Like many other farriers, Mike Dawson of Las Vegas, Nev., has modified a few tools to make his shoeing go better.

Excuse the older folks who still pull to the side of the road when Clint Laybourn’s shoeing rig approaches from behind. Even without its emergency lights flashing, the truck still looks very much like the ambulance it once was.

When the duo of Burney Chapman and George Platt popularized the use of heart bar shoes for foundered and laminitic horses in the late 1960s, it set off a firestorm of innovations and design-styles for therapeutic horseshoes that reinvigorated the hoof-care industry.

Back in 1976, when I decided I didn’t want to work for a living any longer, I decided to become a horseshoer and enrolled at Bob Reaume’s Wolverine Farriers School in Howell, Mich.

Imagine that money is no object and you could have any shoeing rig your heart desired. Want it roomy? OK. Want it to provide protection from the elements? Of course. Want it to travel comfortably? No problem. Eye-catching. You betcha’. Anything you want.

I can’t believe it’s that time again already. The new shoe for the Calgary Mail-In Shoeing Exercise is here.

It still ranks as one of the Golden Rules of horseshoeing: Thou Shall Use The Smallest Nails Possible To Keep The Shoe On Until The Next Appointment.