Poultices have been in use as long as horses have been domesticated. In fact, they used to be a very common human remedy as well. With the long history of their use, you might expect good research would be available to support their use, but this isn't the case. The medical literature is actually pretty scarce, but it does support the ability of clays in poultices to draw out harmful minerals as well as proteins that would accumulate in areas of inflammation.

Uxbridge, Ontario (Canada) farrier Dave Dawson has been shoeing horses for almost 20 years. He mainly works in the show industry with jumpers, hunters, dressage and some gaited horses. In the following video, Dawson advises that farriers should strive to gain more knowledge and discusses the value Garth Johns has provided to the industry (and professionals as a whole) in his literature and ideas on leadership.

In this video, museum director Lee Liles shows us the museum's library, which houses over 300 books about the horse's foot dating back to the 1700s. Begun as a private collection, the National Museum of Horse Shoeing Tools and Hall Of Honor (Sulphur, Okla.) features one-of-a-kind items and memorabilia that has been gathered over many years. Now, in one place is an unprecedented and never-before-seen collection that contains both the conventional and the unusual — the contemporary and the obsolete.