This year marks my 55th year of shoeing horses. Techniques have changed several times throughout that career based on subjective evaluation and misleading science. We now live in the age of information (and misinformation), and those who force their opinions on our farriery practices are expanding. Throw in a measure of “how-to” by owners and veterinarians who don’t shoe horses for a living, yet feel the need to tell us how to do it anyway. Fortunately, knowledge will help weed out the stupid stuff.

Unfortunately as a community, farriers have been repeatedly force-fed information that is presented as scientific, but in fact bears little or no resemblance to good science or fact. However, there is science known about locomotion and the linear relationship between farrier techniques and altering that locomotion.

Both the amount and rate of change involved in third phalanx displacement within the hoof capsule is clinically significant in any hoof lameness diagnosis of the performance horse.