Apron on, rasp in the loop, nippers and hoof knife laid out on the stand.
Professional. Measured.
I’ve shoed thousands of horses and I don’t get nervous anymore, but this one is different.
This one is Lee’s, in every way that matters.
“Start with the right front,” Lee says. He’s at the bay’s head, one hand on the halter, one on the neck. Calm. Grounding. Being for this horse what he’s been since day one—the still point in the chaos. “He’s most comfortable with that one.”
I move to the right shoulder and run my hand down the cannon bone the way Earl taught me—the way he taught Rose—slow, firm, a pressure that asks rather than demands.
The bay shifts his weight.
I cup the fetlock and lift.
He gives me the hoof.
No flinch. No pull.
A slight tension in the leg that eases as I settle the hoof on my thigh and begin cleaning the sole.
Lee murmurs to him—low, steady, the same patient nonsense he’s been speaking to this horse for weeks.
The bay’s ear swivels back toward me, then forward toward Lee, then settles in the halfway position of an animal dividing its attention between two people it trusts.
I work.
I clean the sole, trim the wall, address the flare on the lateral side that’s been pulling the hoof out of balance.
The hoof is better than I expected—the cracks are growing out, the frog is firming up, the heel is developing the depth it needs.
Good nutrition, dry footing, and patient handling have given me something to work with.
I move to the left front. The bad one.
The hoof that started every argument between us, the one I wanted to shoe weeks ago and Lee said the horse wasn’t ready for.
He was right.
The horse wasn’t ready, and now he is.
The bay tenses when I pick up the left.
He shifts his weight.
Lee’s hand steadies on the halter and I hear his voice—low, even, the way you’d talk someone through a nightmare. “You’re all right. She’s got you. Let her work.”
The bay settles.
I trim, rasp, shape the hoof into something that will support this horse properly for the first time in God knows how long.
The work is technical and precise and it requires every ounce of skill Earl drilled into me, and I lose myself in it the way I always do—the focus narrowing to the hoof in my hands, the angle of the rasp, the balance between correction and comfort.
When I set the left front down and straighten, Lee is watching me.
Not the horses.Me.
I’m bent under the bay’s neck, my braid hanging over one shoulder, sweat on my face, hoof dust on my apron.
