During the month of May, we asked farriers to submit their odd/funny horseshoeing stories to us and had our audience vote for their favorite story.

The Top 3 vote recipients and winners of a Noble Outfitters Snakebite Knife are...

1. Esco Buff
2. Gilbert Holland
3. John Stewart

The winners' stories are below to read. Thank you to everyone who submitted a story! All of the submissions can be read at AmericanFarriers.com.

On my way home from tending to horses at a barn, I was assaulted by a stowaway that I had not known was in my farrier truck. I nearly drove off the road getting myself to the side of the road to eject the stowaway from my vehicle. Earlier that day, I had been given a bag of treats from my customer that I left in the back seat of my truck. On the way home, I went into the bag of treats and I had noticed one of the chip bags had been chewed by rodent. Knowing that the barn owner has a barn chipmunk I just figured it had gotten into the bag at the barn and decided to treat itself. No worries. As I drove down the road for home, I thought I kept hearing something rustling or moving in my back seat of the truck and occasionally I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. On the way home it started to hail and rain very heavily, which made a racket in the truck. At that moment I had a chipmunk run its own Kentucky Derby race around my truck, over my legs, up my body and up my shirt sleeve as I was swatting at it to get off of me. It was now doing laps inside my shirt, "freaking me out." Driving erratically, I managed to get to the side of the road, jump out of the truck and lift up my shirt to have the chipmunk drop to ground and run off road into woods. The passing vehicles of people probably thought I lost my marbles, seeing some guy jump out of truck, lifting his shirt up on the side of the road. So, if this is my customer's barn chipmunk, it has now been relocated to the Syracuse, N.Y., area. Sorry. Perhaps he is working his way back to Western Massachusetts to his barn.
- Esco Buff, PhD, APF, CF

About 2 weeks ago my wife returned a phone call about a farrier appointment. The husband answered the phone and my wife asked for Ms. Dorothy. He asked who was calling and my wife replied: Gilbert Holland Farrier Service. The poor man was so shocked because he thought we were calling from a burial service, and he hung up on her. She called back and the wife answered. They had a good laugh over that.
- Gilbert Holland

The recent intense flooding in the U.K. reminded me of an episode in a previous period of flooding. Working as a vet at the time, I was called by a gentleman who was concerned about his neighbor's horse. This neighbor happened to be the local farrier. He reported that he could see this horse lying on its back and not moving. I immediately turned my car around and headed off to this emergency. Before I arrived, I received another call from the gentleman who coyly reported that everything was OK. He had taken out his binoculars and had been surprised to see a very similar horse standing on the top of the hill. He had then realized that the horse lying on its back was in fact a reflection in the flooded field of the horse standing on the hill! Subsequently, I did send this gentleman a bill for £10.00, but reversed the image and added on the bottom, "On reflection, I think we can forget about this 00.01 account."
- John Stewart