Progress continues in our work to define the professionalization of farriers. A few of us met and discussed many of the processes and permutations of the “Initiative to Professionalize the Practice of Equine Footcare and Farriery” in early March. We’ll meet in late summer, when progress can be assessed and new assignments undertaken.

It was heartening for me to learn of tacit support for the initiative among many at the March American Farrier’s Association Annual Convention. Many I spoke with understand that the whole effort is one of professional education and not a clandestine ploy to force “licensing” for the sake of licensing.

Licensing or registration of professional people is the last action taken to attest the knowledge and skill of an individual. Many farriers have yet to understand that the initiative has or will have little effect on their work for the remainder of their career. However, the matter of existing farrier practices (as compared to professionally educated farriers in the future) is resolved, those that prove their livelihood is from equine footcare and farriery now will not be affected one way or the other.

A piece has been written for and is being circulated by a farrier association that attempts to discredit this initiative. The postulation is that footcare and farriery are an inexact science and that imperfect humans do the work. In the author’s view, since the work is inexact and the individuals who do it are human, mistakes and inability should be forgiven and accepted as…