Modern Hoof Care - Two Armed Camps
As you may be aware I have written various articles that pull from my many years experience in the horse industry and specifically as a farrier.
When I started into the trade as a farrier, back in 1966, there weren't any great titles, associations or even competitions.
All that you found was people who trimmed and shod horses that in most cases keep the welfare of the horse as their primary goal.
People that were in the trade did not say that going barefoot was better than having your horse shod, and vice versa.
There were only two guidelines to follow when you started to work on a horse, and they were; 1.
What was the job that the horse had to do? 2.
What could the owner afford to have done? It was then the responsibility of the horseshoer to fill the needs of those two points before going onto actually accomplishing any work on the horse itself.
Taking those two points into consideration created a business that was both large and solid; mainly because it foremost considered the horse and secondly the requirements of the owner.
The end result was that the horse was sound and the owner was happy with the result.
That is what showed that the farrier was doing the best job that they could do.
This was also a time when the only time that a person could enter into the trade was through an apprenticeship with an established farrier that was willing to help you enter the workforce.
There were a few, not too many that were willing to work with young and inexperienced people and that young person had to be willing to commit to a very demanding and rigorous schedule.
It was not a commitment of six to eight weeks of training; it was a minimum of three years and in many cases much longer.
The trade of working with horses' feet is not one that can be learned in a week-end seminar or a classroom over a period of six to eight weeks.
It is a highly skilled trade that requires much knowledge about structure of the entire horse, movement, forward motion (physics), muscle structure and operation, skeletal structure and operation, foot ailments as well as many more areas that aid in the correct operation of the horse as a forward motion animal.
Once that the previous topics are learned you then have to start to comprehend and learn how to make them all work together and correctly.
You have to learn how to work with and hopefully aid in certain types of foot problems, ones that can be corrected and ones that cannot.
If they cannot be corrected you have to know what can be done to make it easier to live with.
That is why it is difficult to find good foot care professionals today, be they barefoot or farrier hoof care people.
After a short time in the trade I was introduced to the concept of associations and initially they had a basis of a betterment of the trade.
They were based on the fact to better the young people entering into the trade and being able to set standards for the trade to follow, but after a while the direction got changed.
It started to be centered on the individual doing the work rather than the work that was accomplished.
There was a great push within the industry and trade associations that even permeated in the "Hall of Fame" selection.
To be selected as a member of the "Farrier Hall of Fame" your work was based on what you had accomplished for the trade, or as they now like to call it, their "profession"; rather than what was accomplished for the horses that a tradesman worked upon.
The focus also became focused upon "competitions" where competitors were asked to create certain types and styles of horseshoeing that were detrimental to the well-being of the horse and the operation of its feet and the overall body function as well.
Farriers became focused on these competitions and winning them.
They shod all year-long in the style of the competition guidelines and in the process let good farrier techniques fall by the wayside.
This is what I base my belief on when I say that the trade became more self-centered rather than centered on the horse.
Now not all of the members of the trade had been centered on the competitions, some remained centered on the horse and the numbers were few and far between.
There were studies on how the horse operated and how the hoof itself was and could be classed as a simple machine under the laws of physics.
All of this was helpful and gave information that was understandable by the new members of the trade, but it was information that was already available and used by the established older farriers at the time.
Then two things happened: • Established tradesmen started not to take on apprentices.
Why did this happen? Simple, we became a structured society that feed off of lawsuits.
Young people would enter the trade, in some cases unaware of the dangers and not have the experience of working with large animals, then sue the person offering them training since they had been hurt.
People have to be aware, and if you have experience around large animals you understand, that it is never if you are going to be hurt, but how bad.
• Opportunists saw a situation that allowed them to make use of the situation that the trade had put themselves into.
With the centering of the work on the individual and not the horse a "program" was created to offer the horse owner an alternative and "natural" "program" that was supposedly centered around what was the most natural way for horse hoof care to be centered, what was right for the horse.
Now I and many other senior members of the established farrier community looked and studied the "program" and found that on the initial layer it was a good program.
But, like many other "program" that had been created over the years it had its flaws, and they were; • As the program grew and gained acceptance, individuals made changes to the overall concept of the established method.
Starting with small ones that were hardly noticeable and then moving onto ones that became larger and had more of an effect on the operation and health of the horses' feet and soundness.
• The second part of changes that were happening was the introduction of the zealot-like attitude of the people who were performing the work.
All other methods and established forms of hoof care were the worst thing that could be done to horses' feet and that their methods were the only thing that was going to save the equine population.
Any method is only as good as the person that is applying it, be it barefoot trimming or horseshoeing.
• On the topic of soundness, we have to look at any program that may require your horse to be sore and unusable for up to one year as a program that is not in the best interest of your horse.
Not to mention that if you want to ride your horse while in a program such as this you have to purchase some rather large and awkward boots for your horse to wear while out on the trail.
The care of the feet of the horse is designed to make the horse comfortable and useable.
At the present time we have two armed camps, the ones that think that barefoot methods are the only answer to all of the foot problems within the equine structure and then we have the horseshoeing camp that do both barefoot methods and farrier techniques.
Obviously all I have wanted to do here is to make you sit down, think and realize what is best for your horse.
You and you alone have to be responsible for your horse that is the way it is legally.
I want you to be educated about the techniques that are out there and available to you.
You have to make sure that you have chosen the right person to do the work that needs to be done on your horse's regular maintenance, so chose wisely and carefully.
We don't need two armed camps.
The only one that suffers here is the horse and they are the ones that end up paying the price for our mistakes.
Remember that education is key, it is not a "program" and it is not association membership or even the number of titles that have been won in competition.
It is results that keep your horse sound.
Until next time "Ride for the Brand"
When I started into the trade as a farrier, back in 1966, there weren't any great titles, associations or even competitions.
All that you found was people who trimmed and shod horses that in most cases keep the welfare of the horse as their primary goal.
People that were in the trade did not say that going barefoot was better than having your horse shod, and vice versa.
There were only two guidelines to follow when you started to work on a horse, and they were; 1.
What was the job that the horse had to do? 2.
What could the owner afford to have done? It was then the responsibility of the horseshoer to fill the needs of those two points before going onto actually accomplishing any work on the horse itself.
Taking those two points into consideration created a business that was both large and solid; mainly because it foremost considered the horse and secondly the requirements of the owner.
The end result was that the horse was sound and the owner was happy with the result.
That is what showed that the farrier was doing the best job that they could do.
This was also a time when the only time that a person could enter into the trade was through an apprenticeship with an established farrier that was willing to help you enter the workforce.
There were a few, not too many that were willing to work with young and inexperienced people and that young person had to be willing to commit to a very demanding and rigorous schedule.
It was not a commitment of six to eight weeks of training; it was a minimum of three years and in many cases much longer.
The trade of working with horses' feet is not one that can be learned in a week-end seminar or a classroom over a period of six to eight weeks.
It is a highly skilled trade that requires much knowledge about structure of the entire horse, movement, forward motion (physics), muscle structure and operation, skeletal structure and operation, foot ailments as well as many more areas that aid in the correct operation of the horse as a forward motion animal.
Once that the previous topics are learned you then have to start to comprehend and learn how to make them all work together and correctly.
You have to learn how to work with and hopefully aid in certain types of foot problems, ones that can be corrected and ones that cannot.
If they cannot be corrected you have to know what can be done to make it easier to live with.
That is why it is difficult to find good foot care professionals today, be they barefoot or farrier hoof care people.
After a short time in the trade I was introduced to the concept of associations and initially they had a basis of a betterment of the trade.
They were based on the fact to better the young people entering into the trade and being able to set standards for the trade to follow, but after a while the direction got changed.
It started to be centered on the individual doing the work rather than the work that was accomplished.
There was a great push within the industry and trade associations that even permeated in the "Hall of Fame" selection.
To be selected as a member of the "Farrier Hall of Fame" your work was based on what you had accomplished for the trade, or as they now like to call it, their "profession"; rather than what was accomplished for the horses that a tradesman worked upon.
The focus also became focused upon "competitions" where competitors were asked to create certain types and styles of horseshoeing that were detrimental to the well-being of the horse and the operation of its feet and the overall body function as well.
Farriers became focused on these competitions and winning them.
They shod all year-long in the style of the competition guidelines and in the process let good farrier techniques fall by the wayside.
This is what I base my belief on when I say that the trade became more self-centered rather than centered on the horse.
Now not all of the members of the trade had been centered on the competitions, some remained centered on the horse and the numbers were few and far between.
There were studies on how the horse operated and how the hoof itself was and could be classed as a simple machine under the laws of physics.
All of this was helpful and gave information that was understandable by the new members of the trade, but it was information that was already available and used by the established older farriers at the time.
Then two things happened: • Established tradesmen started not to take on apprentices.
Why did this happen? Simple, we became a structured society that feed off of lawsuits.
Young people would enter the trade, in some cases unaware of the dangers and not have the experience of working with large animals, then sue the person offering them training since they had been hurt.
People have to be aware, and if you have experience around large animals you understand, that it is never if you are going to be hurt, but how bad.
• Opportunists saw a situation that allowed them to make use of the situation that the trade had put themselves into.
With the centering of the work on the individual and not the horse a "program" was created to offer the horse owner an alternative and "natural" "program" that was supposedly centered around what was the most natural way for horse hoof care to be centered, what was right for the horse.
Now I and many other senior members of the established farrier community looked and studied the "program" and found that on the initial layer it was a good program.
But, like many other "program" that had been created over the years it had its flaws, and they were; • As the program grew and gained acceptance, individuals made changes to the overall concept of the established method.
Starting with small ones that were hardly noticeable and then moving onto ones that became larger and had more of an effect on the operation and health of the horses' feet and soundness.
• The second part of changes that were happening was the introduction of the zealot-like attitude of the people who were performing the work.
All other methods and established forms of hoof care were the worst thing that could be done to horses' feet and that their methods were the only thing that was going to save the equine population.
Any method is only as good as the person that is applying it, be it barefoot trimming or horseshoeing.
• On the topic of soundness, we have to look at any program that may require your horse to be sore and unusable for up to one year as a program that is not in the best interest of your horse.
Not to mention that if you want to ride your horse while in a program such as this you have to purchase some rather large and awkward boots for your horse to wear while out on the trail.
The care of the feet of the horse is designed to make the horse comfortable and useable.
At the present time we have two armed camps, the ones that think that barefoot methods are the only answer to all of the foot problems within the equine structure and then we have the horseshoeing camp that do both barefoot methods and farrier techniques.
Obviously all I have wanted to do here is to make you sit down, think and realize what is best for your horse.
You and you alone have to be responsible for your horse that is the way it is legally.
I want you to be educated about the techniques that are out there and available to you.
You have to make sure that you have chosen the right person to do the work that needs to be done on your horse's regular maintenance, so chose wisely and carefully.
We don't need two armed camps.
The only one that suffers here is the horse and they are the ones that end up paying the price for our mistakes.
Remember that education is key, it is not a "program" and it is not association membership or even the number of titles that have been won in competition.
It is results that keep your horse sound.
Until next time "Ride for the Brand"
