“There’s a difference between shoeing horses and putting shoes on horses,” says 2014 Rising Shoeing Star Diego Almeida, CJF (TE, EE, FE), AWCF

What pays the bills and what lights a fire in you don’t always overlap, but for Almeida it’s a necessity — and for fellow Rising Shoeing Stars Gary Gullo Jr. (2019), Joe Nygren, CJF, DipWCF (2011) and Sam Zalesky, CJF (2015), there simply wasn’t another option.

After entering his first state contest with little knowledge of competition etiquette, Nygren finished in 30 minutes and shut off his forge to watch the other farriers. Still, he earned several ribbons that day for his efforts. From there, he kept attending competitions and clinics, his version of an apprenticeship. By the time he was a 2011 Rising Shoeing Star, he was regularly competing and operating a successful business. 

By contrast, Gullo spent his days after school shoeing high-value racehorses, where he’d spent most of his time before graduating from the Cornell University Farrier Program. Almeida was working for Midwest Horseshoeing School with his mentor, Steve Sermersheim, and Zalesky was shoeing at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital. Gullo notes that the most successful farriers are typically the ones who work hard, are mechanically inclined, don’t think they know it all and keep an open mind. 

“That’s what I love about farriers. We always want more,” Zalesky says. “Farriery has been steeped in tradition for thousands of years, but there’s no set way to shoe horses, and there’s always something more to…