My first confession: It was not original; a horseshoer said it to me. Alas, I can’t remember who it was, so I will simply attribute it to the anonymous horseshoer.
My second confession: I shoe my horse. I don’t shoe other people’s; most can’t afford to have them lame that long!
As I read Ron’s experience as a horseshoer, my own personal catastrophes kept popping up. He never wears a wedding ring while shoeing. I still tell the story of the newly married artificial insemination technician (a type of theriogenologist) from Cedar City, Utah. He ran out of sleeves one afternoon, so he finished the last cows bare-handed. When he got home he discovered he had lost his shiny, one-of-a-kind, 24-
payment wedding ring! He went back to the farm the next day with a metal detector but never found it. His mother-in-law was vindicated. She had warned her daughter, “Never marry someone whose job you can’t pronounce!”
Confession No. 3: It was such a good story I filmed it for my television program. While shooting the B-roll, I lent the film crew my own wedding ring to use as a prop. I never saw it again, except in reruns, atop a cowpie.
I use what I call a “punch” to enlarge the nail holes in the horseshoes. In his book, Ron calls it a “pritchell.” While he was heating his up to reshape the tip with a hammer, the pritchell slipped from his grip. It spun upwards and the sharp, hot end went up his right nostril! He said he could hear it hiss as it cauterized his membranes.
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