Yellow Pages Watersport   Dive and Sea Tenerife SLU Tenerife Watersport

In contrast to many compatriots who devote their days to gazing skywards and topping up their tan, he spends most of his time with his head bowed towards the ground, more often than holding a formidable ‘weapon’ in his hands. 46-year-old David left England almost three years ago for a new life in the Canaries and is fast earning a name for himself as a reputable farrier (horse-shoer, for the uninitiated) in the islands.

From his base in San Miguel he travels the length and breadth of Tenerife to yards and riding clubs to shoe the four-legged animals that have been the focus of his life for around 30 years, ever since he started as a teenage apprentice and then qualified formally at the age of 21. Island Connections caught up with him for a chat about his unusual occupation and lifestyle as he got to grips with a few horses at the yard of Canarian Dressage Champion Marta Duque near Tenerife North Airport outside La Laguna.

David’s Tenerife work is not the first time he has travelled abroad to shoe. His numerous trips to the Canaries began many years ago as a result of a chance encounter with a Gran Canaria horse dealer back in Britain. “He liked the way I went about the job and invited me over for working holidays. I brought my tools and the shoes and he provided the customers and the anvil, as well as the ticket and hotel. The mutually beneficial arrangement continued for several years so Gran Canaria was an obvious choice when I decided I wanted to move abroad in October 2007” explains David.

If his profession is something of a rarity, his chosen method of travel to take up residence in the Canaries was just as rare. Following his divorce, David sold up back in Warrington, bought a 10-metre motor sailing boat with the proceeds and set off on a solo Atlantic voyage from Widnes down to Las Palmas, stopping off in France, Portugal and the tiny island of La Graciosa off Lanzarote before arriving in the Gran Canaria capital. He set up initially with the man who first brought him to these shores, Fernando Torrent, spending about 18 months in Gran Canaria before moving to Tenerife, where he had already built up a substantial client portfolio during working visits of two to three days to local yards.

David now lives permanently on his four-cabin boat (‘sounds posh, but one of them is the water closet!’), which is moored permanently at the Amarilla Golf marina. Although he acknowledges that the lack of more solid roots can prove a drawback at times (the marina, for example, is the official address given to obtain his NIE number), he has no plans to buy property here, preferring to walk the 30 yards it takes for him just to get to terra firma. However, he admits that the prospect of booming business in the years to come might encourage him to buy bricks-and-mortar premises to enable him to make his own shoes instead of buying them in from Sweden and France via a supplier in Los Realejos. He already has his own portable forge which he had shipped out when in Las Palmas, where he gave shoemaking a go but didn’t have enough customers to make it viable.

David has already realised during his time here that the approach to shoeing is very different in Spain. “I was surprised to find that there is no formal regulation of the sector here unlike in Britain, where an Act of Parliament means you must be a registered in order to legally get anywhere near a horse to shoe it. There is none of that here, which is not say some locals are not good at the job. Far from it. But legislation would be a good idea for the horses’ sake.  I have come across many irregularly shod horses already”.

Bending down to hold a potentially lethal leg in one’s hands (and between one’s knees) for hours on end and being permanently close to a powerful animal that is not exactly being treated to a manicure would not be everyone’s cup of tea but David, who rode until his mid-20s, is clearly accustomed to all types of horses and has reached the conclusion that owners are to blame if their horse is ‘naughty’.  “I normally never refuse to shoe a horse unless it plays up very, very badly. I have been through a lot in my time: I have been trampled on, kicked, flung across a stable yard and severely bitten”, he recalls as he drives a nail into a shoe on a nervous white stallion called Campero, adding jokingly “but let’s not talk about my ex-wife”.

Like many first-time customers, Campero is shoed cold due to his (the horse’s, not David’s) jitters. “With this sort of horse, one that clearly reacts negatively to the noise of the tools etc, I take great care. It is one thing to have nails driven into you, but just imagine how this guy would react to me if he saw me setting fire to his feet. We’ll leave that challenge for another day”. No such problems were encountered with another equine client, Rafaela, a dressage veteran who stood happily and patiently as the smoke from the hot shoe billowed out of her hoof and the tools clanged all around her. The searing sun and blast furnace atmosphere caused by the forge appear to pose no problems for apron-clad David, despite the scant ‘natural cover’ (see photo) on his head and lack of hard hat, or any hat for that matter.

The La Laguna visit to the Duque yard is one of many trips the Lancashire farrier makes up north in his trusty (but getting on in years, even though he calls it ‘his limousine’) white Renault 21 to see his regulars, who book him in every six to eight weeks to shoe their horses for around 70 euros a time. “The balance of business is shifting northwards bit by bit of late, particularly since I lost a yard in the south. This is a trade that fluctuates a lot and I suppose I could do even more if I organised myself a little better with a proper Internet booking system but I am not a computer person. I have been hammering so much all my life the keyboard would be in great danger if I got near it”.

However, despite the lack of a hi-tech approach, he believes there is enough work out there to keep him going for some time to come, due to the large number of horses on the island and the Canaries generally. “It may or may not be a sign of local wealth but there are certainly a lot of them out there and proper owners usually go to great lengths to look after their horses, particularly Britons. I know of several cases of British families who have paid thousands of euros to bring their horses here but have now had to sell up and return, paying a small fortune again to fly them back to the UK. Most good owners know and abide by the saying ‘No shoe, no horse’ so I can see a bright future here for the profession, which is good news for me”. 

However, it is not all shoeing and no play for Capper, who devotes most of his free time to giving his boat a lick of paint and keeping it in a good state of repair. He also regularly takes his floating residence out onto the waters for sailing trips and does occasional land-based sight-seeing on Tenerife, particularly when hosting visits by friends from home.  He has even been known to combine work with pleasure by turning out for local demonstrations of crafts and trades, hopefully to instil in a new generation the passion that has given him his livelihood for three quarters of his life

Gallery: Tenerife's English farrier

2 pictures found: Go to gallery