The Cupertino Courier

Photographs by George Sakkestad

If McCleary misplaces a nail, he could lame the horse. Since McCleary took over shoeing Cupertino resident Jan West's horse, West explains, 'she hasn't been lame one day in three years.'

A Shoe In

The farrier is alive and kicking in Silicon Valley

By Justin Berton

In one careful swift move Bill McCleary grabs the right hind leg of a 900-pound horse, folds it back and straddles it between his thighs.

Using a sharp pick, he scrapes out crud from the bottom of the horse's blackened hoof.

He smoothes the callused surface with a file the length of a forearm before he pounds in six steel nails and a shiny new horseshoe.

The horse barely lets out a sigh.

Just then, the horse lets out something else. Something that doesn't smell very good.

Before the question can be asked, McCleary untangles himself from the horse's leg and jokingly says, "No, I've never been hit before."

After 20 years of experience and more than 40,000 horses shod, he is one of only about 25 farriers left in the valley.

The Sunnyvale resident makes house calls in his tan Ford truck, traveling to ranches throughout the hills of east San Jose, Saratoga, Cupertino and Gilroy.

His office on wheels carries more than a hundred horseshoes, an anvil, a small propane-heated forge, a bench grinder, a five-speed drill press, a belt sander, boxes of nails and a Rolodex of more than 200 clients.

When McCleary gets to a stable, he opens the doors to the back of his truck, puts on a pair of thick leather chaps his sister made for him, rolls out his anvil and goes to work.

Before the automobile came along, farriers were in high demand, like auto mechanics today. Along with typewriter repairmen, farriers in the valley have been pushed to the brink of extinction.

Circles run small among farriers and horse owners; thus, information travels quickly.

"If you do something wrong," McCleary says, "all of them [horse owners] are going to hear about it."

Jan West, whose quarterhorse Dolly Ann runs in the pastures at Cupertino's Wood Spring Creek, says the farrier before McCleary seriously injured her horse by cutting too deeply, drawing blood and leaving the horse lame for close to a month. Since McCleary has been shoeing Dolly Ann, West says, "she hasn't been lame one day in three years."

McCleary could lame a horse for life if he peeled off too much hoof or pounded a misguided steel nail into a vulnerable spot. Luckily, though, he hasn't made such a mistake.

"I'd probably say I've made them walk funny a few times," he confesses.

If a horse gets spooked while McCleary is clinging to a hind leg, the outcome can be ugly. He's broken 10 bones in his hands, fingers and toes.

A serious injury can put a self-employed farrier out of business for months at a time, so the local brethren devised a unique insurance plan.

Instead of snatching up the new-found clients, the farriers divide the workload and send the wages earned to the injured farrier.

"It's something you do and you hope it comes around for you if it happens," McCleary says.

Frank Lessiter, editor of American Farriers Journal, says at last count there are 25,000 full-time farriers in the U.S.

"And we're still shoeing with steel nails," Lessiter says. "If you want to make a living as they did a hundred years ago, you could."

That's not to say creative technology has overlooked the farrier.

McCleary says that new products, ranging from urethane-based shock-absorbing impact pads to glue-on horseshoes, have been introduced to the market. There are also doughnut-shaped rubber-coated "sneakers" for the casual horse.

McCleary says he keeps the products that work and throws out those that don't.

"Sometimes you load up so many things to fix problems, you forget about the basics," he says.

For McCleary, the sneakers are difficult to custom shape and the glue-on shoes are too difficult to remove. And like shoes for humans, the fancy ones are a lot more expensive. The glue-on horseshoes cost $60 a pair while the reliable metal shoes go for $3.

His interest in the craft began after his father talked of changing careers--from a test pilot to a farrier--at middle age. After realizing the physical demands on a farrier, his father thought otherwise. At about the same time, McCleary, who worked in the electronics field, had a conversation with a farrier at a high school reunion.

A month later, he registered for classes.

"When I first started, I didn't know how someone could make a living doing this. Except I knew that it had been done before," he says, adding, that "it takes a certain type of person to work this hard."

He learned his calling wasn't entirely outside the bloodline: His grandfather was a blacksmith.

"Wish I had known," McCleary says, shaking his head, "I would have salvaged some of his tools."

In the 12-week farrier course, McCleary practiced on the feet of dead horse legs that were chopped at the knee.

"That way," he explains, "you're working on something you can't hurt."

McCleary says shoeing his first live horse took him four hours.

Now, it's closer to 40 minutes.

McCleary says the farrier is currently enjoying a heyday of sorts. Since the '60s more people have bought horses for pleasure. And with a healthy economy, more horses are filling local stables. The Bay Area is the second most densely populated area for horses in California. More than one million horses--or four million potential horseshoes--populate the state. The average farrier in the valley charges around $90 for a horse that needs four shoes.

But they don't always replace all the shoes at once. Lately, because of the recent rains, McCleary has had to make a number of emergency visits to local stables to replace thrown shoes. As the rain-soaked mud dries, it gets sticky and creates suction between the shoe and the hoof, pulling the horseshoes off.

A few clients have taken shortcuts and tried to do the farrier's work themselves. McCleary says determined horse owners will struggle with a shoe for two hours on a job that takes him two minutes.

"It's usually not long before they appreciate the shoer," McCleary says.

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