Chain Reaction Traction: Anti-slip Horseshoe Chains Took the Farrier Out of the Equation 100 Years Ago

This is the latest chapter in the Hoof Blog's series on the history of hooves vs. snow and ice. To read other articles in this series, scroll to the bottom of this article for links.

When Harry Weed invented snow chains for automobile tires in 1904, he was just following a trend. He had seen people wrap grapevines and ropes around their tires. There was a lot of snow where he lived in Canastota, New York and Harry understood that for people to use cars year round there, they needed more traction. He patented his invention and, as they say, the rest is history. Steel tire chains based on his principles are still in use today.

And when horsemen saw automobile owners wrap Harry's steel chains around their car tires, they thought it should work if they wrapped smaller chains around their horses' hooves on snowy, icy roads. A clever Massachusetts veterinarian was waiting in the wings with a hoof strap that held chain links to the bottom of a hoof. You could strap it on and take it off without removing the shoe. It promised to keep horses on their feet and working, no matter the weather.

But would it? And what would horseshoers think of it?

Silent Anvil: Horseshoers Like Dave Reed

There's a silent anvil here in Massachusetts today. The anvil belonged to farrier Dave Reed of Brimfield. You probably didn't know Dave, but then again, maybe you did. Or maybe you know someone a lot like him.

This article is my way of saying good-bye to Dave, and tipping my hat to horseshoers like him. They're out there. But they're disappearing from the back roads every day. Soon they might all be gone, unless we realize what they had to teach us. A lot of farriers I know who are working now chose the profession because they had been around horseshoers like Dave Reed.

I met Dave back in the early 1980s. Dave was one of a whole legion of farriers in that era who had come back from Vietnam and found their places behind the wheel of a rattley pickup truck. It probably had a dog in the passenger seat. Horseshoers like Dave Reed would always have a good story about how that dog got there.

Being a horseshoer worked out really well for a lot of those veterans, especially when they kept to the back roads in the small towns, away from the big stables and show barns. They could keep their own hours, and be their own employers. There weren't many rules and their biggest competitor was in the mirror, as the profession by the time I came along was changing and demanding that they up their skills--or lose out to someone with a shinier truck, a bigger belt buckle and a better sales pitch.

But back then, there were few books, few classrooms, the tests were optional and horseshoers like Dave Reed could always pack up and move to Vermont or Maine or Montana. A lot of them did.

There was a time when farriers didn't need or want to know how to make roadster shoes. They didn't need letters after their names. They didn't carry briefcases and they couldn't spell or pronounce arteriovenous anastomoses or care what it meant.

Horseshoers like Dave Reed didn't go to many clinics. When they did it, they could sense B.S. by the second slide and I used to smile when I'd see them get up and leave. "Aw, there was nothing there for me," they'd tell me later. I knew what they meant, because I'd catch on by the fourth or fifth slide and I'd be right behind them.

But horseshoers like Dave Reed would come around and stand rooted to the spot when someone like Bob Skradzio was giving a clinic. They'd say it was because he didn't show slides but I knew it was because his handshake was just as strong as theirs, and because he looked them in the eye.

Horseshoers like Dave Reed were the last ones to take the coal forges out of their trucks, and they don't hang up on the people who call looking for help with two-year-old drafts or the rank ones no one else wants to shoe. They shrug. Smoke cigarettes. And somehow get it done, even if it's not pretty.

You don't want to cross horseshoers like Dave Reed. They can have pretty thin skin sometimes. And speaking of skin, their tattoos are the real kind, with anchors or eagles, and you know they got them in places like Bangkok but they never will get around to telling you what the tattoos mean. Or what really happened the night they got those tattoos.

Horseowners would tolerate their erratic schedules because they knew that horseshoers like Dave Reed might not show up when they wanted them but would when they needed them. If their barns burned down or they had a child in the hospital or a horse was injured in a trailer wreck, these are the guys who would show up and probably forget to leave a bill. Even if they didn't shoe there anymore. I've seen it happen.

Horseshoers like Dave Reed don't hold much stock in horse whisperers. What they do is more like a growl but the horses seem to understand. It's hard to fool a horse. They know that. 

Sometimes I think what's wrong with the horse world today is that we've forgotten that being a farrier shouldn't require a business background or a pile of impressive references or a brand new truck or a last name that is a dynasty at the anvil. The job takes character.

The most successful farriers I know seem to be the ones who are characters...and who have character, too. Lots of it. Because you need it. Some days, more than others. It shows up in the way you treat the horse, the jokes you choose to tell (or not tell) the customer, and the time you take explaining to the kid working the drive-through window what a farrier is.

You can do it without character, of course, but you probably won't thrive. You'll always be making more rules and upping your prices and changing your clients and buying new tools. It might be years until you figure out that you need to relax and let the job change you. You can't do much to change the job.

I never actually saw Dave Reed shoe a horse, that I recall. I don't have any shoes he made hanging on the wall. He never wrote an article for or with me. But he never let me down because all Dave Reed ever was was exactly who he was: a horseshoer. A character. And a friend.

Most of the time, I find that all three of those things come together naturally in one package. I hope it always will be that way.

Photo credit: An anvil in the woods would suit horseshoers like Dave Reed. Photo by Jake Matthews.

 © Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.  

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

Read this blog's headlines on the Hoofcare + Lameness Facebook Page

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Standing In A Giant's Hoofprints: Bob McCarthy's Anvil Dedication Saturday

There's a saying that gets tossed around a lot in leadership-by-design books. It's often spouted from the stage by commencement speakers. The words, attributed to Sir Issac Newton, appear on the edge of every British two-pound coin. Newton is said to have said, "If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

I'm sure you understand precisely what this saying means. We have progressed further than those who came before us, because of their tremendous height--height in humanity, height in perseverance, height in sacrifice or bravery or intelligence or ability. And, in some way, the giants gained their height too by the act of lifting up the next generation, sometimes by not even acknowledging that that is what they were doing, even as they did it.

British two-pound coin

For the most part, these giants exist in people's memories. Each of us knows who the giants are--or were--in our lives. But sometimes we see the ghosts of the giants, or I do.

I remember being at farrier Eddie Watson's funeral in Virginia, at an overflowing funeral home with three chapels--all three filled with the three F's of Mr. Watson's life: friends, family and farriers. At the Hunt Club reception afterwards, there was a tiny lamp; he had forged the beautiful base. It burned brightly, though it was the middle of the afternoon, and the paper shade was a warm color. As people jostled around, that little light kept burning. I think I know why it was there, and why it was turned on.

A tree was planted in Saratoga.

Another time was when the horseshoers at Saratoga lost several members of their fraternity in one year. To commemorate the loss, they set up an anvil and planted a tree as a little memorial garden outside the blacksmith shop behind the Oklahoma Training Track. A lot of people came to the dedication ceremony, all for different reasons, and in memory of different people. We stood and stared at a little sapling tree, and beyond.

I felt that way in 2008, when Cornell's vet school farrier shop was remodeled and then-resident farrier Michael Wildenstein sank into the concrete of the floor shoes made by the instructors who had come before him.  And he made sure that Buster Conklin, the only one still living (at the time), came in to have his photo taken in the new shop with his shoe in the floor.

A giant named Buster Conklin posed with Cornell farrier school students in 2008.

We all have ways of remembering people who've made a difference in our lives, and we carry them around in and with us in different ways. But sometimes people care enough, and are creative enough, to make an extra effort, to call out for a gathering or a photo session or a special place to set up a little lamp, because it's important.

Saturday afternoon will be one of those times. The senior statesman of Massachusetts horseshoers, Mr. Bob McCarthy, died last year. His wonderful blacksmith shop in his little town of Medfield has been torn down. A forge stood in that spot for almost 200 years but now there's a parking lot. But someone cared enough to do something to mark the spot where Bob spent his days--spent his life, in fact.

We all had to start somewhere, even Myron McLane, and he was lucky enough to start with Bob McCarthy. Myron bought Bob's 225-pound Eagle anvil years ago when the shop closed, and now has prepared it as a monument on a special granite base, surrounded with a mosaic of inlaid horseshoes made by farriers who were influenced by Bob, and who cared enough to make a shoe in his memory. There will be a few of Bob's shoes in there as well. The town has approved the monument and the dedication.

Allen Smith and Bob McCarthy, two giants of New England farriery.

Bob's anvil will be dedicated at 12:30 on September 17 on Janes Avenue in Medfield, Massachusetts. Everyone is welcome. Just ask anyone where Bob's blacksmith shop used to be. It's the kind of place that, even though it's gone, is still there in a lot of people's memories, and now an anvil will mark the spot.

It doesn't seem so long ago that a giant stood in that very spot, and behind that very anvil, the one that Bob's father bought in 1931. If Bob stood there on Saturday and looked down, he'd see the beautiful workmanship of the farriers who stand today on his shoulders, farriers who haven't forgotten who helped lift them to where--and who--they are today.

Silent Anvil: Bob McCarthy

 Bob McCarthy, the senior statesman of Boston-area farriers, has died.

Farrier friends: The late Allen Smith, left, with Bob McCarthy, right, circa 1988.

Wake  4:00 - 8:00 p.m.  on Thursday, February 17
Funeral Friday, February 18 at 10:00 a.m.
Roberts Mitchell Funeral Service
15 Miller Street, Medfield, Massachusetts 02052
508 359 2000

"The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

--T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

There was a time when I might have been guilty of assigning a high degree of respect for people that was in some sort of direct proportion to the number of hours it would take me to fly to where they lived. As exciting as it is to travel the world, most people stop somewhere, and find a place that they'll call home. I always kept coming right back here, right where I started and like TS Eliot, who grew up  spending summers on the road where I live, it has taken me years to understand what my homing instinct was all about: there was simply no better place on earth for me to be me or to do what I wanted and needed to do.

It had something to do with the people. A lot to do with the people. And I am finally beginning to see it, and know it, for the first time. Just as some of them are slipping away.

I've written a thousand stories about farriers in the Boston area and the Southern New England Farriers Association, which began here in the early 1980s and still carries on. But until the late days of Allen Smith's life, I didn't really understand how it all worked. Or why it worked. I didn't want to analyze something, for fear of jinxing it, and losing Allen was like a spring breaking through a sofa cushion.

Bob McCarthy was a big reason why things worked in the farrier world around here, Allen explained to me one day. I'm hoping that one of the farriers who was close to him will write something about him for the blog but I can tell you what I saw of his character over the years, which was that Bob absolutely had the respect of all the farriers in the Boston area. He didn't demand it, they gave it.

When I came along, there were two senior farriers working who knew the farrier business and had the best accounts: Dick Ham and Bob McCarthy. They were both friendly and generous to the younger farriers, and encouraged them. Dick died quite a while ago, but Bob was helpful in forming the Southern New England Farriers Association, served as its president for many years, and advised behind the scenes for many more. I wonder now how different things might have been if Bob hadn't agreed to be part of SNEFA.

Hardly a politician, Bob served as a stabilizer and a peacekeeper, because no one would ever want to be seen in a bad light in his eyes. Bob was very soft-spoken and made most of his points with a curl of his lip, a raised eyebrow, or a soft grunt. He was gentlemanly, but with a twinkle in his eye; he always seem bemused by what went on around him.

If you saw Bob at a horse show, you'd think he was an owner, not the farrier, until he put his apron on; and when the farrier organizations began talking about establishing vet-farrier relations years ago, Bob was already on a first-name basis with everyone they needed to know.

Bob McCarthy didn't have to say much, and when he did, it would usually have a punchline. He personified the difference between being influential and wielding klout; he didn't seem to have anything to gain, so malice wasn't part of his brand--although mischief certainly was.

Democracy is a wonderful thing. Equality among peers is admirable. But every truly successful civilization recognizes and values its elders. And certain elders accept that they have a responsibility to step forward, or stay accessible, to serve as mentors and role models. With grace and a sense of duty, they impart their wisdom, along with their technical knowledge, to benefit the next generation.

And some, like Bob, never lose their sense of humor, or take themselves too seriously, which makes them very easy to be around.

As sad as I am tonight, I'm sadder still for Myron and Owie and Garth and Freddy and John and Dave and Tom and Alvin and all the others who had a special friend for the past 30 or more years. Someone who was not just a very fine horseshoer--which he certainly was--but who understood all about the challenges they faced trying to make a living.

The Boston area may be a tough place to raise or train or keep horses, but Bob McCarthy helped make it a great place to be a horseshoer. And to be me.