Information for Horseowners

Quality hoofcare is one of the most important aspects of caring for your horse. But finding a truly qualified farrier can be difficult. With no legal requirements for entering practice, some horseshoers lack the knowledge, skill, and experience needed to do the job right.

Many of these unqualified shoers come highly recommended by a few horseowners, vets, or trainers. These horseowners may be choosing their shoer based on a low price, then convincing themselves that the work is acceptable. Some vets and trainers like a shoer because he lets them dictate how horses are shod without question.

A group of well-known farriers from across the United States has banded together to establish a professional standard of competence for horseshoeing. The Guild of Professional Farriers Registered Journeyman Farrier™ credential provides horseowners with a starting point when looking for a good farrier. All Guild members meet the RJF™ standard, which is based on what it takes to be a qualified, full-service farrier in the field.

Experience:

Although horseshoeing schools are a good way to begin training, farriery cannot be learned in a matter of weeks. Like all true professions, years of study and hands-on learning are required to achieve competence. It takes years to observe the way hooves change from one phase of life to another. It can take years to observe the development and recovery of some hoof lamenesses. Just learning what is normal for one horse's hooves takes a full year (four seasons).

All Guild farriers have a minimum of four years full-time experience in the field.

Knowledge:

A qualified farrier must have an extensive knowledge of anatomy, biomechanics, gait mechanics, lameness pathology, and applied trimming and shoeing. All Guild farriers have demonstrated this kind of knowledge.

Skill:

A great deal of skill is needed to make the farrier's knowledge useful. Guild farriers have demonstrated the skills needed to fabricate or modify any shoe that might be useful in practice, as well as to forge and properly apply handmade shoes. While most still rely on keg shoes for everyday work, these advanced skills mean that a Guild farrier will never be limited by an inability to produce the shoes your horse really needs.

Professional Status:

All Guild farriers are full-time professionals.

Continuing Education:

A good farrier must never stop learning and improving himself. All Guild members receive the profession’s leading trade magazine, the
American Farriers Journal, as well as the organization's own publication, the New Guild Chronicle. The Guild also organizes and participates in educational events, including an annual convention which is held every year in conjunction with the International Hoof-Care Summit.

By choosing among Guild farriers, you eliminate all the unskilled, inexperienced, uneducated, and amateur shoers from the equation. If you are currently using a qualified, non-Guild farrier, encourage him to join. By doing so he can help improve the accepted standard of farrier practice in America, at the same time reducing the threat of
expensive government regulation of the trade.