Talking about quarter cracks, equine veterinarian and farrier Stephen O’Grady says, “There are a lot of different causes. Some we don’t fully understand.

When the duo of Burney Chapman and George Platt popularized the use of heart bar shoes for foundered and laminitic horses in the late 1960s, it set off a firestorm of innovations and design-styles for therapeutic horseshoes that reinvigorated the hoof-care industry.

Sooner or later, every farrier or equine veterinarian is going to run into laminitis.

The debate about whether horseshoeing and farriery is a science, a craft or perhaps an art form has probably been around since the first horseshoe.

Blood flows through the equine hoof, reaching almost to the surface as it delivers oxygen and other nutrients needed to keep the foot healthy.

Be sure to look at the shoes every time you pull them off,” says Blake Brown, a Penryn Calif., farrier who worked at a veterinarian clinic for 20 years.