In the mid-1990's I began a career working with horses, studying farriery and natural hoof wear as a science at Montana State University, and apprenticing in blacksmithing and equine veterinary medicine. Before that I was an academic, a professor of poetry and literature. But the horse touched me too strongly, like the inward pounding of the real world. I needed an earthly life, an animal life. I needed to work with my hands and with my body. And the horse to me was the mood at the heart of the earth.

 

Those first decades of my career spanned continents, between America and Italy, and included all manner of horses, from elite competition horses to beloved backyard pets. Throughout the years, I continued to educate myself. Though I'd graduated from the excellent farriery program at Montana State University, later in my career I paused everything in my life and enrolled full-time in the esteemed Long-study Farrier Program at Walla Walla Community College. More recently, I have been an advanced intern at the Troy Price Horseshoeing School, where I continue to polish my blacksmithing skills.

 

We never stop learning. I learn from the luminaries of our trade. I seek them out and study with them with an old-world ethic of sacrifice, gratitude, and devotion. I learn also from my clients. Hardly a day goes by when a simple comment or observation from a horse owner does not change the way I understand this ancient and modern profession, and the horses who are in my care.

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I bring to my horsewomanship a lifetime of teaching yoga, tai chi, qigong, Mythosomatic Movement, and martial arts. I have studied these human arts of power and sensitivity with the same concentration as I have studied the horse. This is perhaps not a trivial association. The horse is pure energy manifest as beauty and need: need for one another as herd animals, and need for us, who are experts in their necessary care. For when we allowed for the horse's domestication, we took responsibility for the care of the wild itself. I like to imagine that my lifelong practices of human attunement draw me closer to the subtle energy of the horse. 

 

I love horses. I love them as reflections, friends, teachers, charges. With all my being, I love being a farrier. People often comment on how hard and potentially dangerous this trade is. I suppose it is. But I feel I am the most fortunate woman on the earth. Everyday I work with majesty, fragility, sensitivity, and power. Every day I am in this mystery school of the horse. Everyday I ply my portion of responsibility for a being that is essentially 60 million years old. Notwithstanding human love and kindness, I can think of no greater blessing.