Neal Smith is a calf-ropin’, slow-talkin’ guy from Texas. As a professional farrier in O.C., he’s a : SHOO-IN

Neal Smith was born and grew up in Lubbock, Texas, on the western plains of the Lone Star State, where horses and horsemanship are woven into the fabric of daily life, and the cowboys really are cowboys.

Smith, 36, is a throwback to another era, when horses were more than weekend hobbies or expensive toys and served as one of the few means of transportation available to human beings other than their feet.

Sporting a bristly mustache and the driest of West Texas drawls, Smith is aptly named. For more than 12 years, he has stationed himself behind a forge and anvil as a blacksmith, or farrier, shoeing horses for a living and working out of the back of his pickup truck.

Being a farrier is often bone-jarring work. There are tedium and long hours, the bending, stooping and pounding. And there’s sometimes the ornery disposition of horses and their owners.

Trust and patience are as much a part of a farrier’s work as a hammer and hot tongs.

“What do I like about horses? Nothin’ by the end of the day,” he said with a laugh. “Well, sometimes anyway. . . . When we were little, we had horses, and I liked messin’ with ‘em. I started calf-ropin’ when I was 13, 14 years old, and then I got real serious about that when I was 22, 23 years old. Shoein’ horses was a good way of just bein’ around horses. All of a sudden, this looked like a good occupation to me, so it kind of just stuck.”

Having left Texas in 1987, Smith lived for a while in New Mexico, then wound up in San Juan Capistrano. These days, he spends most of his time at the Rancho Sierra Vista stables here, where his wife works as a trainer and where the horses--and their shoeless hooves--are in plentiful supply.

On a recent cool morning, Smith had his pickup backed up to a stall, where the 900-degree blast from his small, portable forge was keeping the area as toasty-warm as a chef’s kitchen. Hot metal shavings dropping like falling stars mingled with scents of hay, dust and manure, while Smith pounded away tirelessly, bending and shaping hot shoes.

Smith’s work is an art as much as it is a science. He takes it as seriously as a surgeon: Drive the nail in an eighth of an inch on the inside, and you’ll draw blood, but an eighth of an inch on the outside, and the hoof splits.

His arsenal of tools includes a pritchel, designed to punch holes in the horse’s shoes; round-head hammers; fire tongs; clippers; a drill press; a sander; and, of course, a forge and anvil.

Horses were first shoed during the Roman Empire. Later, the use of wrought-iron shoes became common and allowed horses to go farther with heavier loads on rough ground. U.S. cavalry soldiers found that shoed horses gave them a great advantage when they pursued Indians, who were forced to abandon sore-footed ponies. During that period, the first mass-produced shoes appeared, made mostly of steel.

In some ways, Smith is a pedicurist, filing down what passes for a horse’s nails and even finishing them off with a sweet-smelling polish--Hoof Shield--at the end of the two-hour shoeing process.

“The shoe gives the horse traction,” Smith said. “It protects their feet and corrects a lot of problems. They need shoes for the same reasons we do. Shoes can also correct or alleviate bruises. In many ways, horses are just like [human] athletes.”

Smith is always on the lookout, he said, for calcification of joints and navicular disease, which also occurs in humans. (The career of basketball great Bill Walton was cut short because of prolonged stress to the tarsal navicular bone.)

A farrier is no veterinarian, but he can often alert horse owners to their animals’ problems, said Smith, who usually shoes about eight horses a day and 30 to 40 a week. Individual sessions, which are necessary every two months, cost between $80 and $130.

“I really like this kind of work,” Smith said. “Some days you come home and feel all beat up, but that goes with anything, I guess. One thing I like about it is you’re your own boss. You pick and choose your clientele, and you don’t get that in a lot of businesses.”

Of course, Smith, like any true Texan, pronounces the word “bidness.”

Patty Harris, the owner and manager of Rancho Sierra Vista, said she likes Smith not only for his competence and professionalism as a farrier but also “for being a real easygoing cowboy. He’s one of the good-old boys, and he is truly that--a real cowboy, real low-key. . . . He just never gets rattled. He seems to enjoy life and keeps it real simple, which is a trick in itself. I wish more of us could do that.”

She also likes his deft nature with horses, which seem to understand him, she said, and don’t want to cross him, although, on occasion, some do.

If a horse is ill-tempered, “I won’t hesitate to send him someplace else,” Smith said. “I don’t run into too many bad ones, but every now and then, you run into some you can’t handle. Horses are just like people. Some can be difficult, and a few can be real bad. Most of ‘em, though, are a pleasure to work with.”

Smith has to guard against getting hurt, which is an occupational hazard among farriers. The stooping and bending causes back problems, the constant hammering and pounding can lead to carpal-tunnel concerns, and the work with hot tongs and a fiery forge can easily cause burns. He once clipped his finger in a grinder.

He fears injuries, “ ‘cause if you get hurt, you don’t have nothin’,” he said, especially in a line of work that doesn’t offer sick days or medical insurance. Smith is an independent contractor in every sense of the phrase.

He also has his calf roping, which he enjoys as a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assn. He’s surprised at the fewer number of calf ropers in California, as opposed to his native Texas, “where calf ropin’ is, well, about as common as golfin’, and a hell of a lot more fun.”

But his calling is being a farrier, and much of the fun comes in getting a horse ready to compete in shows and then having the animal do well or win a prize, after which Smith often wins a sweet share of the owner’s praise.

Smith has an apprentice, Chris Magdaleno, a 21-year-old from Silverado Canyon who says he’s learning “from the best.”

Smith misses Texas and sometimes thinks about going home. But he loves the weather of Southern California and the beauty of the place, and says he’ll take earthquakes over tornadoes any day.

In addition to being good with his hands, Magdaleno said, Smith has a good memory, which helps in remembering the foibles and characteristics of certain horses, even if he’s met them only once.

“May 11, 1970--that was the day the big tornado came to Lubbock,” Smith said. “That sucker took the tallest building in town and knocked it three feet plumb off its perch. It still looks that way even today.”

Such attention to detail may be one reason horse owners in San Juan can expect to find Smith shoeing their equestrian loves for a long time to come.

“Well,” Smith said, smiling, “I got no plans to leave. My own shoes figure to be planted here for a little while longer, that’s for sure. There’s a lot of horses here, and I’ll be happy to put shoes on ‘em.”