By GEORGE WILKENS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 4, 2008

LAND O' LAKES - It's a couple of hours past sunrise, and Dirk Braak is holding court beneath the trees at a community stable in Land O' Lakes.

A lifelong farrier as adept at entertaining customers as he is at handling half-ton horses, Braak is shoeing one last animal before hanging up his apron for good.

The self-employed 68-year-old Plant City resident could call it quits whenever he wants, but has targeted a specific date for his unceremonious retirement.

"Yes sir, I'm done April 8, that's 40 years to the day that I graduated from horseshoe school," said the certified journeyman farrier and founding president of the Florida State Farriers Association.

Braak pilots his Ford F-250 pickup on a circuit covering Hillsborough, half of Polk and some of Pasco counties, a schedule allowing him to visit each customer every six weeks.

This morning, at Lake Padgett Estate's community stable, Braak amuses the crowd of four waiting for horses to be shoed or have hooves trimmed. "You can discuss politics and religion because you've got a captive audience," Braak quips.

He touches on those two traditionally taboo topics, tells some "of my daddy's favorite jokes" and offers humorous commentary on life's little problems, like traffic, which is why he quit serving Pinellas County.

It's a sore subject in Pasco County, but Braak manages to get today's group to laugh when he announces he discovered why highway construction on State Road 54 near Interstate 75 is moving so slowly: "They've pushed all the dirt around so much they've worn it out - and they're waiting for a new shipment to come in."

Since early 1975, Lake Padgett has been on Braak's route, so he serves a stable of longtime regulars.

"Dirk always has some political commentary when he comes," said Cherie Cunningham as Braak nailed a shoe onto William, a quarter horse she has owned for five years. "And he always brings jokes. It's never boring," said Cunningham, a retired Hillsborough County schools media specialist.

Braak, she adds, "is a high-tech farrier, always telling me what I should check out on the Internet." He is a wealth of information about all things equine, right down to the horse's skeletal system. "He's very well educated in that; he's no country bumpkin," said Cunningham, a two-horse owner and customer since moving to Lake Padgett in 1981.

Braak also knows the horses' names - and ailments.

"William has had a leg injury and is a little bit contrary about his back feet," Braak explains as he gingerly coaxes the 15-year-old former cutting horse to raise its right rear hoof. "Give me your foot," Braak says with some tenderness in his voice. "You can pick it up this high, I promise."

Braak learned his trade at a farrier school in Martinsville, Va. "I wanted to be a farrier real bad" but could not afford the dormitory, he said. He made arrangements to use the dorm bathroom and, for three months, slept in the topper-covered bed of his pickup.

Interest in the ancient trade was sparked by the findings of a two-day battery of tests administered in high school to determine Braak's occupational leanings. "It came out I liked work of a mechanical nature and liked working outdoors," he said.

After serving in the Navy, he returned to the family farm near Wilmington, N.C., began working with ponies and horses, training them, opening a boarding stable, selling tack and feed.

"It kind of mushroomed from there," he said. He chose the farrier school because the $1,200 tuition was almost affordable.

He laments that today's farrier education methods emphasize speed more than quality work. Although Great Britain has a five-year farrier apprentice program, "In north Georgia you can go take a two-week course and call yourself a farrier."

Hold Your Horses

Braak's four decades of experience have spawned a farrier creed, of sorts:

"You have to be a self-starter."

"You have to have the ability to get along with the horse, and the customer."

Be courteous to the customer.

"Arrive 10 minutes early so you're ready to go" at the scheduled time of the appointment.

Buy quality tools, maintain them between jobs "and it will make your job a lot easier."

"Sometimes the customer has to hold the horse's head while you work, so you've got to have a good line of bull" to entertain them.

Like any other business that endures, Braak's has seen many changes.

Rarely does the self-proclaimed "simple blacksmith" need to fire up the small forge he still carries, as customized horseshoes are mostly a thing of the past.

"You can go to a shoe store for horses" to find virtually every size and type needed for $20 to $35 a pair, he said.

In earlier days, Braak burned coal in his forge, an understandably hard-to-find fuel in Florida.

He recalls his initial search for coal when he came to the Tampa Bay area in 1975. In the Yellow Pages he found a Tampa Coal Co. listing and drove to the company's downtown office.

"Some what?" asked an incredulous employee. "We don't sell coal here," only gravel and decorative rock for the past 25 years, Braak was informed. "I guess they ran out by the time I got there," Braak said.

Braak found a source in Jacksonville and another in Marietta, Ga. He suspects the Georgia mine owner sold "bootleg coal" from an operation closed by federal authorities. Today's forge is propane powered.

Birth Of An Association

Informal regular meetings with two other Tampa Bay area farriers led to Braak organizing the first statewide meeting of what became, in 1976, the Florida State Farriers Association. Braak served eight years as president and remains a member of what he said has become a very successful nonprofit group (www.FloridaStateFarriers.com).

Fellow members may be interested in Braak's farrier tools, some of which he says have antique value. A tool sale is planned after retirement.

"There's some fishing in my future," said Braak, who makes his own rods. "I've got a nice boat I'm going to start rigging out to go fishing," starting with a vacation at a rented waterfront house in Hernando Beach.

He and his wife of 31 years, Lee, a designer of costumes for dancers, live in an A-frame the couple built in 1977 on 10 acres off Bruton Road north of Plant City.

Gardening on the property will absorb some of Braak's time during his fast-approaching retirement.

For now, there are still a few horses to be tended to.

After affixing "the last shoe of my life" to Cunningham's horse, Braak stops to rest, and offers his Lake Padgett customers a final quip: "You know, it's unprofessional, but I'm starting to sweat a bit."

Reporter George Wilkens can be reached at (813) 865-4433 or gwilkens@tampatrib.com. Keyword: Farrier, to listen and watch Dirk Braak at work with horses in Land O' Lakes.