Dean Balut

How Dean Balut became a pacesetter in the high-stakes world of horseshoeing

Dean Balut was a bartender at a high-end restaurant in Los Angeles. He was good: He could flip the bottles and set drinks on fire, and wow the customers across the bar. He also had a good schedule where he didn’t work weekends.  

But as he and his then-girlfriend talked about starting a family, he knew he didn’t want to be leaving for work right when the kids got home from school. So he started to think about a change. 

Talking about this with farrier Tom Doolan III—his future brother-in-law—Tom suggested Dean give horseshoeing a try. He said, “If I can do it, you can do it.”

Getting Schooled

Dean was game. He signed up for a two-month course at Sierra South Horseshoeing School, which was two hours away from his Los Angeles home in good traffic (three hours in bad). He would leave at 4 a.m. to get there by seven. Then he would shoe horses in the 126-degree heat. And at 3 p.m., he would turn around, drive straight to work, and tend the bar till midnight, only to do it all again the very next day. 

“It was the toughest thing I've ever done,” Dean says now. “I got three to four hours of sleep every day for those two months. I remember thinking, ‘What am I doing?’”

If he was looking for comfort, there was none coming from his teacher.

“My instructor, Kenny Lyon, told us, ‘This is not an easy job. The attrition rate is about 95% for farriers starting off. I'm not saying you're going to make it, but I’ll give you the tools to start. Where you go from there is all heart and perseverance.’

Instead of being discouraged, Dean took this as a challenge. 

“That statement alone made me say, ‘I’m going to do this,’” he says. “But I knew it was going to be a difficult road.”
 

Pride before the fall

Dean toughed it out. After two months, he finished his classes. Next, he asked his future father-in-law, Tom Doolan II, a farrier at Santa Anita race track, what he should do. Tom recommended he work with Chuck Esau. 

Dean’s audition with Chuck didn’t go well. The weather was hot, and on about his fifth horse, the floor started spinning. Everything went black. When he woke up, there was blood from his nose everywhere: all over himself and the horse’s leg. 

Still, he went back to work until Chuck came over and told him they’d call it a day. He told Dean he’d had many helpers over the years, but none of them had passed out. Then, just when Dean thought he was about to get fired, Chuck told him he was impressed.

“He said, ‘You kept working and probably would have kept working if I didn't call it a day. I just felt bad because you had blood all over yourself and that doesn't look good to my clients.’”

Chuck offered Dean a job. He accepted. 

The school of Esau

“Chuck had a reputation of being very, very tough to work for and very hard on his assistants,” says Dean. “All the farriers in the area said, ‘If you stick it out with Chuck for a year, any of these guys will hire you.’”

Again, Dean took it as a challenge. 

“It was strictly a pride thing,” he says. “It seemed like a challenge that this guy was impossible to work for. So I wanted to conquer that.”

The year went by, and he conquered it. Along the way, he also learned a lot from Chuck, like: You don’t just shoe the foot—you shoe the horse for the job. 

After that Dean rode with a few other farriers, but a year later, his father-in-law’s assistant got in a bad motorcycle accident, leaving him blind and with four broken limbs. So Dean came to take his place in the high-stress, high-stress world of racehorses.

Off to the races

“It was very, very heavy,” he says now. “I was still pretty green—barely two years into shoeing, and all of a sudden I’m getting under some of the best horses in the country. Some of the best in the world.”

To learn on the job, he watched the elder Tom closely. 

“I’m very observant,” Dean says, “and I really pay attention. So I was basically mimicking the way my father-in-law used his hands, whether it was knifing or nipping or rasping.”

Right away, Dean found himself, “under a lot of very big horses,” one of which was Midnight Lute, who won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint in 2007 and then again in 2008. He was the first horse ever to defend the title, and it was Dean’s first time being part of a big win. After that, he was hooked on Thoroughbreds. Since that first win, he has shod winners of everything from the Preakness to the Belmont to the Dubai World Cup. The only win he’s missing is the Kentucky Derby.

“I definitely want a Kentucky Derby,” he says, then adds: “And a Triple Crown would be nice.”

Dean worked with his father-in-law for eight years, until he finally went out on his own. It wasn’t hard for him to pick up work, having been highly visible at the track. What was hard was balancing work and home life. 

Put me in coach

At the time, he was coaching his son’s travel baseball team, which had four-hour practices three times a week, plus tournaments every Saturday and Sunday. So while Dean tried to build his book, he would have to quit early to make it to practice.

Over time, something had to give, and in the end, he backed off coaching, though he was still struggling financially. So when Jim Jimenez asked him if he wanted to come work with him, it was a no-brainer. 

Jim hired Dean as an associate, working together to keep prominent Thoroughbred trainer Doug O'Neill’s horses ready for the demands of the season. With Jim shoeing the front ends, and Dean shoeing the hinds, the two kept this routine for several years. Already having years of experience to draw from, the partnership was a good fit for Dean and provided yet another opportunity to learn from one of the best. 

“Jimmy took the most meticulous notes on every horse he shod,” Dean says. “Prior to the horse being worked on, we would observe and document whatever issues the horse had, and what we're doing to make corrections or changes.” 

Learning to Excel

Now, Dean maintains his own spreadsheet that contains the shoeing dates, races dates, and notes for every horse he’s worked on. But during those years, the lessons didn’t stop.

“Probably the most important thing I got from working with Jimmy,” he says, “was learning how to run a business. The way he ran his just made me want to model that—the service he gave, the attention he paid to every horse, whether it was $8,000 claimer or a Kentucky Derby hopeful.”

When Jimmy decided to retire, he talked to client Doug O'Neill, recommending that Dean take over the business. Doug agreed, and soon Dean was in charge of both of his strings of race horses. In addition to that, he took on other work. 

“It felt so good when you finally get that recognition after so many years struggling so much and trying to get work. I just kept saying yes to people who wanted me to work for them. Again, I think pride was taking over.”

Finding balance

The work piled up. At its peak, Dean had 400 hours in his book. He hired two people and they worked constantly. “It was just nonstop,” Dean says. “We were just a system, getting under a lot of horses every day.”

Something had to give.

“It became too much,” Dean says. “My work started suffering. We couldn't even get to all the horses in one day.”

So again, he decided to pare down to a more manageable number of barns, four to be exact. Today he’s in a more sustainable place. He still works hard, but now he can give the horses the attention they deserve. 

“I try to treat every horse like they’re running the Kentucky Derby,” he says. “Every horse is going to get the best I can give it. I want every foot of every horse I shoe to walk away being able to perform at his or her highest ability. I take a lot of pride in doing whatever I can do to help an owner’s dream.”

Tell me a little bit more about how you were shaped by your early years of mentorship.

One thing I took from my mentors was really simplifying the work. I think a lot of errors in the industry happen when we overcomplicate things. Try to keep it as simple as possible.

Very few people get to work with family or want to, for that matter. What was it like working with your father-in-law, Tom Doolan II?

Even before I started shoeing, the family was so inviting. They're just wonderful people. Tom takes so much pride in what he does. As soon as I showed any type of interest, whether it was going through school or working with Chuck, Tom was checking on me to see how everything was going. We’ve really developed a professional respect that’s translated to and helped build our personal bond.
 

Does the footing horses are on day to day play a substantial role in how you shoe? 

Yes. Depending if they're a turf horse or a dirt horse, I’d take a different approach as far as how much I'm knifing away. With a dirt horse, I tend to create more of a cup to create that purchase. Versus the grass horse, where I'll leave a little more sole to keep the horse on top of the grass and achieve breakover more quickly.

What kind of products are you using, and how do you find the confidence to try new products, given the caliber of horses you work with?

First there’s the initial assessment of the shoe: the shape, the nail patterns. I look for certain characteristics that the shoe provides so that I can say, ‘Okay, I'll definitely give this a try.” 

Shoes

The St. Croix Forge STs allow me to do my job more efficiently because I don't have to do so many things. There are certain things I do for a shoe that the St. Croix fronts already have. In my opinion, the shoe’s shape is more common in Thoroughbreds, so I can get to my desired shape a lot more quickly. I appreciate the nail pattern and the boxing of the shoe, and I love that on the sole side, there's a little sole relief there. It’s a well-thought-out, well-designed shoe.

Rasps

Rob Logsdon from Mustad met up with me in Kentucky. I was using the standard size Save Edge when he handed me a Heller eXceL Legend and said, ‘Try this.’ So I tried it for the first time and said, “This is butter. I'm switching.” So, now I use the Heller eXceL Legend. I really liked the width of the rasp. It wasn't too wide and cumbersome. And it was just a hair longer than the Save Edge, so it allowed me to have a lot longer stroke and cut well.  It was just a really, really good rasp. I was like “Wow.” It was black and white for me. Compared to the life of the other rasps, I get a lot more horses per rasp.

Do you ever reflect on the fact that you left bartending in order to have more time in your day only to join a profession infamous for the required time commitments?

Yeah, I didn't realize that at the time, but now I do have some time in the evening, which is great. It’s allowed me to do a lot of things with my kids and with the family. My brother-in-law didn't tell me about the learning curve, and I didn't realize how drastic the attrition rate was for people starting out either.

What do you want for your future, moving forward?

I'm absolutely content—and I guess proud—of where I am right now. If it stayed here and didn't go anywhere else, I'd retire happy. I think one of the things that I really want, as far as the future, is to be able to develop any guys that are coming up under me, and apprenticing under me, and to watch them develop and build their own business. I’d like to pass on what I've learned from my mentors. That's what I see in the future.

If you’d like to learn more about Dean, you can find him on Facebook