08/22/2026
Well said. Looking forward to hosting Yogi next weekend!
GREAT FARRIERS DON’T SHOE HOOVES. THEY SHOE HORSES.
As I prepare to head across the USA for the TED Tour, there is one group of people I would particularly love to see more of in the room.
Traditional farriers.
Something I’ve noticed over the last few years is that a huge proportion of the TED audience is made up of vets, physiotherapists and what we might call the more progressive end of farriery and hoof care practitioners.
Yet at the previous USA clinics, we often see comparatively fewer of the traditional, forge-focused farriers.
I find that fascinating because those are exactly the farriers I want to join the conversation.
There is enormous skill within traditional farriery.
Forging a shoe from bar stock, fitting accurately, understanding horn, reading a foot and developing the hand skills to execute that work efficiently are crafts that take years, sometimes decades, to master.
Nothing I teach through TED is trying to replace that. I want to add to it. Because the better we understand the hoof, the harder it becomes to separate it from the horse standing above it.
The hoof influences the limb. The limb influences the body. Hoof balance can influence tendon loading, proprioception, limb orientation and posture.
But the relationship also runs the other way.
Posture changes limb orientation. Limb orientation changes how force enters the hoof. Repeated loading influences hoof morphology.
When we pick up a distorted hoof, the question is “How do I improve this hoof?”
But to answer that we should also be asking “Why did this hoof become this shape in the first place?”
The answer is in understanding the whole body.
This is what TED Tour clinics are be about.
Not another clinic where I stand at an anvil and show you how I make a particular shoe. And certainly not a clinic telling experienced farriers that everything they have been doing is wrong.
I want us to go underneath all of that. Back to first principles.
How is the hoof actually designed to function?
How do forces enter it?
How are those forces transmitted through the limb?
How does hoof balance alter moments and tissue loading?
How does the nervous system use information from the digit?
How does the horse above influence the hoof below?
And once we understand those things, what does that mean for the decisions we make underneath a horse tomorrow morning?
We now have access to biomechanics, material science, mechanobiology, imaging, objective measurement and research that previous generations of farriers simply didn’t have.
That doesn’t diminish traditional farriery. It gives those traditional skills more information to work with. You can be brilliant at the forge and still learn something about biomechanics. You can have shod horses for thirty years and discover something about tendon loading that changes how you interpret the next foot you pick up. You can make a beautiful handmade shoe and still ask whether the mechanical environment you’ve created is actually the one that particular horse needs.
That isn’t abandoning traditional farriery.
That is taking mastery of the craft and adding mastery of the system it operates within.
So, as I travel across America on this tour, I would genuinely love to see more traditional farriers in the room.
Bring the forge skills. Bring the horsemanship. Bring the experience. Bring the things you’ve seen work for thirty years and challenge me to explain why they work.
You don’t have to agree with everything I say. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. Ask questions. Challenge ideas. Bring your own experience and put it against the research.
Come and join the conversation. Represent.
Because I don’t think the future of farriery is traditional versus modern. Or steel versus composite. Or craft versus academia. I live in both worlds too!
I think it’s what happens when we take the best of all of them and start asking better questions.
Because ultimately, great farriers don’t shoe hooves. They shoe horses.
This is why I am very excited about my collaboration with Olsen Equine as we do our best to bring the two worlds together!
So to the amazing craftsmen of traditional farriery, I hope to see you at one of the clinics.
