Talk with most farriers and hoof-care providers about safety or dangers inherent to the work and the most common thing that will come up is potential injury caused by a horse.

As part of our April “Shoeing Showcase,” we’d like to ask you to invest in a couple of particular products, if you aren’t already using them.

They would be safety glasses and some form of hearing protection. There might not be anything else you can invest so little in with such a huge potential payoff.

Stop by any hardware store and you can pick up a decent pair of safety glasses for less than $10. You can add ear plugs for even less. For less than $20 you can protect yourself from losses of a kind that’s cost can’t even be calculated.

Obviously, you can spend more on protection than $20, and there’s no doubt that the level of protection provided will increase as you spend more.

What’s An Eye Worth?

But the point we want to make is that a very small monetary investment will provide protection for most of the small bits of slag and chips of metal that go flying through the air during a typical day of horseshoeing. Even something as simple as cotton ear plugs will cut down some of the high-decibel, metal-on-metal sound that is so damaging to hearing over weeks, months and years.

Yes, safety glasses can fog up. During hot weather, you may have to stop frequently to clean perspiration…