Farriers help keep horses on their feet
It's a pedicure and shoe fitting all in one, and the customer stays in the comfort of home. It's a visit from the farrier and the customer is a horse.
Farrier Jill Beidl-McCandless of Pine Ridge Farms in Slippery Rock trained 26 years ago to take care of her own horses.
“I really never meant this to be a business,” Beidl-McCandless said. “I wasn't thinking of doing this as a career.”
But horses need farriers.
“Without it the horse will have lameness or other issues. The shoe provides some support, and if the horse is used a lot more, the hoof wears down faster than it can grow,” Beidl-McCandless said.
She works on about 600 horses of all sizes. She visits each horse every six to eight weeks and makes it to two to four locations daily. From April to October, the farrier's busiest time of year, she sees 15 to 20 horses a day.
Her tools include a shoeing hammer, a rasp or file, 15-inch long nippers for cutting the half- to one-inch thick hoof wall, a hoof knife for paring the loose or flaky sole of the foot, durable steel horseshoes or lighter aluminum ones, nails to attach shoes and clinchers to bend the nails.
She said, “Nothing you do will hurt them as long as you don't go too short or too deep.”
<h3>45 to 60 minutes</h3>She removes shoes to trim the hoof walls and other parts of the horses' feet. Then she puts the old shoes back on or uses new shoes. She shapes or bends pre-made shoes so they fit the horse. This “cold shoeing” takes 45 to 60 minutes per horse.“I buy cases of shoes all different sizes,” Beidl-McCandless said.Some farriers do “hot shoeing,” she said. After heating the shoe, it goes on for fitting and then is removed to cool. The burning hoof or burning hair smells of hot shoeing make some horses snort or move, even though they don't feel the heat.Bob Jamison of Jamison Equine Services in Evans City made two-thirds of the horseshoes he used when he started as a farrier in 1974. He was hot shoeing then, but now it's mostly cold shoeing because available shoes are good.He said shoes should fit snugly but allow the hard, fibrous hooves to grow down and expand sideways. Shoes should not put pressure on the sole of the horse's foot.Beidl-McCandless said how much the horse has been handled recently, how trained the horse is, its age and whether the hoof is damaged or infected all influence how the horse reacts to the farrier.“A horse sometimes recognizes something different is going to happen when a farrier or vet pulls in,” she said.While working, she leans against the horse or has a hand on it. If she feels the horse tighten a muscle, it could mean the horse is going to kick.“You do have to communicate with the horse. You talk to them to soothe them,” Beidl-McCandless said.Josh Dillaman of JD's Farrier Service in Slippery Rock said, “Ninety-nine point nine percent of horses are good to work on, the ones I do anyhow.”<h3>Difficult horses</h3>But, he does meet some difficult horses.“It's not worth the money you're going to make if you're working on a bad horse and you get hurt,” he said.Dillaman didn't plan to be a farrier. “I was building houses and the housing market fell apart.”He knew Jamison who was the farrier for Dillaman's mother's horses.“(Bob was) grumbling that his helper quit,” Dillaman said. “I thought I'd have a go at it. I always wanted to be my own boss.”After working with Jamison for a year, Dillaman went to farrier school and served an apprenticeship. Dillaman still helps Jamison but has his own business.Jamison said, “About 35 years ago I slowed down in the shoeing because it's hard on the body, so I went to dental school.”With his equine dentistry training, he cut back to shoeing about 180 horses every six to eight weeks rather than 100 horses a week.Dillaman said a farrier has the costs of fuel, trucks, trailers and insurance while making a living. A farrier works many evenings and weekends.“I joke with my wife I'm working half a day and half a day is 12 hours,” he said.Trims take about 15 minutes, shoes take 40 to 90 minutes and he can tend 10 to 12 horses daily.Dillaman works mostly with performance horses and trail horses. Sometimes he cares for miniature horses.“They're sometimes as hard as a draft horse because you have to stand on your head to do them,” Dillaman said. “They're just so close to the ground.”Weather is a big issue with his job.“In the winter time when it gets cold, it's hard to nail shoes on,” Dillaman said. “Working outside all day, that takes its toll. In the summertime it's hot. Everything has its pros and cons.”Farriers get to know the horse owners well. Beidl-McCandless enjoys her customers and said conversations during shoeing often lead to friendships.Grasp the ideaFor success, she said a farrier has to get along with the animal and the customer, grasp the idea of how to balance and level the foot, have business sense, not mind working alone and tolerate both the weather and barn conditions.Jamison said, “I wanted to be a dairy farmer but I saw it was going to take too much money. I liked horses, so I went to shoeing school.”He and his wife raise team pen and ranch-sorting quarter horses. He knows people spend money on their hobbies — like horses — even when other things are expensive.Dillaman, who owns quarter horses, said, “There's a saying no foot no horse. If (you) don't take care of their feet they're lame. You can't ride them or show them.”“I love what I do,” he said. “You never do the same thing twice. There are so many different people you get to talk to and different farms to go to.”
