A short biography of how it all came to be.
I remember being 13 years old and holding one of my fathers "Dude string horses" for him while he shaped up a couple of shoes on the bumper of his old ford truck. while I watched him work, I began to ask him questions about everything from picking out feet to clinching. Finally I asked him "Dad, would you teach me how to shoe a horse?"
(The reply that he gave me set the wheels into motion on my journey towards becoming an honest to goodness real life farrier.)
He quietly stood up and looked at me with squared shoulders (that seem to accompany every person that has just recently returned a foot to the ground after holding it between your knees for several minutes) and without any hesitation he said "nope" and then picked up the foot and went back to work.
Now I just could not accept the fact that he would not teach me anything about a horses foot, so I began to research differant farriers schools and for the next four years I studied every book, article, and magazine I could get my hands on that pertained to the art/science of farriery.
At the same time, I was finally getting old enough for Dad to really start teaching me how to handle the rougher types of horses that he had a knack of bringing home from various salebarns. I remember him once buying a load of bucking horses from an estate sale when a local rodeo stock contractor past away.
He told me and my little brother to see what we could do with them. Which, ended up being us gathering these mangey things up everyday of the summer from assorted neighbor's pastures.
I would crawl up on a colt or some spoiled saddle horse and ride for hours through the canyons and creek bottoms surrounding my fathers ranch pushing my mount toward anything I thought might blow his little mind and once found, I would find methods of making the "boogerman" behind the rock, stump, or whatever it was to disappear. After putting a months worth of hard riding on some outlaw cayuse and finally get to the point where I was not scared to death everytime I climbed aboard, Dad would sell them at a tremendous profit and give me a new project or three.
If I seem a little rough around the edges please forgive me,