I like to surround myself with people in the industry who have the same passion, loyalty and integrity as I do. When it comes to buying supplies, it baffles me that farriers don’t buy from the same shop each time simply because of the tremendous advantages that you can reap.

During my more than 25 years of shoeing, I purchased all my farrier products from the same supplier. Here are some of the immense benefits that you can enjoy from remaining loyal to your farrier supply shop.

Product information. After buying The Horseshoe Barn in Sacra­mento, Calif., 5 years ago, the first thing I had to handle was answering questions about products.

It’s incredibly important that farriers fully understand the products that they are using. Most product information comes from YouTube, other farriers, publications and supply shops.

When I go to the International Hoof-Care Summit in Cincinnati, Ohio, I see tons of different products and I ask all kinds of questions about them. I thought I had pretty good product knowledge, but I found that I didn’t know 20% of what I thought.

After I took over the store, I constantly was asked what I thought was the best product. It was really difficult not to push the products that I was most familiar with. I remember being told by the employees that we sell all kinds of products from all kinds of companies, and the farrier and horse owner need to determine what they think is the best. I…