The Farrier Shop

The art of the farrier and blacksmith is hardly romanticized, but perhaps it should be.

Today was our farrier lab, where we got a crash course in what farriers do and how they do it. For those who don't know, farriers manage horse feet, performing trims and maintenance as well as their more well-known task- making and fitting horseshoes. It's fascinating to watch. The farrier trims and studies the foot, taking into account a myriad of factors from the size and shape of the hoof, to any lameness or asymmetry the limb might have, to what the horse does as his day job. Through some secret algorithm in their head they come up with a shoe type... there are thousands. Iron, steel, rubber, plastic, aluminum. Smooth, ridged, studded, toe grab, heel grab. Raised, rounded, bar across the heel, frog support (the frog is the sensitive part of the hoof, akin to a dog's paw pad). Toe clip, quarter clip, clips all around. Nails or glue. And more. It's mind-boggling. When the farriers make their own shoes (some are formed from metal bars, others are fitted from premade forms), the bar must be heated 1/2 at a time and hammered into shape in only a few minutes before it cools. While pounding at this blistering hot piece of metal with a very heavy hammer, the farrier must also be thinking about the shape of the hoof he's trying to fit and therefore the final shape of the shoe- it's not like he has a pattern to work off of, and every hoof is different. There's also the risk of things going terribly wrong at every stage of the process. During trimming, there's about 3/8ths of an inch of space between insensitive hoof material and a bloody, painful mess. If the shoe isn't fitted correctly in any way, a horse can be permanently damaged- the old saying is very true: no hoof, no horse. There's also the fact that you're applying hot and sharp things to the main weapon of an animal about ten times your size who may or may not like you fiddling with his feet.

We got some interesting historical trivia during our demo as well. Apparently Napoleon, in his conquest of Moscow, had his blacksmiths fit the horses' shoes backwards on the march in, so that trackers would think they were retreating. This worked beautifully until it snowed, and the horses had no traction (and the blacksmiths had no time to fix it). And we all know how that conquest ended. When Alexander the Great marched his mounted armies into Asia, he never made it further than India because his horses weren't shod, while the Asian horses were. Alexander's cavalry had to rest for months at a time while their hooves grew out... sitting ducks for enemy attacks. Horses profoundly altered history as we know it... and so did their farriers!

All told, I developed an even deeper appreciation for farriers today... and was even more thankful that my heart lies in small animal medicine. When I have a horse someday, I'll be more than happy to pay somebody else to handle his pedicures!