Dave Farley creates a metal bowl at Well-Shod in Amarillo, Texas. Henry Heymering once told Farley that most good ideas become reality, especially when industry experts combine their ideas and goals. Image: Jeff Cota

Editor's Note: American Farriers Journal is celebrating its 50th anniversary and we’re reflecting on the relationships and partnerships we’ve forged, the milestones and the lessons we’ve learned along the way. In the famed Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” protagonist George Bailey gets to see, via a dramatic intervention by an angel named Clarence Oddbody, what the world might have been like had he never been born. International Horseshoeing Hall of Fame member Dave Farley offers his thoughts on what the farrier industry would be like if AFJ never existed.

On one of our late evening telephone calls, when a few of us friends were kicking around the idea of the American Association of Professional Farriers, I asked Henry Heymering about his thoughts concerning another association. I was fascinated with his answer.

He told me that most good ideas eventually become reality, especially if several industry experts combine their ideas and goals. He told me that if he had not started American Farriers Journal, somebody else would have published another farrier-type journal. It wouldn’t have had the same name, of course, but someone else may have had better content and quality.

We can’t turn back time, he said, but that was his thought. He also told me that he had studied the old journeyman journals that went back to the earlier days of their publications and often wondered why there wasn’t more competition for the journeyman at that time. He told me he felt that if there had been, the simple fact is that competition sometimes can excel excellence. He felt there were even challenges writing articles about horseshoeing in the early 1900s, as most print at that time was challenged by others' ideas or suggestions.

I feel that if not for Henry starting the AFJ, it may have been many, many years before someone else started another magazine with educational purposes.

If he had not started it and Frank and Pam Lessiter hadn’t expanded it as much as they did, we all should realize that it may have been 10-20 or 30 years before somebody else started another magazine. Hence, we would be 10-20 or 30 years behind in our continuing education and all the wonderful product development that has happened since the 1990s.

We have to realize or ask ourselves, if it weren’t for the publication of AFJ, when would any of the other magazines have started? Just think and realize how fortunate we are that Frank and Pam have taken the industry to the heights it has become. Without the publication and marketing of all the great products and all the good horseshoeing, can you imagine where the industry would be now without the AFJ? I’m personally very grateful that he did and that Frank and Pam have taken it to where it is today.