This post has been brewing for about four days now. I’ve been noticeably absent from my blog in recent times, but after an exchange with a rim shoe farrier on Thursday, felt compelled to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard as it were.

The thing is – as I said, its been four days, and quite frankly I’m still seething.

The setting for this tale of angst revolves around the fact that, for reasons out of the control of myself and my farrier, he’s been unable to shoe my horse. Infact, unable to shoe any horses. Now, for me – this isn’t a big deal – I had trimmed my horse for two years before going the Cytek route, so felt quite confident in ripping the shoes off and trimming him until such time that my farrier was back on the road.

If you’re like me, and you’re incredibly pedantic about who touches your horses feet, its not just a simple case of “I’ll just get another farrier in the meantime”, No. It’s taken us far too long and we’ve come way to far, for some “Johnny come lately” to go and bugger it all up again. Noone else is touching his feet. You ask my farrier – he even had a trial period!

With my horse throwing a shoe, and a weeks worth of wet weather forcast (wet weather + long toes is the catalyst for his feet falling apart) I made the decision to rip the shoes off and trim him up.

My first mistake was sleeping in, and risking running late with an afternoon appointment.
My second mistake was assuming my horse would meet me at the gate as he usually does – instead, he must have known and pretended not to realize I was there.

15 minutes after arriving at the paddock  he’s finally out of the paddock and I’m starting to think that I’m not going to make it on time, and that without the correct tools I’m going to ruin my nippers and rasp.

As all this is running through my head – I see a “tradie” ute driving down the laneway. Thinking to myself “What luck! I think he’s a farrier”

And that’s where I made my third mistake. Capitalizing on the fact that he could rip three shoes off in about 3 minutes, as opposed to my 15 minutes – I was seeing a chance to catch up on lost time – so ran over, horse in hand to ask a favour.

Just to be clear, I only wanted him to remove the shoes. I intended to trim him. I explained my predicament, and that I didn’t have the tools to remove the shoes, would he mind doing me a huge favour, and simply ripping them off while he waited for his next horse.

He said yes. He makes small talk about his feet, how they look a bit average, and I reply something along the lines of “Well, he’s a thoroughbred, you should have seen his feet when I first got started with him, its been a huge battle. He used to have cracks so wide that you could put a 50c coin in the gap”

So he reaches down and picks up a foot.

“Well. These shoes aren’t doing him any favours”

Oh. bugger.

I wasn’t prepared for this, truth be told – I’d completely forgotten about talking to the “anti’s” about these shoes. I’ve been on private agistment for the last 5 years, and the only farrier I’ve seen is my own. I’ve had conversations with other horse lovers about Cytek, but I’ve not encountered someone vocally against them.

I took a deep breath, the voice in my head screaming “Danger Will Robinson”, and said “Oh, yeah, the Cytek’s, you don’t like them?”

He replied “No, can’t say I’m a fan of these”

At that point I took a deep breath and offered “Well, they’ve done wonders for him – you should have seen his feet two years ago.”

To which he countered “Well, I wouldn’t say these shoes would have anything to do with it”

I thought to myself, If the shoes don’t have anything to do with it, then why are the feet better? Instead of pointing that out, I asked him what his experience with Cyteks was.

He replied “None, I wouldn’t use these shoes, I wouldn’t pay someone to put these on my horses feet, in fact, I wouldn’t put these on a horses foot, and then expect them to pay me”

So, he’s got NO experience with the shoes, and knows nothing about them, but he wants nothing to do with them and further to that, thinks I need to hear it from him?

Trying desperately to avoid a confrontation, I asked him if he knew of my farrier, I gave him my farriers name and he admitted he’d never heard of him.

So now we’ve established he not only:
a/ knows nothing about these shoes, he
b/ knows nothing about the farrier that fits them.

I reminded myself silently that he was doing me a favour by taking the shoes off, and to not say anything that would instigate an argument, I didn’t want him to turn around and charge me for taking the shoes off, as i didn’t have a cent on me.

Anyway, he turned the three minute process of ripping three shoes off, into a 10 dissertation on everything that was wrong with my horses feet. Criticising the number of nails my farrier had used, the placement of the shoe, reiterating again that he could never take money off me for a job like this.

At one point I suggested that perhaps it was unfair to judge a farriers work, and these shoes, on a shoeing job that was nearly three months old. He didn’t take it no board, just continued to work his way around the feet criticizing as he went.

He just repeated over and over again, “No, can’t say I like these shoes, these shoes aren’t doing him any favours”. He made a further comment regarding the placement of a shoe on one of my horses back feet, and I offered, that he needed to know the history of my horse. That he was toed-in on the front feet, and toed out on the back, which made it difficult. This farrier’s reply was “So? What’s all that got to do with it?”

Are you serious? How does he expect to do a balanced trim on a horse, if the horses feet load in four different directions? How can he sit there and judge my farriers painstaking process of figuring out what works for my horse, without even seeing him trot up?

He then quipped further “If its such a big deal, why has he put a front shoe on a back foot? (referring to the absence of toe clips), I mean, look at this – you can’t even shape this shoe, he’s just tacked it on, there’s no skill in that at all”

For a guy that confesses to know nothing about the shoe, he evidently knows more than he lets on.

I wanted to explain that with the additional surface area of the shoe, allowing the load to be spread over a larger area, “fitting” wasn’t exactly an issue. I bit my tongue however, as I could sense my anger rising, and knew I wouldn’t be able to hold my temper.

It just made me so angry, that someone who didn’t even know my farrier, know the shoes, know my horse, or his history was standing there and criticizing the workmanship of the only person who’s ever had any success with my horses feet.

My God I was mad.

I got even madder when he asked me if my farrier was even registered.

Are you serious?

I replied “Yes of course he is”, to which he countered “With which association”, I replied that I had no idea and he again dug in with “Well, theres only two associations”, I replied again, that I still didn’t know. The fact that my farrier was a rim shoe farrier for 25 years before he became a Cytek farrier wouldn’t have mattered. The fact that my farrier is in fact a master farrier would have made no difference.

He finished off by making comments about how the nails were ripping up my horses hoof wall (remember… this shoeing job is WELL overdue”, nails would rip up the wall of any horse wearing any shoe in this situation) he says “I mean look at this – its just ripping his foot apart, these are just no good, no good for this horse, look, just look at how many nails are in this foot! How many nails does he want to put in there!”

I swallowed the rage by realizing that he’d ripped off the last shoe – so I smiled broadly and said “Oh, don’t you worry about that, I”m going to cut it all off – you won’t eve know he had shoes on”. He straightened up and looked at me “You can’t cut that much off, you’ll make him lame, you’ll leave him nothing to walk on” I replied happily “Naa, he’ll be fine” He again repeated for what seemed like the 50th time “I really really don’t like these shoes” and I replied as cheerfuly as I could muster “Thats ok mate, I’m used to no one liking them – the important thing is, I like them, and I like them because my horse likes them, and thats all that matters, Thanks for your help and have a great day”

I then went back over to my car and started trimming – all the while listening to him denigrate the shoes to his customer who had been standing there for the last 10 minutes listening as he put me on the spot, the rage just brewing and brewing.

I sent my farrier a number of SMS’s detailing the interaction with this “naysayer”, lets just say, via the choice of my language I made it abundantly clear I was very irate. My poor farrier’s sole response was

“Welcome to my day”

How sad is that? Seriously. Think about it. These shoes, do more for horses than any other shoeing contraption ever invented, and every day the poor souls who have seen the light, who take it upon themselves to make it a better place for equines, have to deal with this sheit from so called educated farriers?

To all the rim shoe farriers – When is it OK to stand there and judge a horse, a farrier, an owner, on what YOU think is good for a horse when you don’t know the first thing about that horse, How can you stand there and criticize the reasoning behind the number of nails a farrier uses when you haven’t even see the horse move. How can you belittle the workmanship of another professional when you don’t know the first thing about the horse or its physical limitations?

I stood there and said to that farrier, “You should have seen my horse two years ago” and “I love these shoes, I owe my horses health to these shoes” only for him to stand there and in a nutshell, tell me I was full of shit, that my horses hoof health was obviously a case of divine intervention – if my farrier and his shoes were, in his opinion “not helping my horse at all”.

Following up from this altercation I asked the agistment manager if she knew who the farrier was. I got his name. I know who he is. Out of PROFESSIONAL COURTESY I will not name him on here. The same professional courtesy which he failed to demonstrate when he deshod my horse.

Whats my point?

Know your horse. Know his feet. Know WHY you put these shoes on. Know WHY they’re different – so that when the next farrier who feels threatened by these shoes comes along and challenges you on the welfare decisions you make – you can calmly tell him that your horse gives you all the feedback you need on whether these shoes are all that they claim to be. Don’t get caught out like I was.