The fabric of farriery is interwoven with risk.

The moment a horseshoer ventures alone into the world of the self-employed, the risk component skyrockets. It’s already a dicey proposition involving large animals that can run, kick and stomp without warning. Hot forges, heavy hammers, sharp knives and abrasive rasps only heighten the prospect of injury.

While it’s easy to wave off safety measures as inconvenient, cutting corners just to save time could prove costly. In the blink of an eye, the sounds of children playing near a barn can spook a horse and unleash a devastating chain of events that could result in a very uncertain future for you and your family.

Farriers from around the country lend their considerable know-how on the precautions they take each day to help improve their chances of avoiding serious injury while on the job.

Your Work Area

When arriving at an area where you intend to shoe, be sure to assess your surroundings. Is the surface slippery because of water, ice or mud? Are there shovels, horse blankets or trash cans nearby? Is there a loose piece of tin jutting from the side of the barn that could cut you or the horse?

“The most important thing is having a clean shoeing area,” says Steve Sermersheim, head farrier of the Midwest Horseshoeing School at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “A lot of times there are brooms, muck buckets and other stuff that are left in the area. I want to make sure I remove it. The horse could step on a broom, knock it into itself, get spooked and run you right over.”

Walking surfaces should be dry. The slippery conditions of wet or icy concrete could cause you or the horse to fall, but it also could lead to other injuries.

“When a horse loses its footing, it often panics trying to regain its balance,” says Mark Ellis, a Mukwonago, Wis., farrier. “If a horse is flailing around trying to get back onto its feet, it can strain muscles, tear tendons and ligaments.”

Many times while shoeing at a public event, a farrier doesn’t have much say over the surroundings. When a farrier must shoe in a high-traffic area, Sermersheim suggests taking some proactive steps.

“I don’t want my shoeing area close to the arena,” he says. “That’s ideal, but that’s not always the case. I always put a little warning — a toolbox or a hoof stand or something like that — to let people who are moving horses or wheelbarrows know that I’m right around the corner.”

Before making the trek to a shoeing client for the first time, be sure there are releasable crossties.

“I want a quick-release latch or maybe some hay string that will easily break if a horse tries to run,” Sermersheim says. “If the horse pulls back, it can hurt itself. If a horse struggles, it can fall right on top of you. You want them to be released and on all four feet.”

Ellis uses a short string of hay to connect a heavy piece of rope with about a foot of chain.

“A lot of times, a horse likes to nibble away at a crosstie,” Ellis says. “Eventually, it’s going to chew right through that rope. It can bite that chain all it wants; it’s not going to hurt that. The hay string is important because if a horse panics and bolts, the string will snap. Usually, the horse calms right down once the tension snaps. It thinks that because the tension went away, the danger’s gone.”

A Sensitive but Dangerous Problem

Children and dogs are a common and especially dangerous problem that demands immediate attention.

“Summer is always the most difficult time for those situations,” Ellis says. “The kids are out of school and are playing outside. They’re running around, having a good ole time. All it takes is a sudden scream outside the barn to spook a horse, and you get trampled.”

It can be a delicate subject to broach with a barn owner or parent. Children elicit an emotional response, particularly when an outsider is critical of their behavior. Bob Smith, the owner of Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School in Plymouth, Calif., suggests tapping into that emotion to make your point.

“I just explain to them that ‘I’m very sorry, but I’m having difficulty concentrating on this horse,’” explains the International Horseshoeing Hall of Fame member. “‘You see, a few years back, a guy was in a barn and some children were running around and somebody got seriously hurt. I just can’t get the image of that poor child who was injured so severely out of my mind.’”

People outside of the farrier industry might not realize that a black shoe can cause a significant burn.

Untrained Horses

Antsy or untrained horses are a huge headache for farriers. All farriers have one, or more, horses that constantly jerk them around while paring the sole or trying to put the foot on a hoof stand. While it’s most definitely not a farrier’s job to train a horse how to stand, there are humane and painless ways to ease your burden.

“Horses learn through habituation,” Smith says. “In my school, we use a little nerve line, which is just a piece of string that goes underneath the upper lip of the horse. If the horse jerks its foot away, you bump the line. You’re not trying to cut it or create pain.”

It will take some patience and about 25 to 30 bumps of the line for the horse to habituate to the stimulus, but you will see results in about 20 minutes, Smith says.

Hot Take

Using a forge introduces an entirely new and substantial set of hazards that demands a farrier’s vigilance.

“When you have kids around, you have to take extra care not to leave hot metal around,” Smith says. “If they’re not professional farriers and not familiar with the forge, they could pick up something that could seriously injure one of them.”

Of course, while working the anvil, farriers should always secure it and wear hearing protection. Putting on earmuffs or using earplugs are simple enough, but hearing loss generally is gradual. So, it’s an easy trap to wave it off as unnecessary, but it will catch up to you.

“It’s all about decibels,” says Dan Bradley, a Hall of Fame farrier from Jefferson, Texas. “If you just tie down your anvil, banging away at it will be 82 decibels. That’s high enough that you should be wearing hearing protection. An anvil that’s not tied down will create 100 to 140 decibels of sound. Instantaneous hearing damage occurs at 100 decibels.”

Forges present other, larger hazards that farriers need to keep in mind.

“Most of the time, if I have the forge off my truck, I keep it outside,” Sermersheim says. “If I have to pull it into the barn, I want to make sure we always have it vented if it’s a tight area. We have an exhaust in our shop, and along with that, we crack the door open so we get air inside. You can get in a lot of trouble if you don’t have good ventilation. I have a carbon monoxide detector in my shop.”

A precaution that’s commonly neglected is venting propane out of trucks and shoeing rigs. During a walk-through of shoeing rigs during a convention, Smith and Pacific Palisades, Calif., farrier Jim Halverson were in for a surprise.

“Only one or two out of the literally hundreds of rigs had vented their propane,” Smith recalls. “That’s a big bomb. Going down the road, you can jostle that valve open a little bit. All it takes are two shoes banging together to create the spark.”

Aside from venting, inspect the propane fittings and hoses daily, suggests Bob Schantz of Spanish Lake Blacksmith Shop in Foristell, Mo.

“It doesn’t take longer than 2 minutes to spritz soapy water on all the joints to find a leak,” he says. “Two minutes here are better than 2 weeks in the burn unit.”

Risk is inherent in horseshoeing but if you take just a few precautions, not only will they help you stay safe, they also will make your job easier.