The story of America's best known woman farrier is a tale of our times. Ada Gates left behind her genteel East Coast roots soon after graduating in 1963. She was about to opt for a career in the cosmetics industry when as she says, she "took a wrong turn" and found herself in a farrier school in Oklahoma. Her goal? She simply wanted to get her horse shod and thought by going to farrier school she'd get it done - herself. "I can do this" Ada announced to her astonished classmates in Oklahoma. My great grandfather was Henry Burden - he invented keg shoes and won the Civil War for the north". This declaration was met with silence. But Ada stuck it out.
After the course, Ada briefly shod ranch horses in Colorado, then decided there must be a better life waiting; she headed to Los Angeles, took a deep breath and marched onto the backstretch at Santa Anita, one of America's premier racetracks. She brazenly announced she wanted to shoe there. Again there was silence. But Ada didn't go away. All she needed was an ally.
Her ally came from the most unlikely man in the local union. Harry Patton, the dean of racetrack farriers on the West Coast and Santa Anita's esteemed paddock farrier, agreed to take her on. To join the union and make a living Ada would have to pass a grueling seven hour blacksmithing test where horse handling skills didn't count. It took her several tries to pass the union test. "I am sure that I was the first person ever to cry at a horseshoeing examination" she recalls.
Finally making it into the union might have been Ada's dream, but competing head to head with male farriers was the real test. The open market at the tracks would prove if male trainers would hire a woman to shoe for them.
Somewhere in the triumph of passing the union licensing test, word leaked to the press that a woman was doing a ‘real man's job'. "I've Got a Secret" "The Bill Cosby Show" "Late Night with David Letterman" - Ada was there, winking at the camera and recounting tales of life at the track. And in stables and schools across America, young women saw Ada and said "If she can do it, so can I". Ada says she never saw herself as an icon or as a role model for women in the horse industry. She was just doing what she loved to do and living her life horse by horse, day by day.
Some of Ada's quotes:
If a horse comes to me all crooked and hitting the ground wrong, I fix him, and there's my satisfaction. I don't care if he wins. I care if he walks off looking terrific.
I don't clutter my mind with a horse's career. I clutter my mind with doing the best job on his feet and legs, and that's plenty.
I didn't do it to prove anything to anybody. I wanted to be the best I could for the horse. It was always about the horse.