Every professional needs to operate their business by a code of ethics. Just like in life, the decisions that you’ll face as a business owner won’t always be easy to answer. Your ethics will guide you in making decisions when the answer isn’t simple.
Many of the choices you will make on a daily basis isn’t always a right or wrong answer. These are the times when your code of ethics can help guide you.
Survey Shows Complexity
We asked farriers via an exclusive email survey to comment on ethical dilemmas that could occur in hoof-care work. More than 140 hoof-care professionals took a few minutes of their time to share their thoughts on how they would deal with each of these entirely different ethical situations. Although the scenarios presented here deal with a certain point in their career or working with a specific discipline, the complexity is common to ethical dilemmas.
A code of ethics should guide your business practices.
Ethical dilemmas can be complex, with no universally correct answer.
These scenarios show tough challenges farriers may face.
Each of the ethical dilemmas are described in detail here along with a summary on how these farriers indicated they would deal with these troublesome situations. As you will see from the survey results, there are no easy answers to these three ethical predicaments.
The consensus of many participants of the survey was summed up by a comment from one farrier:
“If it isn’t ethical, I’ll bail out of the case. If I’m not sure whether an idea is ethical or not, I rely on my own judgment, along with sometimes consulting with other professionals in animal care.”
How would you have voted on these situations? With your status as a new farrier, the first question will be of particular interest to you.
#1 Starting Out In The Farrier Business
Imagine you are a recent graduate of a farrier school. You line up an apprenticeship with a mentor who is well regarded among his peers and clients. He is a great communicator with you, is patient and a thorough teacher. He pays well and offers incentives and benefits. You work for him 5 days a week. He plans on retiring within 4 years, and says if things go well, he’ll turn his clients over to you at that time.
A few months in, things are going well. Then one day, you find he is overcharging a less-than-savvy horse owner for work that wasn’t done. Over the coming weeks, you begin to notice similar business practices occasionally show up.
These infractions are small in relation to the overall bill and his work is superb, so these clients don’t notice. Again, he is well regarded by other shoers and his clients.
What do you do?
#2 A Case Of Illegal Shoes
You trim and shoe the show horses for a large-scale Arabian operation. There’s a mare with serious foot problems that is going to a national Arabian show in 3 weeks.
The trainer asks you to put on a set of shoes that will definitely help the horse, but you know are illegal to wear in the show ring. When you tell the trainer the shoes are illegal, he says he knows that and will switch out the shoes when they arrive at the competition site, which is 600 miles away.
Unfortunately, the shoes are never replaced. When the mare is named as a World Champion, the feet are inspected and the mare is disqualified. Sitting in the stands, the owner is furious.
The trainer apologizes, stating that it was not your fault. As the farrier, what should you have done?
#3 To Dose Or Not To Dose
You’ve added a 25-horse barn to your books. The client will prepay with a check for every visit, and the owner insists on keeping these horses on a regular 5- to 6-week trimming and shoeing schedule.
On your first visit to trim and shoe six of these horses, you find a note from the owner saying that she had an emergency and won’t be back until tomorrow evening. She has a list of six horses that need to be done before a show. Earlier, over the phone, the owner “forgot” to tell you about one of these horses. This Thoroughbred is very nervous, doesn’t like to have its feet picked up, let alone be hot-fitted or shod.
In her note, the owner explains she doesn’t like to see the use of control devices such as a twitch or lip chains as she finds them cruel. But she has left you with a new syringe of oral sedative with instructions for dosage, including the horse’s weight.
She says sedation is the only way to get this horse done. The horse can’t be trimmed or shod without the dose. And the groom has left for the day.
What do you do?
