Silent Anvil: Red Renchin

Today the American Farrier's Association (AFA) and the American Association of Professional Farriers (AAPF) reported on their Facebook pages that popular farrier Red Renchin has died.

There are no other official reports, since it is a weekend, but more information will surely be available soon. Red is married to Kate Renchin; they live in Wisconsin and Florida. A more complete or factual obituary may be available elsewhere or later. This is more about what he meant than the facts of what he did, although he did a lot.

Red Renchin was a member of the AFA for decades and had been distinguished as an honorary lifetime member of the AAPF after his retirement from practice in 2011. His accomplishments as a farrier at the international level in the hunter/jumper world were well-known, and he also easily made the transition to lameness-specialty work as long-time horseshoeing consultant to Wisconsin Equine Clinic. He was interested in business management and at one time successfully managed a multi-farrier practice and trained many apprentices. He was a horseman as well as a farrier; he knew what his clients were talking about.

Red was easily at the top of his profession in terms of accomplishment and respect earned for his ability to shoe horses; he's even in the "Hall of Fame". But he will always be remembered and missed for his kindness and manners both at and away from the anvil. That's a very different hall of fame. His friendliness and attentive way of listening to others made everyone feel special and important.

Improving the farrier profession was a burning desire for Red Renchin, who could have taken it easy these past few years but chose to give back to his profession instead. He suffered through a major life-threatening health crisis in 2011 and came back to re-join the farrier world with a renewed sense of purpose. He made himself accessible at horseshoer events, supported fundraisers, and worked to improve continuing education quality and opportunities for farriers. He often shared his wider vision, that it takes more to be successful as a farrier than just an impressive number of horses shod in a day or the ability to excel at the anvil, and left a legacy in print and on video through his work as technical editor for the American Farriers Journal.

I never met anyone more interested in what was going on at an AFA Convention in the old days than Red Renchin, and he genuinely felt offended when a speaker didn't deliver a quality presentation. "That could have been so much better," he'd often moan, but sometimes he'd meet up with me outside the lecture hall and his eyes would be sparkling. "That was fantastic!" he'd say. "Let's go talk about it!" 

I don't know how many hours Red and I spent over coffee or cocktails, trying to sort things out, drawing on napkins and asking the opinions of others. On a higher level, or when it came to politics, we'd mourn that people couldn't get along and wish that things would get better for farriers.

Somewhere along the way, it did get better, thanks to Red and the too-few people like him. The improvements they made for the farriers that came behind them are everywhere, if the new people are motivated enough to take advantage of them, and don't take them for granted.

I hope Red won't be forgotten. Everyone who is hosting a farrier education event for the next year should take one seat in the audience and tape it off. Make it Red's seat. Remember him, because he probably would have been there, or wanted to be. 

Make your educational event good enough that Red's eyes would have sparkled and he would have chirped, "That was fantastic!" Aim to make everyone in the room want to talk it over with their friends late into the night, because that's really why they came. That's what Red Renchin would have done, and loved every minute of it.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing 

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Silent Anvil: Bruce Daniels, American Horseshoer, Has Died

Bruce Daniels died today, just before noon, the American Farrier's Association tell us. The icon of American horseshoeing of the late 20th century had suffered several aortic aneurysms and what his son Tad called "multiple strokes". He still made it to his daughter Cary's house in Florida for Christmas, though.

Just try and stop him.

The farrier world will be a little less colorful now. His stories will be retold forevermore but who's left who remembers the world he lived in, back before the American Farrier's Association civilized horseshoers, as he used to say?

Bruce lived for many years in Mullica Hill, New Jersey. One hundred acres of his property has been made into a conservation preserve by the township. It is now know as "Daniels Woods" or the "Daniels Preserve".

It might be a good place to go for a walk sometime.

I knew for the past week or so this might happen, and didn't know then any more than I know now what should be written about Bruce. I tend to think this is a moment like that great song, "Bye, Bye Miss American Pie". I never really understood it, except that it was written about moments like when Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash, and similar unforgettably tragic days when American innocence and "the music" died.

Was today the day that good old-fashioned American horseshoeing died, once and for all?

In an interview in 1995, Bruce told a reporter, "Determination, strength with gentleness, artistic talent and tolerance for discomfort, even some pain, are the qualities of a successful horseshoer."

Bruce Daniels was one of the first farriers I met when I took on the job of editing the fledgling American Farriers Journal when it was bought by a Massachusetts publisher. It was in the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We had all arrived to attend the American Farrier's Association Convention; I knew Bruce was the vice-president of the AFA, and that he planned to win the competition. I had just edited one of his articles for the Journal and been advised by founder Henry Heymering, "Just don't edit him." That sort of thing sticks in your mind.

And there he was. I timidly introduced myself to him, amidst a crowd of horseshoers who were all trying to shake his hand or slap him on the back or tell him a joke, all at once.

He was chewing tobacco. The baggage carousel revolved behind him. He squinted down at me and muttered, "Oh, yeah, the new girl." He gathered up his luggage. "Where's my tool box?" he growled. Something that looked vaguely like a munitions vault lay on the floor near my feet.

"Hey, Fran, grab that tool box and come along," he directed. "We've got a cab."

I leaned down and grabbed the handle on the top of the box. I almost fell down trying to lift it. It was like a 100-pound dead weight. Bruce (and all the farriers and, it seemed, everyone in the airport) roared with laughter as I attempted to half-carry, half-drag it behind him.

"Welcome to the horseshoeing world, babe," he chuckled as he turned and picked it up easily; I followed him meekly to the cab, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

And did he just call me "babe"?

I always used to joke that Bruce didn't teach me how to shoe horses, he taught me how to tell stories about shoeing horses. He very definitely understood the value of doing both well. Possibly no one did it better--shoe a horse or turn the shoeing of a horse into a story to share afterwards.

I took this picture of him one day in the mid to late 1980s. It's my favorite memory of him. Bruce and his friend, the late, great Bob Skradzio wanted to create a tableau vivant of Norman Rockwell's famous painting of a marathon horseshoeing competition in Vermont.

They didn't just want to pose for me to take the photos so it looked like Rockwell's scene, though. Oh no, not Bruce and Bob...they actually researched and then held the one-on-one competition, making the exact shoes described in Edward W. O'Brien's short story, "Blacksmith's Boy Heel and Toe" that accompanied the illustration in the Saturday Evening Post, way back on November 2, 1940.

It really was a contest. Both of them wanted to win. No one could believe they'd gone to so much trouble, and made it so realistic.

But then nothing less would do. It never would, for Bruce Daniels. And if he taught us anything, it wasn't horseshoes or anvils or even storytelling. It was that he showed us the mindset of total focus, of doing something right, if you're going to do it at all.

--Fran Jurga

Click here to read a good article written in 1995 about Bruce from a Philadelphia newspaper.
 
  

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Disclosure of Material Connection: The Hoof Blog (Hoofcare Publishing) has not received any direct compensation for writing this post. Hoofcare Publishing has no material connection to the brands, products, or services mentioned, other than products and services of 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.

An Unusually Silent Anvil: Ron Dyer ("The Horseshoer")

 I learned tonight, completely by accident while researching something on the web, that Ron Dyer the Horseshoer (as he called himself) died on April 23, just shy of his 84th birthday. I don't have much information, perhaps other people have already announced his passing, but I had no idea.

When I knocked on the door of the farrier profession, I immediately noticed that people tended to cluster around certain individuals. Were they hoping to pick up some sage advice? Not really, they were more likely souvenir story collectors. These people stood close enough to listen, memorize and then go home and re-tell the best stories, again and again, until the stories became legends. And the people who originated those stories along with them

Ron Dyer The Horseshoer 1927-2011

Ron Dyer, a.k.a. Ron Dyer The Horseshoer was one of those people whose stories were and still are re-told.  Here was someone who'd been there, done that and definitely had an opinion about it that he didn't mind sharing. People were a little timid around him; some might use the word "gruff" to describe him, but I also saw him be generous and kind and help people.

Ron was a horseshoer, all right. According to his obituary, he worked for the Budweiser Clydesdales, he worked on the midwestern harness racetracks of the Grand Circuit, he traveled with the circus, he was part of The Great Milwaukee Circus Parade...he did it all.

To hear him talk, he might have been around to shoe Dan Patch or Man 'o War. He pulled history out of the past and made it sound like he'd been there. I never could tell if he was giving me a history lesson or telling me about something he'd seen with his own eyes.

Case in point: The Galesburg, Illinois horse sale barns were one of the biggest horse yards in America in the early 20th century. It was right there in Ron Dyer's hometown that the French military, and then the British, came to buy artillery horses and mules for the First World War. Thousands of them. Reading the history of the sale barn tonight in Ron's honor, I realized it closed seven years before Ron was born. But he told stories about it as if he'd be there.

"By 1910, (the Galesburg Horse Sale) was receiving 25 carloads of horses a week and the same number of 25 cars would be shipped out—making a total carload business for the two railroads of 50 cars per week.  The sale employed 25 regular men. and always had 40 to 50 extra men for Friday and Saturday. Five hundred horses per week consumed about all the hay and straw raised in the adjacent counties. Five hundred horses per week  had to have 500 new halters. Each horse had to have two shoes on his front feet, which made a total of 1,000 horse shoes per week. From 7 to 10 blacksmiths were busy the week around making the shoes." (From Galesburg's Mighty Horse Market by Cornelia Thompson and Fred Dunbar)

I found a story about Ron Dyer in the archives of the Chicago Tribune. It included this gem: Once--possibly many more times than just  this once--Ron Dyer was judging a horseshoeing competition. The anxious competitors awaited their precise instructions of what the esteemed judge would be looking for in their work. Ron told them simply, "I want to see a commercial job; something you can charge for." End of subject. 

Farrier Henry Heymering, the visionary founder of the American Farriers Journal and my colleague in our early years of publishing that magazine, offered a few memories of Ron, who was also an author of articles in that magazine in its early days. Thanks, Henry:

• Ron left quite an impression on me. Florida formed a farrier's association and started a certification test before the AFA. When Ron took the Florida test he made four shoes and shod the horse with them in about 40 minutes, and did a damn nice job!
• Ron said the Illinois association was started after a shoer had a heart attack. Two farriers worked in the same barn, but they (as was the custom then) worked at opposite ends of the barn and wouldn't talk to each other. One day one of the farriers collapsed under a horse. The other farrier went up to the owner to tell him there was a problem.
• When Florida started having contests, Ron was so good he won most everything. Other farriers before signing up would ask if Ron was going to be there and if he was, they would't compete. Ron got wind of this and stopped competing. He would only judge and/or demonstrate, and help the others improve.
• Ron was too young for the French remounts, but I bet his father and grandfather worked on them. I believe Ron was a 4th generation farrier.

Probably Ron Dyer never wrote down any of his stories, and probably no one ever tape-recorded them for him, either. Like so much of the history of the horseshoeing profession, it's just going away with him. Horseshoers wear their stories well. Maybe if he'd written his life down, no one would have believed it anyway.

Except those of us who knew Ron Dyer The Horseshoer.

To learn more: Ron Dyer's obituary in the Galesburg Planet

and

Funeral home page and guest book for Ron Dyer

If you have a favorite memory of Ron Dyer, click the comments button below and share it with the rest of us or email it to blog@hoofcare.com and I will post it for you.

 © 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.  
 

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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.

"We Lost Kevin": North Carolina farrier Kevin Fahey has died

Kevin Fahey was excited when Chris Pollitt's book came out in 1995. He grabbed the first copy from me and turned right to the heart bar shoe section. He probably never read anything else in the book. He was focused.

"We lost Kevin". That's what Danny Ward's message on my voice mail said. How could you lose Kevin Fahey, I wondered? You always knew when Kevin was around. Did he hike up a mountain? Did he get caught in a spiraling tangle of interstate interchanges somewhere or...did we "lose" him, in the most dreaded sort of a way?

It turns out the last one is what happened. Kevin Fahey, a.k.a. "Kev the Farrier", has died.

You probably don't think you know Kevin Fahey, and you'd be just like the rest of us, because he was a hard person to get to know. In a nutshell, he was a Boston-born Irishman with a distinguished background as a United States Marine. He tended to lock into ideas and people with an intensity that scared some people away. He left Boston one day to attend horseshoeing school at Donald Jones's North Carolina School of Horseshoeing...and he stayed in North Carolina for decades. But he never lost his Boston accent. That was how he talked and he was always going to talk that way.

Kevin showed up 31 years ago to help Danny Ward host his first big farrier event at his school in Martinsville, Virginia, and he came back 31 more times, making him the only person besides Danny to attend every event...and helping Danny grow the event into what people call "Woodstock for Farriers". It's the most fun time you can have, and Kevin helped make it that way.

When Kevin met laminitis expert farrier Burney Chapman in the 1980s, he locked into the heartbar shoe theory and the fact that, using it, he could help a lot of horses with laminitis. So that became his specialty. He only wanted to work on foundered horses. If you had a sound horse, you didn't need Kev. He also locked into a long, loyal friendship with Burney, and helped him when he was dying of brain cancer.

At some point, Kevin learned to make jewelry and he must have made hundreds and hundreds of horseshoe belt buckles in his spare time. He told me once that he would start out making other shoes, but somehow most of them turned into heart bars.

Kevin was a longtime veteran of Dr Ric Redden's Bluegrass Laminitis Symposiums, where he would sell his heart bar jewelry in the trade show and intensely study the disease that fascinated him so much.

Kevin had beaten cancer a few years ago, or so we all thought. But when it came back, and he was told that he only had a few months to live, Kevin did a very "Kevin" thing. And it would be the last Kevin thing he would do: He got behind the wheel of a camper, sick as he was, and he drove across the United States from his home in Colorado. He made a beeline for Martinsville, Virginia, the place he had gone back to time and time again in his life: to Danny Ward's horseshoeing school. My guess is that he didn't stop much along the way and he didn't look left or right. And Kevin Fahey didn't need a GPS.

Kevin made it to Danny's, but without much time to spare.

If you walk around a horse show or a racetrack or a farrier event and you see someone with a shiny horseshoe belt buckle, chances are you're looking right at Kevin. Especially if it's a heart bar.

Whenever you see him, say hello for me.

Do you have a favorite memory of Kevin? Are you wearing one of his belt buckles right now? Hit the comments button and leave a note to him and to his friends, or email it to fran@hoofcare.com and I'll make sure it is posted here.