In Memoriam
Remembered.
Fifty years is long enough to lose a great many good horses and a great many good horsemen. This page is for them.
Harry Patton
Harry Patton was Head of the International Journeyman Horseshoers’ Union in the 12 Western United States when I applied to take my Journeyman Exam at Santa Anita. After only two months of horseshoeing school in Oklahoma, I spent the next 6 years in Western Colorado dragged around corrals, kicked, rebuffed by farriers when I asked for further training, I had to get out and go to the big time. California. I asked Harry Patton if he would train me for the six-hour Journeyman Exam, he said YES! Under his brilliant tutelage, I practiced for months and months, passed the exam in 1978 and became the first woman licensed to shoe Thoroughbred racehorses. If it hadn’t been for Harry Patton, I’d be pumping gas somewhere. Harry gave me a career beyond my wildest dreams.
Monty Roberts
Monty Roberts took a chance on me when I was just a rookie in 1978. The greatest horseman in our lifetimes, he could read a horse a mile away. He saw how all his horses went better, put his trust in me, gave me the same confidence that he gave to his horses. He kept me as his farrier for the next 45 years. There was no one like Monty Roberts. He changed me. He changed the world. The power of one.
Alpha Queen
Grandpa David Dows supported my horse life, when I was ready, he gave me my first and only Thoroughbred Alpha Queen in 1957. We were inseparable, we jumped in horseshows, we fox hunted, we rode endless hours through the woods; when you know a horse so well you are so comfortable, so at home, everything feels right with your whole life. When I left home for college and work, Alpha Queen went to the wife of the huntsman in the Genesee Valley upstate NY, then went on to a nine-year-old boy in Rochester who later became my lawyer in a landmark historic preservation lawsuit that changed NY law. Alpha Queen was the thread, the line, the tie to the important events in my life. She died an elegant fox hunting mare in 1976.