Remember, you're always in the public eye and bad impressions can overwhelm good ones.

In 2012, we surveyed horse owners on the most common reasons they've fired farriers. The leading answer was that the farrier didn't return phone calls. This was no surprise — I've heard this complaint before. While the answer isn't a shock, I am amazed it still persists.

Members of the United Kingdom's Farriers Registration Council (FRC) in late June pointed farrier training in an entirely new direction. That's when FRC members voted to disband the National Farrier Training Agency (NFTA) and hand the country's required farrier training over to three colleges that are already training farriers.

The first time I ever saw a horse shod, the farrier was my college roommate, John Hart. This was back in the early 1970s. John, who was a couple of years younger than me, had taken a spring term off from Ohio's Bowling Green State University, where we were students, to go to horseshoeing school in Oklahoma.

A recent review of terms searched for on our website, www.americanfarriers.com seems to confirm the belief of many farriers that high-low syndrome is virtually endemic among U.S. horses.

Some farriers are finding the 3-day ban on the use of drugs and medications is becoming a more serious issue when working with high-level horses. This is particularly true of those that that need immediate hoof repairs to keep competing. And a big question is whether we'll see a trickle-down effect at more shows that will impact shoers.