Iowa State University Offering Hands-On Personalized Farrier Clinics
Small group farrier courses are offered through the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine under the direction of resident farrier Doug Russo.
A recent Facebook post by the Iowa State Large Animal Hospital drew attention to the clinics offered by Russo, who, for the past 10 years, has taught veterinary students at the college and provided hoof care for the hospital’s equine patients.
The Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center’s website lists two 1-week clinics: an equine therapeutic shoeing and American Farrier’s Association certification prep clinic. These are better understood as suggestions for course content. Russo emphasizes that these clinics are student-interest focused.
“The courses are custom to the people coming in,” says Russo. “I talk to them on the phone and figure out where they’re at and what their goals are and then build the week that they’re with me around that.”
If a student is only interested in forging or prepping for a certification, Russo would focus on that.
“If they wanted to get better at shoeing laminitic horses, then that’s what we’d spend a week on. We’d learn the causes, the changes that occur within the hoof capsule and the specific anatomy that’s affected,” he says.
Though the course content has its limits.
“If I feel unqualified to help on a certain topic, I’ll send them someplace else rather than take their money,” he says.
Russo says courses are limited to 2-3 students to avoid spreading himself too thin on top of the 3-5 veterinary students who come in for their clinical rotation. Sometimes he only has one farrier student for the week, but when there are more, he tries to group study interests together. Any more students, and he feels he’s not giving them the one-on-one focus they’re looking for.
“I do a lot of clinics around the country where there’ll be 20 people with forges set up, and you’re trying to float between them, but inevitably people get robbed of some of your time. There’s people who paid to be there for the day, and they get a total of 20 minutes with you,” he says.
If a farrier aspires to work with a vet clinic, do mainly therapeutic work or are working toward a therapeutic endorsement, Russo says his course could be a good introduction. They round with the vet students and shadow equine surgeries, navicular or laminitis cases while working with X-rays and other necessary imaging and treatments.
He says he gets many veterinary students from central Nebraska and North and South Dakota because of the tuition reciprocity in Iowa.
“I hear back from a lot of them that they don’t have any farriers to do the therapeutic work. Some of them are sending horses 3-4 hours back to Iowa State,” he says.
Though some farriers are simply uninterested in therapeutic work, one of the reasons Russo suspects there are fewer farriers to contract with vet clinics is money. It can be difficult to know how to set prices to make the shoeing worthwhile, especially when someone is just starting out with therapeutic work.
“A valuable part of these courses is understanding what you need to charge for your time,” he says. “In a therapeutic setting, it might take four hours to get one foot shod. Compare that to what a farrier could do in four hours if they were staring at a barn full of sound horses.”
For Russo, there was a huge learning curve when he started at Iowa State, something his clinics can help minimize for others.
“I was lucky I had a good network,” he says. “I was getting advice on charging appropriate fees and professional expectations, like what is it fair for me to expect from the veterinarians without coming across as rude or demanding. If working primarily with therapeutic cases is somebody’s goal, they could gain a lot of knowledge from these courses.”
Russo’s classes are not held on specific or recurring dates to accommodate the needs of farriers. Whenever there’s an open week, farriers are welcome to fill it. Longer than a traditional clinic but shorter than a farrier school, his clinics are designed as one-on-one or small group hands-on deep dives into whatever subject a farrier wants to learn.
Interested farriers can contact Russo at drusso@iastate.edu to schedule a class or get more information. Read the course description here.
