Saratoga News

Photograph by George Sakkestad

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

Horsing Around

Bill McCleary's ancient craft thrives in modern-day stables

By Justin Berton

In one careful, swift move, Bill McCleary grabs the hind leg of a 1,200-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 smooths the callused surface with a file the length of a forearm before he pounds six steel nails in 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, the Sunnyvale resident is just one of about 25 farriers left in the Silicon Valley area.

He 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 100 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 file 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, just as auto mechanics are 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."

Several of McCleary's equine clients reside at Garrod Farms and Riding Stables on Mt. Eden Road in Saratoga, according to Wendy McClendon, the stable manager at Garrod's. McClendon's own horse, Cheyenne, is among McCleary's happy clients, especially because the horse has soft feet that need extra care.

"Since Bill has been shoeing Cheyenne, he hasn't been lame since day one. Bill's also very confident but at the same time very calming and reassuring to horses," McClendon explains.

"A former shoer had the angles of the shoes all wrong. He also formed the hoof to the shoe instead of forming the shoe to the hoof. Cheyenne was on and off lame pretty much every other week. Shoeing can either make or break a horse," McClendon says of her 15-year-old quarterhorse/Appaloosa gelding.

Saratoga resident Barbara D'Angelo, who owns a Connemara pony and a thoroughbred mare, agrees with McClendon's sentiments.

"A lot of people enter the farrier business because they think you just take a shoe and hammer it onto the horse. But farriers go well beyond that," she says. "Bill is like an artist. The structure of a horse's hoof--internally and externally--is very complex. He understands all this and is very meticulous in what he does."

D'Angelo recalls the time several months ago when her pony Casper came down with a severe case of laminitis, a painful disorder of the hooves that can cripple a horse if left untreated.

McCleary went out of his way to thoroughly research a new technique in treating the problem, D'Angelo says, then worked late into a Friday night to raise Casper's heels with special corrective shoes. The horse's front hooves were so sore and weakened by laminitis that he collapsed when McCleary lifted one off the ground. D'Angelo left in tears.

"Bill understands the angst of the owner as well as the horse," she says. Whenever he is at Garrod, D'Angelo adds, McCleary always looks in on Casper to see how he's doing. D'Angelo says the pony should make a full recovery and credits McCleary with preventing Casper's permanent lameness.

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 into the white line, 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 make a horse lame 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 newfound 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 100 years ago, you could."

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

McCleary says new products, ranging from urethane-based shock-absorbing impact pads to glue-on horseshoes, have been introduced to the market. There are also therapeutic horseshoes and sneakers, which are made of rubber and padded, for the casual horse.

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

"Sometimes you load up on 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 a farrier takes on, 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. "It takes a certain type of person to work this hard."

He learned that his calling wasn't entirely outside the bloodline: His grandfather had been 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 horses that were chopped at the knee. "That way," he explains, "you're working on something you can't hurt."

McCleary says it took him four hours to shoe his first live horse. Now, it's closer to 40 minutes.

McCleary says the farrier is currently enjoying a heyday of sorts. Since the 1960s, 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 about $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 misplaced 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," he says.

Saratoga News features editor Shari Kaplan contributed to this article.

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