Caring for backyard horses can be difficult, sometimes because of the environment in which they are kept, or because some owners don’t maintain a regular hoof-care schedule because of the cost or a lack of horsemanship.

But there are ways to address the challenges.

Farrier Dean Moshier remembers a 4-H Club horse that had been ridden over the years by two young sisters. The horse largely was forgotten as the girls aged until the family decided to show the horse at an annual local fair and called Moshier about 5 weeks before the event. He first trimmed the feet, and then returned before the fair to shoe the horse at the family’s request.

“The first year, they never rescheduled after I put shoes on the horse. So this poor creature was going around the field trying to lose four shoes randomly and having four different lengths of feet,” Moshier recalls.