Page 73 - Speedhorse October 2018

Both Butch Pridemore
and Hank Morgan credit Bill Hoskins, shown here in 2013 at the American Paint Horse Association awards banquet, as one of the great farriers to inluence them in their trade.
and jump out there. I told him he had to apprentice under me or somebody for a while, so he’s been doing it for four years.”
Following footsteps is how Morgan learned the trade.
“I apprenticed under Bill Hoskins for two years before I went out on my own,” says Morgan, who grew up in Drexel, Missouri. “My stepdad had pulling horses, draft horses. I had uncles who were horsemen. One of my uncles, Floyd Camerer, trained racehorses at Eureka and other places and trained some really good horses when I was a young kid. As a boy, I spent my summers with my uncle Don Camerer who ranched and roped. When I got a little older, I was training rope horses, and when I moved to Ada, I went
to work for Louis Wartchow for three years as a groom. Bill Hoskins was shoeing for Louis and he started helping me shoe. That’s how I got started shoeing horses: at ‘Louie’ Wartchow’s under Bill Hoskins.”
Pridemore took a similar path to becoming a farrier. Still shoeing horses at 70 years of age, he was born in Lakin, Arkansas, and grew up with horses.
“We moved to Boise, Idaho, when I was in the first grade,” says Pridemore. “Dad
got some horses, and I got started riding
and been riding ever since. Moved back to Arkansas in the fourth grade, been there ever since. The way I got started shoeing was I was roping, and a guy who shod my horses told me if I’d help him I could work it out.”
Pridemore’s father was not impressed.
“Daddy said I could never make a living shoeing horses, so he helped me get all kinds of jobs at different businesses so I could make a good living,” he says. “But sooner or later, the place would close or get bought out or I’d get laid off and then I’d go back to shoeing horses. So finally, one time I told Dad I’m just going to see if I can’t make it just shoeing horses. And that’s what I did.”
Pridemore has been on the racetrack since 1982.
“I started in Hot Springs – that’s where my wife was from and my daughter was born,” says Pridemore, whose daughter, Rachel Hart, is a schoolteacher with children Kloy and Brookes. “We moved to Hot Springs because there were no doctors anywhere else. When we got there, I got to shoeing horses at the training centers. Some of those horseshoers liked me and helped me get in the business.”
“Winning a race is a team effort . . . a great stable isn’t just the trainer and jockey. A great stable is from the grooms to the horseshoer to the vet, everybody.”
- Hank Morgan
SPEEDHORSE, October 2018 71