With his back to the horse's head (so that each got a good view of a horse's ass, Wilson, who long ago taught him shoeing, used to say), he took the foreleg between his knees and held it there while he inspected the shoe for damage. It wasn't too bad. Two of the nails had pulled through the shoe. He could simply pull those out and replace them. The worse news was that the clinches, the ends of the nails that went through the side of the hoof and were then hammered, or clinched, down weren't tight. Whoever shod this horse had been in a hurry. One of the clinches was badly bent, but the end of it was visible and could be filed off. The other was nowhere in sight. Only the hole and the depression it left were still visible.

He tried to see inside the hole, to see if he could detect any trace of metal. It could have broken off from the force of the horse's weight when it went down, but he couldn't be sure. It was also possible, maybe likely, that the nail had bent back toward straight and pulled into the hoof. But even pulled back toward straight was not straight. Pulling the nail out from the shoe would be likely to damage, even crack, the hoof.

He took his file and filed down the clinches from the nails that had held until there were just metal spots on the outside of the hoof, ready to be pulled out from under the shoe. He levered the side of the shoe away from the hoof until he had loosed the nails on that side enough that he could grasp them with the pliers and, levering backward, pull the nails free. When he had done all but one, he went to work on the stuck nail.

He filed the nail with the thin side of the file, working it until he was able to just snap it by prying it up with the shoe. Then he filed the shaft of the nail until it was flush with the sole of the hoof, leaving nearly an inch of the nail embedded in the horse's hoof, but deep inside where it would do no damage. The next farrier who filed the hoof would get an unpleasant surprise, but that was a farrier's lot.

He could remount the shoe, though it was not a good one, a lot worn and a little bent. He would have to leave a nail out, but he saw no use in that. It would be better to let the horse go unshod than to make do with a bent shoe. It would be an uncomfortable ride for John, but it wouldn't hurt the horse much. Confronted with choices of horse and man, he tended to go with what was best for the horse. Horses were expensive, Wilson had told him. People were a dime a dozen.