Millwater's Farriery: Continuity...

   I hear it all the time in meatspace. See it posted on the equestrian forums...  Someone's good old farrier is retiring, and they're having difficulty finding a trustworthy replacement.

   As I deal with the effects of *ahem* middle-age myself (long gap between blog entries and absence from message boards due to yet another surgery to try and fix the wonky peeper which makes extended screen reading a real head-splitter), I'm looking around and seeing a number of old friends and respected leaders in the profession slowing-down, having to hang-up their aprons, or going to that big shop in the sky...

How the-  WHEN the heck did THIS happen?!?!

   Fortunately, there's some considerable fresh talent coming-up.  But when one of the better old guys is no longer available, it can be quite a problem until the horseowners can weed through the younger shoers to get past the wannabes, all flash and no substance hotshots, and gung-ho transients to find the good, solid farrier of tomorrow.

   In the old days, this was less of a problem due to apprentices.  As the old master farrier slowed-down, his apprentices took on more of the load (becoming journeymen along the way), and eventually the torch was passed in such a manner that there was no great gap in service.

   We've tried to re-establish farrier apprenticeship in the modern era.  I was on the American Farriers Association's Apprenticeship Committee for as long as it lasted.  We had some of the top farriers in the country enlisted as masters, but the program never really took off.  Too many regulatory and liability issues for formal apprenticeship these days...  And, an apprentice with a shoein' school diploma and a CF level certification has more credentials than the average horseshoer in the field, so it's hard to convince him to continue as a subordinate very long.

   Still, informal apprenticeships, or mentor relationships, are sometimes workable.  If horseowners will allow them.  The understandable inclination for them is to want their established farrier to be the only one to work on their horses' hooves, which makes it hard for the apprentice to progress very far.  But if folks will trust their veteran farrier to judge how much the apprentice is competent to do on each horse, the eventual pay-off may be a familiar, well-trained young farrier to step-in when the old guy gets sucker-punched by Father Time.

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Livin la Vida Amish...

   As with the old Chinese curse, we are living in interesting times.

   Between rising prices, and the proliferation of grossly unhealthy additives, substitutions, and GMO Frankenfoods in grocery store "food" products, a lot of folks are looking towards some level of self-sufficiency.

   Fuel and equipment upkeep costs are motivating some small farmers to revisit really old-school approaches...

   Our latest distraction here has been getting old-fashioned production of real, unadulterated milk flowing.  (Once you discover fresh, creamy, raw milk from a grass-fed Jersey, you'll want to punch the grocer right in the nose for passing-off that bleached and boiled, watered-down sewage in plastic jugs...)

Around here, THIS is a milk "by-product".

   Draft horses seem to be gaining in popularity in recent years.  This may have started-out with folks wanting to breed them to performance stock to develop American sport horses.  But more and more, folks appear to be gaining an appreciation of draft horses for what they are...  Which means even veteran horsemen have to learn a whole new world of things, like collar fitting, harness types, and so forth.  And, of course, farriers have to become conversant in these new things as well.  Farriers have always been expected to know a good bit more about horses than how to mount them on iron.

   This is why some fundamental draft horse and harness information worked its way into Millwater's Farriery: The Illustrated Dictionary of Horseshoeing and Hoofcare.  The big critters are part of the scene on our farm too, and doing what they were bred for.

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Millwater's Farriery: In Review...

   Bob Smith of Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School was kind enough to review Millwater's Farriery: The Illustrated Dictionary of Horseshoeing and Hoofcare for the recent issue of the American Farriers Journal.

   The blurb from the review is "An excellent reference for shoers, owners and farrier students..."

   He also observed that the dictionary had evolved into a "mini-textbook" of farriery.  Something I realized myself as I was putting it together. 

   This actually gave me pause at the time...  After all, we are blessed with some really great, full-on farrier textbooks in this day and age.  It was certainly beyond the intended scope of the lexicon project to 'compete' with them.

   But the massive textbooks from Butler and Gregory are designed for dedicated students going through training at the better farrier schools on the way to careers as professional farriers, and retail for several times the list price of my book...  I know a lot of people interested in farriery aren't starting-out at that level.  Especially in times like these, I figured there was a place for an entry-level primer rooted in the fundamentals.  Something to get the prospective hoofcare provider (or horseowner who has to resort to doing their own) started so they can find out if it's really for them, then they can move-on to the more advanced training and texts appropriate to their chosen career paths.

   Smith did bust my chops on the "selected resources" appendix of the book...  And not without justification.

   I included Crudoir on the "periodicals" page.  At the time the review was written, all there was of the magazine was a webpage announcing the upcoming launch...  Since then, that has been replaced with an announcement that they've given-up on the plan for a new magazine as-such, and are going "another direction".

   Well, that's the peril of reference book publication.  Even in this modern age of fast publishing tech (and believe me, it's like greased lightning compared to the 'good old days'), I still had to put the content to bed and shift to formatting and set-up long before the actual release.  I'd been in-touch with the intended publisher of Crudoir, and she was in-earnest about making the magazine a reality...  I didn't have the option of waiting to see if it caught-on, so I included it.  Actually, I figured that even if it didn't fly, it'd be an interesting footnote in the future.  Henry Heymering's bibliographic history tome On The Horse's Foot cites a number of publications that are only known due to their being mentioned in old reference books.

   Then there was the fact that, with the folding of so many other farrier periodicals, the American Farrier's Journal is effectively the Last Man Standing.  Frankly, I had to stretch a little bit just to keep AFJ from being completely alone on the page! 

   As to the weakness of the "Internet resources" page, he's got a point there.  In truth, that section is almost vestigial.  Left-over from earlier dictionaries before Google was built right into all our browsers, when you actually needed to know a URL to get to a resource.

   I certainly didn't intend to snub the AFJ website in this section.  Since a URL was included on the "periodicals" section, where AFJ was at the top of a far less crowded page, I figured putting it in the "Internet" section was kind of redundant. 

   With the ever shifting sands of the Internet, I'm also a little reluctant to reference new Internet documents, as they have a nasty tendency to get moved or gone as websites get 'updated' and redesigned.  My personal favorites/bookmarks lists attest to this with tons of now '404' links.


   On a side-note, I included contact information with the Press Release which was really intended in-case the folks at AFJ needed to touch base with me.  (Sort of traditional PR format.)  Unfortunately, I apparently didn't make that clear, as my farm land line and snail mail address got published with the review...  I rarely use the land-line, and can barely hear incoming messages due to interference from the electric fences...  And all orders are ultimately processed over the Internet anyway.  (I do not have a warehouse of books and mail packaging like the not-so-good old days.)

   If someone really hates to order over the Internet, they can ask at a brick and mortar book store.  They're not likely to have Millwater's Farriery in stock (as it's a specialty kind of book), but it is available through regular distribution channels, so they can order it.

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Millwater's Farriery: Founder Frustrations...

    A recent posting over on the American Farriers Journal refers to "Hitting the Wall With Chronic Laminitis"...

   I can dig it.  Just worked on one I've been doing for many years.  They can be quite frustrating.

   The problem is that the malady isn't really in the hooves.  Heck, I can fix the hooves.  And have fixed them time and again.  Pushed the bone column back up off the ground.  Built-up a solid, thick sole.  Got the dorsal surface of the wall parallel to the front of the coffin bone.  Better feet by all measurements than many 'sound' horses are wearing...  Back to regular shoes or barefoot, and all is well for a while.

   Then "kersplat!"...  Sole goes flat.  Abscesses all over.  Hoof capsule warping all out of shape... 

   So I fix him again.  And again...  In time it becomes apparent that he's still stilt-legged, even when his feet are in good shape.  And he's starting to look like a skinny wooly mammoth in the Summertime.

   There's the rub.  The source of the problem is ultimately in the endocrine system, and the flexor muscles and tendons.  Put perfect feet on the legs of a horse whose flexor muscles are drawing up into balls, and with a pituitary sending out haywire signals to have the horse essentially poison himself, and the feet won't stay perfect long.

But people get a little upset if you try to take the nippers to these bits.

   Brain surgery to get rid of a pituitary tumor isn't really plausible with most horses.  Various drug, supplement, diets, and hormone treatments are tried, but they only work 'sometimes', as the nature of the condition is constantly changing.

   Deep flexor tenotomy can help... But vets are often reluctant to try it.

   So I just keep fixing the feet.

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Eagle-Eye Revisited...

   I covered this once before, but the recent passing of J. Scott Simpson prompted me to bring it back.  In this day and age of endless argument over relatively academic aspects and vague philosophies of hoofcare, I really appreciate solid, practical solutions to the challenges of better shoeing, and few are more useful than the Eagle Eye system developed by Simpson.  This is why the system and each of the five patterns have had individual listings in the Millwater lexicon since the first version in '94, with attribution to Simpson, of course.

This sample has the Eagle Eye definitions gathered together.

As usual, italic boldface terms in the entry are defined in their own entries.

(Alternate Link if above fails.)

   In other news, Amazon is running a sale on the paperback version of Millwater's Farriery.  At $16.20 (eligible for free shipping if included in an order over $25), they even beating the best I can do on eBay.      But that's fine with me.  The eBay listings are honestly just there to point the web-bots to the Amazon and MillwaterPublishing pages.  I'm better off having copies sell through Amazon.


   The current Amazon deal actually makes the encyclopedic Millwater's Farriery less expensive than its predecessor, The New Dictionary of Farrier Terms and Technical Language in its final (2010) edition...   Which is still available out there, so make sure you get the one you intended.

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Millwater's Farriery: Distractions...

   Hey all,


   I've been a bit scarce on the Internet lately.  Trying to get everything caught-up and a bit ahead in preparation for being laid-up after another danged surgery.  And the weather hasn't been helping.

   If anyone has any topics they'd like to see addressed on the blog, or Encyclopedia sample entries they'd like to request, please feel free to let me know.

   Meanwhile, a 20% discount is available on the Millwater's Farriery HARDCOVER through 2/23/12...  Just enter "SWEET" as your discount code.

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Millwater's Farriery: On the Road Again... Not.

   Well, a lot of the boys are getting home from the International Hoof Care Summit in Cincinnati. Shan't be long before they're packing-up again to hit the American Farrier's Convention in Mobile.

   I don't get to travel to these things like I used to.  Used to be a frequent flier to the Bluegrass Laminitis Symposium, AFA, GPF, and even BWFA national conventions, and various other clinics and events.  I do miss it sometimes.  Learning from some of the great minds in the profession, both in the formal settings and, perhaps even more beneficial, in the many informal discussions between and after the lectures and presentations.

   Spending days soaking-up wisdom and techniques from Burney Chapman, Grant Moon, Edward Martin, Simon Curtis, Gene Ovnicek, and so many other farriers... Learning about the cutting-edge research and theories from Doc Redden, Jaime Jackson, and many other vets and horsemen...  Always had me coming home with a new enthusiasm for the profession, albeit perhaps a little too eager to try the latest thing on horses in my own practice.  Fortunately, I eventually learned to temper that impulse.  (Which in itself is something I try to convey to folks who get carried-away with the study, technique, or guru du jour.)

   Of course, it was always hard to get away for cross-country trips.  Seems like horses have a psychic ability to know when their farrier is out-of-state so they can throw shoes.  It's frustrating for horseowners to call and be told their shoer is thousands of miles away when they need him NOW.  But their patience is rewarded with a real farrier who knows more about horseshoeing than how to lop-off a bit of foot and mount the horse on iron.

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