When it comes to having your work concentrated in an area, you couldn’t ask for a better setup than the one enjoyed by Rod McCumber. While he drives 12 miles each morning to his first stop of the day, nearly all the horses he shoes are located within a 3-mile radius.

While McCumber used to live in Wellington, Fla, which is located in the center of his shoeing work, he moved 20 minutes away to a place where he could dock his fishing boat on the inland waterway. Another reason for the move was that he kept running into shoeing clients who wanted to talk about foot problems when going out at night while living in the Wellington area and he likes to get away from the business when not working.

An up and coming shoer on Florida’s elite hunter, jumper and dressage circuit, the Boynton Beach, Fla., farrier shoes year-round in this area that features many elaborate and expensive horse farms and boarding barns. Attracting nearly 4,000 horses from all over North America for the Winter Equestrian Festival, this series of events offers nearly non-stop competition from late November until the end of March for riders at every level of competition.

9:15 a.m. After meeting at Mom’s Kitchen in Lake Worth, Fla., McCumber explains that he had shod horses in upstate New York for 10 years before moving to Florida 8 years ago. “We had horses back home in New York and the guy that shod our horses talked…