Jack Miller is recognized as one of the premier farriers in the hunter and jumper show world. This highly sought after jet-set shoer shared some of his successful shoeing ideas while working at last fall’s Madison Square Garden Horse Show in New York City.

Miller has been shoeing for 42 years and has worked with show horses for 28 years. He’s worked leading shows from coast to coast and border to border along with events in Europe, Canada and Mexico.

Q: Since some horseshoers may confuse a hunter with a jumper, can you explain the difference and what trainers, owners and judges want to see when it comes to movement of a good hunter?

A: There’s a lot of difference between hunters and jumpers, but many people confuse them because horse shows refer to them as hunter/jumpers. The differences in their movement are huge and that’s what sets one apart from the other.

If you produced a graph for a hunter, it would be a very smooth graph indicating a certain number of strides between fences. For jumpers, the graph would be sporadic with one to 15 fifteen strides between the fences, depending on the quality of the horse. The shoeing is different as you wouldn’t want to shoe a jumper like a hunter or vice versa.

There are many hunter divisions at a horse show. You can jump a fence anywhere from a height of 2 to 4 feet with a class often offered for every 3-inch increase in…