It's a bright but cold Kentucky morning as I head out of Lexington in the direction of Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, where I’m to hook up with Scott Morrison for a highly unusual “Shoeing For A Living” day.

Morrison, a native New Yorker who graduated from Danny Ward’s Northern Virginia School of Horseshoeing more than a decade ago, has followed a career path clearly marked by hoof prints. Morrison used the farrier skills that he developed under Ward’s tutelage to help pay his way through college and veterinary school. He joined Rood & Riddle a few years ago, and is now the only vet at the hospital who is specializing in podiatry.

8 a.m. It’s early, but Morrison had already visited some of the hundreds of horse farms that roll across the area known as the “Horse Capital Of The World.” He’s contacted me via cell phone at my hotel and suggested I meet him at Rood & Riddle, where he’d soon be returning.

“Have them hook you up with Manfred in the farrier shop,” he tells me. “He can show you the shop and maybe give you a tour of the new podiatry clinic that’s being built.”

8:11 a.m. The Rood & Riddle complex covers a number of acres and seems to contain more than a score of low-slung buildings. I enter a reception area, where I watch through a glass window as a big Thoroughbred is being prepared for surgery. As soon as she’s done with a…