Finding the right furrier school to meet a prospective student’s needs is not much different than the long ordeal friends have gone though when trying to decide where to go to college or what subject to study.

Among roughly 75 AFA members, educators, suppliers and non-members who attended the mid-September “open forum” sponsored by the American Farrier’s Association, nobody spoke in favor of regulating and licensing farriers. 

Faced with overwhelming opposition from its members, the American Farrier’s Association cancelled its plan to survey North American farrier schools and dropped any possibility that the organization might push for farrier registration and licensing.

In the mid 1990s, Great Britain’s Farrier Registration Council granted American Farrier’s Association Certified Journeyman Farriers the right to gain full farrier registration and shoe horses in the United Kingdom. Now that move may come back to haunt them.

From 1996 to 2004, the number of horses in the United States jumped by 2.3 million. While this figure includes all horses, it’s unlikely that wild horse numbers have increased much.

Five years ago, we produced an American Farriers Journal article on how horseshoers were dealing with skyrocketing fuel prices.

You can almost feel the horseshoeing industry shaking on its foundations already.