Is there more to heat, pain and lameness than meets the eye? Is there a reason why a horse is not responding to therapies? Potentially, yes. A farrier often is the first line of defense in identifying inflammation of the distal limb, and understanding its influence is critical for proper management.

At his core, Ralph Hampton is a farrier. Not like Jack is in construction or Jill is an administrator. The Rosevine, Texas, shoer is a throwback to the days when a farrier fulfilled an important role in a small rural town. “This is not something you do for a living,” he says. “This is something you do for life.”

Performance horses, by the very nature of the work they are asked to do, are more prone to injuries than horses that are being used primarily for recreational riding. There are a number of studies that offer evidence that certain injuries are more likely to occur with certain disciplines, but an informal survey of several experienced farriers indicates that across disciplines, more common injuries such as sore feet and abscesses are the culprits that farriers most often have to deal with.

One of the consequences of domestic life for horses is hoof disease. Diet and heredity, along with confinement, contribute to certain serious conditions of the hoof.

One of the stone cold, lead pipe locks in the industry is that the overwhelming majority of farriers work on backyard horses. Only 8% of all farriers do not have a single backyard horse client, according to American Farriers Journal’s 2016 Farrier Business Practices Survey, which starts on Page 22. That percentage has not moved appreciably in 14 years. It’s a safe bet that the needle won’t move in the foreseeable future.