Handy Tool for Farriers!

 FARRIERS!

   Do you have some of 'those' clients?  Always thinks you're doing it wrong, because of something a trainer, vet, riding instructor, Social Media expert, or random person at the tack shop said? 

   Here is a succinct way to reply...

   Hand them a copy of, or at least forward them a link to...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGF3CZVD

   Maybe they'll take the hint.  ;)

#farrier  #hoofcare  #horsecare
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Why would you want or need to shoe your own horses?

 Excerpt from Shoe Your Own Damned Horse!

Why would you want or need to shoe your own horses?

   I'd be the first to agree that a good, professional farrier is worth twice his fee.  But, with things going the way they are, a lot of horseowners are liable to have trouble coming up with half of what a pro farrier has to charge to stay in business, or may not have the option of hiring one at all due to career shoers needing to consolidate their services to the most lucrative stables.

   It's been said that equines are a luxury in modern times.  So, if folks can't afford to pay for essential things like hoof care, they just shouldn't have horses at all.  But I'm not too crazy about the idea of restricting the Horse World to just the wealthy elite as the Middle Class withers away.  Heck!  With petroleum prices as volatile as they've become, ordinary Americans might just be back to horse and buggy anyway.

   Even during the boom years of the 1990s, when I was an officer of a national organization of professional farriers, I frequently received calls from horseowners telling me that there were no real farriers available in their areas.  Sometimes what these callers really meant was "Nobody wants to come shoe for beer money."  But often their claims proved true and I couldn't find a decent journeyman taking on clients within a hundred miles of them.

   The ever-increasing standards of pro farriery, as well as the advancements in the science, have since contributed to the stratification of the trade between expensively equipped, trained hoofcare technicians and jackleg shoe-horsers. 

   So horseowners may find themselves with few options:  Expending considerable effort and treasure to haul their horse to the nearest qualified farrier willing to take them on...  Settling for the local Cheap John horseshoer and hoping for the best...  Or resorting to one of the magic barefoot trim or horseshoe alternative fads.

   Or you could learn to do it yourself.  Of course, no collection of printed pages can teach you to do that without some real world training.  But this book may give you some idea of what you're getting into.

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Fire... So easy a caveman can do it?

 

Excerpt from SHOE YOUR OWN DAMNED HORSE!

   At our regional farrier group's first public clinic, one of our
guys broke out his most recent acquisition. An antique, but fully
functional roll-out coal forge. Like most horseshoers circa 1990,
his experience was almost entirely in gas forges. He poured the
pan full of green (uncoked) coal, stuffed some paper in over the
grate, lit it, and started cranking away.

   In a few seconds the paper was blown away as ash and the
forge was still cold.

   So he tried again. With more paper, harder cranking. After
several attempts with no success, he got a bit frustrated and
went for the gasoline.

   I backed up several steps.

   Coal got soaked with gas, match was tossed-in, and our guy
cranked the blower like a madman, resulting in a spectacular
pillar of flame straight out of The Ten Commandments... For the
twenty seconds or so it took for the gas to burn away. Then our
intrepid blacksmith was left with non-burning coal, singed
beard, and a smoldering cap brim.

   At this point he seemed ready to accept assistance, so I got a
scoop of burning coke out of my forge, put it over the grate of
his, mounded-up the coal around it, wet-down the outer stuff,
and cranked easy 'til we had a proper fire going.

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SHOE YOUR OWN DAMNED HORSE! Release.

 

Press Release

MILLWATER PUBLISHING
Dave Millwater
SYODH@MillwaterPublishing.com

For immediate release.

SHOE YOUR OWN DAMNED HORSE! LAUNCHED.

Comprehensive yet good-natured paperback primer for horse owners who want (or need) to learn how to trim or shoe their own animals.  Written by a veteran farrier and horseman. Well illustrated, and with emphasis on practical economy.

[Dateline: Albemarle, NC, September 23, 2024]  --  Sometimes there really isn't a professional around when you need one.  Social and economic trends are likely to make it difficult for many horseowners to access the services of competent farriers.  SYODH! is designed to be a light overview of what is involved to adequately service one's own horses, as opposed to a heavy textbook intended for aspiring professional horseshoers.  It includes basics of hoof and limb evaluation, hoof trimming for barefoot or shoeing, shoe selection, modification, and application.  Also covered are tool selection and production. 

Millwater Publishing was started thirty years ago to release the first modern lexicon of farriery, The Pocket Dictionary of Farrier Terms and Technical Language (LCCN 94158685), which was followed by eight, ever-expanding editions of The New Dictionary of Farrier Terms and Technical Language, and finally culminated in the illustrated, encyclopedic Millwater's FARRIERY.  (Dave Millwater's extended bio is available on his Amazon author page, linked from the aforementioned book pages.)

Shoe Your Own Damned Horse!
ISBN: ‎ 9798338547410
Amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGF3CZVD

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Download Press Release PDF.

How SYODH! Came To Be...

 

   Okay...  It may seem strange that, after so many years of promoting farriery as a proper profession with a high standard of practical competence, I would publish a primer for horseowners wishing to shoe their own animals.

   This project actually didn't start out that way.  You see, one of my primary interests for decades has been "doomsteading".  Basically, setting up and living on a rural farmstead designed to withstand the various social, economic, and natural disasters that happen from time-to-time.  I was part of some of the Internet's discussion forums on the subject of coping with broad collapse, and was bemused by how much nonsense some "Doomers" were throwing around.  Especially when it came to hippie-dippy wishful thinking about self-sufficiency from a tiny garden and reliance on a "community" of similarly clueless people.  Especially (and irrationally) optimistic was the notion that they could wait until AFTER some apocalyptic, civilization-ending event to start their doomsteads.

   Having been on our own doomstead since Y2k was the upcoming End Of The World threat (no, we weren't really worried about that one), we'd figured out a good bit of what did and did not really work.  So I decided that my next book would be on low-nonsense doomsteading. 

   I soon realized that the book was becoming a full set of encyclopedias.  Real world derailments and health crises made me realize that it was likely that either myself, Western Civilization, or both, were going to go belly-up before I could get the thing finished and published!  So I scaled the project down to my general field of expertise, horse keeping...  Then again to my professional bailiwick, horseshoeing.

   It doesn't take a nuclear war type KABOOM to create a situation where lots of horseowners will be unable to hire competent, professional farriers.   You don't have to be too geriatric to remember times when folks simply didn't have the money to pay fair prices for horseshoeing, and journeymen farriers couldn't afford to drive all over the countryside doing small-time stops.  It is probably no coincidence that magical "barefoot horse trimming" snake oil  blossoms in popularity when there is even a moderate economic downturn.

   Considering how much some people vying to rule the country loathe fossil fuels, it might not be a bad idea for folks to learn to shoe their own damned horses.  Just in case they become involuntarily Amish!

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TEMPUS FUGIT!

    Somebody posted a meme about how "thirty years ago" seems like it should be big collars and bell-bottom jeans, but is actually just 1994.  And it dawned on me that 1994 is the anniversary of the publication of the Pocket Dictionary of Farrier Terms and Technical Language.  The pathfinder for a whole series of farriery lexicons that culminated in Millwater's FARRIERY.

   While 1994 doesn't seem like it's THAT long ago to some of us, a lot has changed in that time.

   Today I found myself groaning at the hassle of having to re-upload a book manuscript to my P.O.D. after fixing a PDF formatting error that they (fortunately) detected.  Big uploads take a while (several minutes) with our out-in-the-boonies Internet. 

   Then I remembered putting together and publishing that first dictionary.  P.O.D. wasn't really a thing then.  Neither was Amazon, really.  The Internet as we know it was just getting started.  PDF was still in development. 

   Most of the work on the Pocket Dictionary was done on an archaic (even by '90s standards) Commodore computer, which is why the main body text was output by daisy wheel printer.  Got a 68030 Macintosh to help towards the end.  Didn't have fancy printer or scanner to go with it, so it was off to Kinko's with diskettes in-hand to intimidate the nerds out of the way so we could monopolize the machines needed.

   Back then, for us, "cut and paste" involved actual scissors and glue!  I had to create photo-ready master sheets, make copies and assemble them into prototypes.  We'd take all this to a printing shop and get a literal truckload of books made, paid-for up-front.  Hauled 'em home to warehouse.  No wonder I tried to keep the page-count down, and omitted anything fancy!  I had no guarantee any of the bloody things would sell to recoup that investment.

   And selling them was problematic, since online retail wasn't really a thing yet.  We had to get people to snail-mail us checks so we could package-up and ship books to fill their orders.  So cumbersome!

   But the press releases and review copies did their job, and before long, half of the first printing was gone and we were in the black on the project.   From there it was onward and upward, publishing-wise. 

   Can't say I miss the "good ol' days" of publishing too much.  Though I am nostalgic for when more people were into reading...  I'm too old and homely to do trendy video content!

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