Frequently Asked Questions about The Guild

Why do we need a Guild? ...Why now?

The need for an organization of professional farriers has been apparent for some time, but it took a while for the right combination of people to get together and develop a viable structure.

A project as ambitious as the Guild requires a group of people with considerable knowledge, dedication, promotional abilities, media access, experience, and impressive reputations to get it off the ground. It was no small feat to get a team of farriers with these traits together. But we finally accomplished it on August 10, 1996.

...But there already is one successful farriers' organization in the USA... The American Farriers Association (AFA). Why isn't that enough? What do you think is wrong with the AFA?

It is not a matter of anything being "wrong" with the AFA. The AFA is an excellent organization with a broad membership base of individuals interested in farriery and hoof care, including, but not limited to qualified farriers. It has been a prime mover in the redevelopment of farriery as an art and science. It provides a useful avenue for interaction between farriers, and between farriers and other members of the equestrian community.

What the AFA is not, and by design cannot be, is an organization of professional farriers qualified to represent and establish standards for the profession of farriery. By altering its structure to be able to do these things, the AFA would lose its ability to fill the important niche it currently fits so well. Because the AFA does all that it does, it was possible to structure the Guild to meet a more focused set of needs. The Guild should be thought of more as a supplement to the AFA than as a competitor or replacement for it.

The AFA has a farrier certification system. What shortcomings in that system cause the Guild to claim AFA certifications are not valid field credentials?

The AFA certifications are not really designed to be field credentials, and the AFA does not actively promote or advertise them as such. Supporters of the AFA Certification Program often state that they don't expect certification to win them better clients of justify higher prices. So complaining about the certifications because they are not valid field credentials is like complaining that a luxury car cannot haul fifty bales of hay.

The AFA certifications are most often referred to as a means of getting one's work evaluated objectively. A set of stepping-stone achievement awards that motivate farriers to develop skills and knowledge that some might not have developed left to their own devices. The AFA Certification Program is well designed for this purpose.

The features of the AFA certification program, which preclude it from being considered a valid source of professional credentials, are manifold. The AFA's highest certification, Certified Journeyman Farrier (CJF) is available to part-time horseshoers with as little as two years experience. Four years is the bare minimum for accomplishing competence as a farrier. And individuals who shoe horses merely as a hobby or avocation can hardly be relied upon to uphold a professional standard.

Even if the AFA were to require four years and full-time for CJFs, the fact that the AFA recognizes two lower certification level farriers as well as uncertified farrier members makes AFA certification unworkable as a field credential for professional farriers.

Again, the AFA certifications are not designed or promoted as field credentials. So we are not criticizing them as such. We are merely pointing out the difference between the nature of AFA certifications and valid field credentials. For farriers who find it helpful to have their work and development evaluated by other farriers, and to have prefabricated sets of skills to work towards achieving, the AFA system fills the bill very well.

Why does the Guild consider four years to be the "bare minimum for accomplishing competence as a farrier"?

Four years is the traditional minimum experience for being recognized as a qualified farrier. More than that, four years is the logical minimum, since it takes that long to see the effects of corrective work on a colt when he grows into a working horse. It takes a year (four seasons) to really know a given horse's feet, another year to get him through a founder, a third year for him to grow new hooves, and a fourth year to learn the new "normals" for his hooves and compare them to what they were before the founder. Four years gives the farrier a chance to follow horses as they go from middle-aged to geriatric. It gives the farrier the experience of helping to keep geriatric horses comfortable in the last phase of life.

No matter how smart or hard-working a new horseshoer is, the nature of horses and hooves makes it impossible to achieve competence in less than four years. This is why it takes at least four years experience to apply to test for the Registered Journeyman Farrier (RJF) credential and join the Guild.

By requiring four years experience, isn't the Guild abandoning the up and coming farriers?

Lowering the standards of our credential to allow beginners in will simply render the credential worthless to everybody... Including them.

The myth that a few weeks training can produce a competent farrier short-sells the entire profession and invites an endless stream of half-hearted wannabe shoers to enter competition with the serious developing farriers for the entry-level clients. By fostering the realistic expectation that it will take at least four years to be recognized as a real farrier, we are encouraging beginners to spend those years in training, which will pay off big as they continue their careers.

By elevating the standards of the profession, we are giving the new horseshoers a career with the potential to be worth training for.

Why would a farrier want to join the Guild?

The Guild offers competent farriers the opportunity to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack by earning a valid field credential based on real-world, practical knowledge and skills as well as experience. It gives the working farrier the backing of a national organization of his fellow professional farriers.

This credential will be promoted to the horse owning public - which should give Guild members a real edge in the business. The Guild membership standards will not be compromised for the sake of boosting membership numbers, so the value of Guild credentials will remain solid.

Why should horseowners care about the Guild?

When choosing a farrier, horse owners often have considerable trouble finding a competent practitioner. Is the guy your friends recommend really good, or did your friends convince themselves that he was good because they liked his low prices? Is the guy your other equine professionals suggest really qualified, or do they just like him because he lets them call the shots on shoeing?

Horse owners can use Guild Membership as a way to recognize farriers who meet a high minimum standard of knowledge, skill, and experience.

You said the Guild credentials are based on "real-world, practical knowledge and skills". But the RJF live shoeing exam requires handmade shoes, which many career farriers rarely use in their practices. Why is this?

There are many reasons for requiring handmade shoes. Tradition. The horse owners' expectation that a really qualified farrier can make shoes. 20th century history has demonstrated that there is no guarantee that we will always have a good supply of keg shoes....

But the main reason for requiring handmades is that shoeing one horse with handmades demonstrates a full range of applied keg-shoeing skills that would probably never be required to shoe one horse with keg shoes for the exam. Any good keg shoer should be able to cut and refinish heels, reshape the iron, punch, resize or repitch nail holes, etc. Forging handmade shoes merely puts all those skills together.

The Guild realizes that most working farriers forge very few handmade shoes, and therefore are not efficient at it. This is why ample time is allowed. A skilled farrier should be able to pass the live shoeing exam even if he has not made a handmade shoe in years. We just want to verify that the farrier will never be limited by the design of available keg shoes. We don't expect him to make a second career out of developing skills he will only need for our test.

• • • • •