their back out of alignment it takes several weeks for the horse to get better. But people want an instant fix and worse, don't realize they caused the problem.This is also the time of year that horseshoers have to fight off exhaustion. Working in the heat and with a full schedule starts to wear on your body. Trying to find holes in the schedule to fit horses in that you have to reschedule because of weather means that you work under more horses than your body can tolerate in a week. You leave the house an hour earlier and come home at dark. This leaves no time to contact your customers who are due, call customers to confirm upcoming scheduled appointments, or return phone calls. It gets frustrating. No matter how hard you work you are always behind.

The first four years I left my cell phone on all the time and I took it with me everywhere. This year I shut my phone off at 8pm every night and I never fire up the cell phone on Sundays. This is also the first year that I won't work on Sunday. To my knowledge I lost two customers totalling 5 horses this season. One woman called at 10:15 on a Friday night and left voice mail. I called her at 8am the next morning and she said she found someone the night before. Oh well. Another woman called me on a Saturday afternoon on my home phone, not my business line, to shoe her horse that day so she could go on a competitive trail ride the next morning. I already had a full day of horses. By the time I found her message on the home phone it was too late to shoe a horse before dark. Last year I did shoe her horse at a park in the dark during a thunderstorm.

When I rode with Bob for two years as an apprentice, it was like working with a machine. He left the house at 7:30 every morning. He shoes ten to twelve horses a day six days a week at the same steady pace all day long. He rarely stops to eat, almost never stops where there is a bathroom and always drive the shortest distance from barn to barn. He doesn't take breaks, answer the phone or stop working until his list for the day is complete.

For the past three years on my own I have followed much the same path, except not as many horses a day. This year I am not. I discovered that Starbucks is always on the way to a barn. I am not sitting on the side of the road waiting because I got to a barn early. I have actually been exactly on time or five minutes late for appointments. I have more horses a day now. As an old girl, I started staggering my day. I work until noon, then go home for four or five hours and rest. Then I go back out at four or five and work until eight at night. This give my body a chance to rest and has kept me out of the heat in the afternoon.

I was always an early morning person, awake and up by six. Now that I am in the throws of menopause I am not sleeping well at night. I sleep the heaviest from five to seven in the morning. To accommodate, I moved my first appointments this summer from eight to nine in the morning. While this is my busiest year, it is also the most relaxed and comfortable year.

New customer

This little cutie was born two days ago. I think he is adorable!I spent more time rescheduling customers the past two weeks than working. There have been storms every morning. I took one week for light duty only because of the surgery on my foot. It was just getting easy to walk again when I got bucked off my bicycle at Shawnee Lake. Not on the mountain bike trail. Oh no. That would be too easy. I was on the concrete trail where no one should fall. So, that means this week had to be overbooked. One of my customers is on vacation this week. She rode with me two days and was a great help. Except at one place where she forgot we didn't shoe. We only trimmed. She picked up the horse owners bucket of brushes thinking it was my bucket of nails and tools. We both watched her load it in the trunk of my car along with my shoeing box, waiting to see how long it would take her to realize she had the wrong bucket. She didn't figure it out until she saw us laughing!

I have three new stops this week with six new horses. One horse was a set of four shoes. He stood nice and quiet. I found out he and my horse have the same daddy. That explains why he is so quiet. I had two from last night that I walked away from. They were trims. One was new to the woman and he already had her scared of him. She can't catch him and has arranged for a cowboy to come in to rope the horse so they can get it on a trailer and gone. The other horse was a brat. She kept rearing when I would pick up a foot, then she would step into me and tried to push me down. I have three new ones tonight. The rest of the week should go smoothly with known good quiet horses.

When the horseshoer needs a farrier

I have been hobbling around all weekend because I had an ingrown toenail removed from my giant toe. I always thought it was called the big toe, but the nurse said it is officially a giant toe. Who knew? Tom laughed at me all the way to the walk-in clinic. He thought it was funny that the horseshoer needed a farrier. I had an appointment with a podiatrist two weeks from now, but the nail decided to get infected the day before a holiday. So on 4th of July I had minor surgery.

I have horses scheduled in the morning and hope I do OK. I am still pretty sore and can't take any more of the prescribed pain medicine so I can drive and safely work under horses in the morning. That is one of the joys of working for yourself. You don't have sick leave and you don't get paid if you aren't working. You also take a chance if you call your customer to reschedule. Sometimes, they will move to a different farrier. You just can't be sick or take vacation in this job and keep your customers. The strip mall where the clinic was also has a coffee shop that was new to us. They made great coffee and had awesome sandwiches.

Hubby was on vacation most of last week. Wednesday we spent the day bicycling the levee trail in Lawrence. At 5pm we stopped to regroup so I could trim horses on the way home. The horses are a mother and yearling baby haflingers. They are quiet good horses, except that the baby was taught to bow when you pick up a front foot. That makes it a little bit of a struggle to trim its' front feet. There is also a drop dead gorgeous Holsteiner dressage horse. He is black and all legs. He always trots in from the pasture when his owner calls him. He is magnificent to watch.

I have a new pony on my list that is cute as a bug. He is foundered, but assuming he is taken off grass I think he will come around pretty quickly. I had to move some horses around during the week it was over 100 degrees. Everyone was willing and understood. One afternoon, in the middle of the week, I just couldn't go out again. I had to reschedule a new customer. If I had just waited another two hours before calling him I could have used a thunderstorm as an excuse to cancel instead of sounding like a wimp and cancelling because of the heat! Both of his horses were quiet and stood nicely.

Tom was bicyling on the Landon trail this morning and saw one of my customers riding their horse. He stopped and got off his bicycle because he didn't want the horses to shy. He asked them where they were from and asked if they knew me. One of the horses was my customer. The horse owner said that I was just at the barn last week and that I was telling her how I drop him off at one end of a trail and pick him up at the other end. The Landon trail is only an eight mile round trip ride. Had my giant toe not hurt so much, I would have ridden with him.

I have six new horses scheduled this week that I am looking forward to meeting. I also have to make a stop to check on one customer who's horse probably has a rock bruise on a front foot. I hope not, because he has his horse for sale and if it goes lame he will have to hold onto the horse awhile longer. Truthfully, if I thought I could keep a horse right now I would have bought this one already. It is a good broke quiet horse.

The advertising I did in May is still working. I have two new customers that will be regular trims and occasionally shoe. They handled their horses exceptionally well. Both horses are older, but recently trained to ride. In my little world that means the horses didn't have much patience. The owners were right on top of it, though. One new customer is the cutest white welsh pony. He was a sweetheart to work under. Two horses last week are customers I would love to have on my list. I was filling in for an injured farrier so I probably won't see them again. Too bad as the horses stand quietly and don't have any issues. I may be slightly one sided, but I also like the barn because it has cats that enjoy human contact.

Knock on wood, but my shoes are starting to stay on 8-10 weeks like they were when I first started. This work is so frustrating. The harder you work at some part of it the more frustrated you get. When you get to the point that you want just to hang up your apron, things start to go better. There are feet I put shoes on that I would swear won't stay on a day because of all the issues the foot has. Those are the shoes that stay on eight weeks. The hoof that doesn't seem like it should lose a shoe at all are the ones that come off right away. Go figure. Without fail, every shoer I have met is a perfectionist (Although I am not! Am I?)who can and will spin themselves in circles trying to make a foot or a shoe come out just so.

So what have I been doing differently? First, I realized that I started dropping shoes when I started using city head #5 nails. I started out using combo #5 nails until I got brave enough to go with a bigger nail. I went back to the smaller nail. Then Bob came out to help me with a barrel horse that needed front shoes. He showed me that I was not rasping the toe level. So I started rasping the toe differently. Finally,another shoer showed me a different way to clinch the foot. The good thing is that my shoes are hanging in there now. The bad thing is that I don't know for sure what I was doing wrong or which of the three things I changed was the right thing.

The weather is a pain in the neck this spring. I had to reschedule several appointments because of storms, rain or 100 degree temperatures. Most customers understand and are happy to reschedule. The storms really wreck havoc with my schedule. The horses act stupid just before a storm front. The bugs go on an eating frenzy and chew on the horses so they are contantly stomping their feet and lashing you with their tail. The horses feet are soft from all the moisure and their is mud everywhere. The winds we have this spring make the horses spookey. The outlook this week is for 100 degree temperatues. I know at least on customer will want to reschedule. The rest are morning appointments. If I pace myself and drink a lot of water I will get through it.

A Half Century

I have several new shoeing customers this spring. The horse that belongs to this foot is a tall lanky grey that is used as a trail horse. This week is the end of three long weeks. You have to make hay while the sun shines, but I am not sure my body is up for it. I have one more long day Monday with four horses getting shoes and three trims. After that, I need to get control of my schedule and tone it down. At up to $700 a week gross, I can sleep at night. Over that and my body hurts too much to sleep.

Funny how the weather affects horses. I have one stop with three horses that are fairly well mannered. We had weather moving in the other morning when I showed up. All three horses acted silly. In the first half hour, one horse broke his lead rope, one knocked over my shoeing box, the third got loose. It started raining and we decided to drop back five yards and come back another day.

One of my long time customers began riding her horse again after taking some time off to have a baby. Her horse tends to have soft spots just behind the toe. I asked my mentor, Bob, to help out. His front feet have soft spots just back from the toe. That spot was soft to the touch three weeks ago, so I thought he would need pads. Of course, by the time I met Bob at this barn we had been several days without rain, so the soft spot was not as sensitive anymore. We think he will do just fine with St. Croix Eventers. That shoe is wider in the web and has a bit of a roll to it.

Playing Fetch

When you work outside all day you quickly find out that perfect days are rare. The summer heat in the Midwest is brutal. The wind blows every day in Kansas, and the winter wind will cut right through you until you are chilled to the bone. When I moved here in 1989, a real estate agent told me that if the wind stopped blowing everyone in Kansas would fall down. It didn’t take long to understand what he was talking about. About six months after I moved to Kansas, on a spring Saturday, we had seventy mile an hour sustained straight winds for about six hours.

This week, however, was amazing. The sky was as blue as could be, with no clouds. There was very little humidity and, most of the week, very little wind. It was pleasantly warm and still quite cool at night. I worked at one of my favorite stops this week. It is one of the barns I go to where I am usually alone. The horses are quiet and easy to catch. I don’t have to race against a clock to get there, since no one is waiting on me.

There is also a Labrador retriever who loves to play. Since it was so nice out, we played fetch for about a half hour. Actually, I sat in the shade under a tree while the dog fetched. I think we both had a good time, even though the dog did all the work. Retrievers always have to have something in their mouth. Two winters ago, this dog took one of my gloves and dropped it in the pond. The owners found it and left it for me when I came back eight weeks later for the horses next set of trims!

The advertising I paid for is producing a lot of calls. I seem to be catching a break this year. So far, all but one new stop resulted in good horses to work under. I did get one phone call where the man insulted me, propositioned me, and then tried to bribe me to come out to trim his horse at supper time on a Sunday. He probably still doesn’t understand why I hung up on him.

One of my new stops this week was a coming two year old who was passive aggressive while I was trying to trim her front feet. When that didn’t work, she started rearing and striking. I told the owner we were done for the day. She got the filly settled down and removed the halter and lead rope. As the owner turned to walk away the filly tried to run her down. I stepped forward holding my arms up and growled. The filly did a sliding stop and started to turn away, which is what most horses will do. Then she turned back toward me, ran at me reared and tried to strike me. The owner came in beside me and used her lead rope to hit the horse. The filly turned around, backed up and tried to kick the woman. The filly didn’t back off until we were out of the paddock. I have had horses that were too ill mannered to work under, but have never had one attack me. This is why stops like the one with the fetching dog are the ones you treasure.

A couple of years back I trimmed a mule. Their regular shoer had injured his back and the mules’ owner was taking her in a 4th of July parade. He needed her feet to look good. I knew it was a one time stop, but was happy for the money.
He called this week and wanted me back out. He tried to trim the mule on his own last year and didn’t like how hard it was on his back. He liked the way I handled his mule so he had me back out. I was happy to go because several times the past two years I received calls from people he gave my name to. His mule is well mannered and has a great paint job.