When Blake Brown agreed to start providing shoeing services to the Loomis Basin Veterinary Clinic, Large Animal Services near his home in Penryn, Calif., he and the clinic’s staff agreed that one day a week would fill their needs.

A few years have passed since that assessment was made, and now the clinic takes up virtually all of Brown’s shoeing time. He holds “office hours” at the clinic from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Here’s a look at a fairly typical day in the life of this veterinary clinic shoer.

8:00 a.m. Brown has backed his pickup truck shoeing rig up to the shed where he does his shoeing work. The building is roofed and enclosed on three sides. Most of his shoeing tools are kept inside the truck, although a few larger power tools are set up permanently in the shed. An elaborate shoe display board is mounted on the shed’s back wall.

Brown parks his rig to one side of the open end, so there’s plenty of room for clients to bring horses inside to stand on the mats where Brown does most of his shoeing.

The shed provides shade from what can be a very hot sun here in northern California. It’s pleasant this morning, but there’s a promise of it getting hotter later in the day. Brown is quickly ready to go to work on his first horse of the day, a big brown jumper named Chrissy. Her owner, Connie Williams, is present…