Back in 1976, when I decided I didn’t want to work for a living any longer, I decided to become a horseshoer and enrolled at Bob Reaume’s Wolverine Farriers School in Howell, Mich.

Imagine that money is no object and you could have any shoeing rig your heart desired. Want it roomy? OK. Want it to provide protection from the elements? Of course. Want it to travel comfortably? No problem. Eye-catching. You betcha’. Anything you want.

I can’t believe it’s that time again already. The new shoe for the Calgary Mail-In Shoeing Exercise is here.

It still ranks as one of the Golden Rules of horseshoeing: Thou Shall Use The Smallest Nails Possible To Keep The Shoe On Until The Next Appointment.

After roughly two decades of use on humans, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI for short, is becoming practical for equine medical care.

The development, evolution and versatility of today’s adhesive products have made farriers’ lives easier. Repair procedures that used to be extremely time consuming such as rebuilding severely damaged feet, hoof-wall rebuilds due to pulled shoes, quarter cracks, glue-ons, etc., can now be relatively fast-moving jobs.

Onlookers might ignore even the most elite show horses if the classic beauties turned into shoeing rigs by Dan Burke and Roy Bloom happen to drive up.