When a well-clipped shoe is applied correctly, it sure looks sharp on a horse’s hoof. Some farriers will even go so far as to call them sexy. Proclivities aside, they serve an important function. “Clips are mainly used to improve the security of the shoe on the foot and relieve stress on the nails,” says Tucumcari, N.M., farrier Jim Keith. “They can be applied anywhere around the wall perimeter, but usually only in the anterior half due to their ability to constrict wall movement. They may be used to contain wall flares.”

Cool mornings, Utah and June don't seem to belong in the same sentence, but it's a cool June morning in Roosevelt, Utah, as Jacob Manning pilots his shoeing rig from the parking lot of a local restaurant where he and his nephew, Dennis, met me for breakfast before heading to their first shoeing stop.

The day is already warming up as Bill Poor and Nick Hannan leave a Denny's restaurant just a few miles from the George H.W. Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas, where they've stopped for breakfast and get ready to head out to start their day shoeing horses.

A few years back, Gregg Kremer was right in the middle of an unfortunate continuing economic story — and he wasn't enjoying it much.

It is often thought that brittle, weak feet are strictly a nutritional or genetic defect. However, we often neglect to look into other causal factors, many of which are staring us right in the face.