Every facet of being a farrier requires teamwork. Whether you are working with a single client with a backyard horse or the trainer, owner, groom and others with a high-level performance horse, to effectively do your work means there is a team dynamic.

According to farrier John Samsill, your role within that team is most evident in therapeutic farriery. It isn’t only about being able to do that handwork necessary of being a farrier, but it is working with those vested in the horses and other aspects that also influence the probability of success for each case.

Shoeing since 1984, Samsill works with Chaparral Veterinary Medical Center in Cave Creek, Ariz. Here he works with farrier Wade Uldrikson to handle all of the footcare needs off the clinic’s horses. Through his experiences here and working on other therapeutic cases, Samsill outlines several factors that will help you succeed on individual cases or in a clinical setting.

Your skills and knowledge must be up to the task. This should be assumed of any farrier, regardless of the horses worked with. Samsill says therapeutic shoeing requires a large toolbox. The success of the tools inside that box rely on you to address the principles of the case you are presented with. Samsill says that he builds most of the therapeutic devices that he uses.

“You have…