He Got His Forge..

Jared's been waiting to get a forge for a while now so he could start doing hot shoeing. We've been saving up and looking around for the kind he wanted (these aren't cheap!). We even made a trip to AA Callister's to buy one but they had just sold the one he wanted the day before. So the wait continued on.
Jared had an appointment with one of his long time clients to trim two horses. He went and about an hour later he called to tell me he bought a forge. Turns out this customer had the exact forge Jared wanted and traded him for the trims plus $300! He just wanted to get rid of it. What a deal!! Saved us about 5 or 6 hundred dollars! And it's almost brand new. Sweet!

Here's Jared trying it out for the first time....

My Dad happened to come over at the same time Jared was trying this out so he wanted to check it out, too. He'd never seen something like that before and got a kick out of it. He's so cute. He loves new tools and seeing how they work. (Remind you of anyone? Maybe someone by the name of T.J.? He's a lot like his Grandpa!)

Heatin' up the shoe. It's gets about 2500 degrees in there and it only takes about 2 minutes of heat before it's ready to mold.

Shaping the shoe.

Burning it into the hoof. He does this after he's trimmed up the hoof. Burning it in helps to get it almost completely flat so the shoe stays on even better.

Look how much this horse ~Scout~ leans to the side. Scout isn't much on gettin' shod. Jared used to have me hold him but I won't do that anymore. He does better when he's just tied to the truck. Jared also had me try to hold him up by pushing on his side. Won't do that either. Thought my wrists were going to break when he just leaned into me even more. Silly horse.

Jared does so good at shoeing. He hardly ever has clients whose horses have thrown a shoe. And when they do it's usually the owners fault cause they waited too long to have them shod so it breaks the hoof up and he can't get a good nail to hold in there.

My cute farrier.