Since ancient times, farriery has been considered the master craft.

To help prospective students decide how to evaluate numerous educational opportunities, several school owners shared their insights on three different student background scenarios.

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.

Facing an examination of their educational programs by the American Farrier’s Association and stung by criticism in an AFA task force report on farrier education, the majority of private farrier school owners in the United States have banded together in a new group called the American Farriers Education Council.

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.