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– Cathalena E. BurchMARANA — Shotgun took two steps backward, two sideways.

The nearly 6-foot tall, 1,350-pound horse tethered to the metal gate outside the stable appeared nervous.

It may have been the late winter chill. Perhaps it was the dark clouds spitting raindrops every few minutes on that mid-March Monday morning.

Or he could have known it was his turn to get new shoes.

"Easy now," Victoria Payne cooed as she hoisted Shotgun's front leg. She squeezed it between her thighs and cajoled the horse with a firm but soothing command. "Stay. Stay. Stay."

Payne tapped the cutter with a hammer, then yanked at the horseshoe. It started to give way just as Shotgun two-stepped backward.

"Stay. Stay. Stay," Payne repeated.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The shoe loosened a bit more.

A few seconds later, Payne flipped the cutter over and pried the metal shoe off with the tool's flat side. It landed in the dirt with a quiet thud.

"What would make a person want to do this and think it's fun, right?" she asked, chipping away with a hoof knife at horse manure, hay and dirt caked into Shotgun's hoof.

Payne is one of only about 15 women farriers — professionals trained to care for horse's hoofs — in Arizona, said George Goode, who runs the only horseshoeing school in Arizona, the 35-year-old Tucson School of Horseshoeing on North Kimberlee Road. She is probably one of only a few who actually shoe horses.

"It's hard work," said Goode. "It's very strenuous. And sometimes we have a lot of fractured horses. They don't like you to pick their (hoofs) up."

The sheer physical strain turns off most women, Goode said.

"We're outnumbered 15 (men) to one," Payne said as she set about shoeing four horses at Tamara Sharp's 2 1/4-acre spread in Picture Rocks.

Payne worked the horses in pairs; first up were Shotgun and Tonya, a 30-year-old gray mare. Mr. Extraordinaire, aka Mr. X, and Zipper, a feisty 3-year-old, were tethered inside their pens. Every now and again, Zipper put his leg on the metal rails; if you didn't know better, he looked like he was trying to climb out of the stall.

Payne's 14-year-old son, Austin Vandament, took charge of Shotgun while Payne worked with Tonya. Austin was no match for the horse; every time he lifted Shotgun's leg, the horse squirmed and scooted.

"Is he being obstinate?" Payne, 38, asked her son, who dropped Shotgun's leg and stood up, visibly frustrated. "You've got to bend the foot out the other way."

Payne dropped Tonya's foot and went to assist Austin. He is in the eighth grade and takes classes from home online. Next year, he plans to attend Marana High School. He likes horses, but he has no desire to follow in his mom's footsteps, he said.

Payne has been around horses her whole life. She was born in Michigan, where her grandparents had horses on their farm. She spent her early childhood in Alaska, where she had horses and rode in the snow. She moved to Picture Rocks when she was 9 and within a week had a horse of her own.

She began showing horses when she was 12 and has competed in local events since, including the monthly barrel races with the Cowboys and Cowgirls Open Barrel Racing Association at Frizzell's Arena in Marana.

She decided she wanted to shoe horses after watching a farrier hurt one of her horses.

Payne turned to a longtime friend, the late competitive roper and farrier Erv Clark, and asked him to teach her the trade so she could attend to her stable of seven horses.

Clark taught her to remove the old shoes and clean and manicure the hoofs. But she resisted actually shoeing the animals. The thought of pounding a nail into a horse's hoof scared her to death, Payne confessed.

She caught on quickly, and Clark saw that she had a way with the horses, Payne said. So he invited her 11 years ago to help him with his business, which serviced horses throughout Southern Arizona and as far away as the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Payne had no intention of shoeing for a living. She was a hairdresser by trade, although she had taken three years of equine studies at the University of Arizona. She wanted to become a veterinarian, but single motherhood derailed those plans. So she became a hair stylist and settled into a life of competitive riding every chance she could.

She agreed, though, to lend Clark a hand. The money was decent. And it was never supposed to be permanent.

But the calendar has ticked off 11 years; the first seven she spent doing everything but actually shoeing horses. That changed four years ago, when she picked up the hammer for the first time and nailed a shoe on a horse — her own.

"The first day I had to drive nails was the day before my barrel race. I was scared to death," she recalled. "If I messed up, I was ruining my next day, too."

She didn't mess up.

When Clark died in a roping accident in December 2006, Payne was ready to quit.

"Shoeing with Erv, it could be raining, nasty cold, 100 degrees, smelly — we had fun," said Payne, who also works part time at the Marana Style America hair salon. "Doing it alone is tough."

Her customers, including Tamara Sharp, persuaded her to continue.

"She's awesome. She's good with the horses," said Sharp, who has had Payne care for her horses the last three years. "I've had other shoers that are mean to the horses. She has a way with the horses."

Sharp remembers when she acquired Mr. X, whose care had been neglected to the point that his hoofs were dangerously overgrown.

"She worked and worked and worked and got that horse's feet back in shape," Sharp said. "I wouldn't want anyone else touching my horses."

Payne estimates she has 60 to 70 regular clients. She shoes their horses every couple months, working two, sometimes three days a week. She likes keeping the horses on a schedule.

"I do it mostly for the horses," she explained on the drive out to Sharp's spread, bumping along a rutted dirt road in her Dodge dually pickup with all the tools in the back. "It puts everyone on a regular schedule. It makes it easier for the horses."

She charges $65 a horse — less than the going rate of $85 to $120, the instructor Goode said — which includes caring for the horse's hoofs and shoeing if needed.

Payne said her rates encourage owners to maintain their horses. If the cost were higher, she reasoned, some might put off the maintenance, which could end up hurting the animal in the long run.

Payne stands 5 feet 3 inches and weighs a lean 130 pounds — muscle weighs more than fat, she is quick to note.

Against Shotgun, Payne looks puny. She stands on her tiptoes to rub his back and calm him. Payne thinks Austin might have spooked the horse.

So she and her son trade places; he works with Tonya, who is docile and cooperative, and Payne tackles Shotgun.

There are no shortcuts to shoeing a horse. Technology has made almost everything we do easier, except horseshoeing.

"It's pretty well been that way for hundreds of years. You have to bend over, cut the shoe off and put the shoe on," explained Goode.

"If there was an easier way to do it, man, I'd find it," Payne said. "Can I cheat? Not really."

Payne grabbed Shotgun's leg and positioned it between her thighs. The horse danced around and Payne lost her grip. She smacked the horse in the stomach.

"My smacking him like that doesn't hurt him," she quickly notes. "I just want to settle him down so he works with me . . . so he realizes I'm not going to hurt him."

Shotgun took a few more steps, then resigned himself to the idea he was getting new shoes.

Payne hoisted the horse's leg, pried the nails out of the old shoe with the nail clincher, then flipped the shoe off. She took the nippers — which looked like oversize nail clippers — and nipped away the overgrowth. Then she placed Shotgun's hoof on a hoof holder — hers is a modified car jack, she explained — and used the rasp to file the outside of the hoof.

"It's basically like a pedicure," Payne explained. "(The hoof) is just like your fingernails. It grows."

With the hoof clean, she went to her truck and retrieved a horseshoe and a half-dozen flat nails that curve to the outside of the hoof. She put the nails in her mouth and returned to Shotgun, who obligingly let Payne lift his leg and position it between her thighs. With her left hand, Payne placed the shoe on the hoof. With her right hand, she removed a nail from her mouth and pounded it with a clipping hammer into the pre-set hole. Then she bent the nail against the outer hoof with the claw end of the hammer. She repeated it until she had pounded six nails into the shoe. When she finished, she snipped the nail ends off with the clipper and gently let Shotgun's hoof down.

It took about 20 minutes and through it all, Shotgun stood still and stared into his pen. He looked positively bored.

Payne said horseshoeing is good therapy. She likes petting the horses, and being alone with them she has time to clear her mind and work things out. She's also carrying on in Clark's memory. He would be proud of her, she says.

"And he'd tell me to quit," she added. "He didn't ever want me to get hurt. He used to tell me all the time, 'I don't know why you get in the truck every day, but I'm glad you do.'

"A lot of this is honoring the memory of Erv. It's a big reason I keep doing this. And I don't trust anyone else to shoe my horses, so I might as well stay in shape to do them."

On StarNet: Watch a video of farrier Victoria Payne at work at go.azstarnet.com/horseshoe