Ummm, not to trim a horse to be shod and then leave it unshod and otherwise unprotected. Having it in writing will help, but is not a guarantee and does not necessarily relieve you of responsibility and/or culpability. I don't want to merely 'limit my liability', I don't want it to exist in the first place. Ergo, while I would absolutely memorialize the incident, and have both the owner and I sign off on it, it would not stop me from shoeing the horse, despite the owner's protestations. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? YMMV.
I completely agree and I think that's what I said (not in so many words) in the other thread. In fact, I think we had a very similar discussion on horseshoes although it dealt specifically with going against vet advice. That could be said for almost any business in America. David
Not if the court determines that doing so is an act of animal cruelty. All that does is CONFIRMS that the act was willful on your part. So a barn manager has written instructions from a horse owner to lock a horse in a stall without food or water for 5 days. Evidently some people on this forum think a judge or jury is going to absolve that barn manager from that willful act of cruelty. How does having it in writing make it OK for the barn manager to "follow orders" and deliberately starve and dehydrate the horse because the "owner released liability?" Hey the horse might survive. Maybe nobody will find out. And since the manager was "overruled" - ordered to do it, you think don't have any responsibility? I really cannot see how having documented that 1. you believe the act is harmful and 2. you have "orders" to perform the act do anything BUT prove that you conspired in writing with an idiot to willfully committed a harmful act to an animal. No different than soring a walking horse to make it perform an artificial gait because that's what the owner wants. If you had it in writing, it would serve the court well as evidence to convict you and the owner of violating the horse protection act. Which, IMO makes you out to be an even bigger idiot than the owner because unlike them, you know better and can't claim ignorance of the probable outcome.
You probably should have a law degree if your objective is to learn how to legally CYA whenever you knowingly through your own action or inaction do harm to a horse on purpose. If there's a way to "get away with it" and CIRCUMVENT the ETHIC, a lawyer will be the one that knows how. The difference between a lawyer and a cat fish - one is a scum sucking bottom dweller, the other is a fish.
Just how much of a different kind of trim are yall doing that will kill a damn horse if you don't go-ahead and put something on it..its clear to me I must be trimming feet all kinds of wrong... We talking about this likea shoeless horse will just buckle at the knees if he don't get a shoe... Am I the only one that's had a horse throw a shoe and run around a few days on the shoe prep trim foot.. am I the only one to have a jumper take a bad count and cork front shoes and off they go but the rider never check up and keep jumping the course just as bare foot as one can be..imo if you got a horse on ur books that will have so much trouble or die if shoeless you got more problems than a farrier needs to deal with without a vet..
No way in hell would I have a paper filled out saying hey i pulled the shoes on your horse and this someabetch probly gonna die and I know it but hey I'm fixing to leave here.. good luck ..I see you in court to say I told ya so... I'm no lawyer by any means but my first move would if in court is to say Mr reed do you shoe horses full time ..yes I do ..and your client is a cook at burger king..so why would you leave the horse like that because you say right here in this letter the horse will suffer ..its clear Mr reed the cook don't know shit about Shoeing a horse..but... No letter I would say I had no reason to think the horse would suffer after all horses go shoeless every day ..had the client called me I would have come right on out to shoe or boot.. i thought the horse was doing just fine ...
I don't know anyone who would intentionally harm a horse whether by action or inaction. But I know plenty who who might UNintetionally harm a horse by action, inaction, owner directive or veterinary Rx. eg What happpens when we "know" anything above a five week cycle will probably be harmful to a particular individual, advise owner of such, but owner insists on a 7 week cycle? What if an orthotic solution, not only does not work, but MIGHT have exacerbated an unsoundness? Excuse me, but the rest of the world, from the three levels of gu'mint right on down, plays by CYA rules. I wouldn't blame a farrier one jot if he Ced HA, pursuant to taking all due care.
Travis, Do you trim a horse that your are going to shoe any differently than you do one that you are going to leave barefoot? Why or why not?
Tom just because you read a few things on the internet doesn't make your opinion right, that is why I asked someone who has actually been to law school and interprets the law everyday. In this case I don't see much difference between a farrier and a horse owner. One hand you have someone who deals in the subject everyday and the other you have someone that read some articles on the internet. I think I know who's opinion I'm going to trust more. If what you say is the case there would be a lot less barefooters crippling horses, because they would all be getting sued. If you go against the owners wishes because they are ultimately responsible for the care of there animal and things go bad, which could easily happen in the case at hand, you are setting yourself up for disaster in a court of law. It seems you have a crystal ball in your truck.
Either way I think in this case your in a bad spot either way you go, and is the best time to no longer put yourself in the situation again by no longer offering your services to the customer. If you go ahead and shoe the horse and don't charge, what about the next customer who finds out you shod her friends crippled horse and didn't charge her, there going to want the same service or they will just pull the shoes off. Double edged swords cut in both directions.
A friend of mine owns a tire store, if someone comes in and wants their tires rotated and he finds a bad tire while doing the rotation, he has to advise the customer by law that there tire is potentially dangerous and recommend they buy a new tire. If the customer declines he cannot force them to buy a new tire and I doubt he would stay in business long if he starts giving them away. If the customer comes in and they find a cracked rim he cannot mount a new tire on that rim, he advises the customer that their rim is cracked and that they should purchase a new one. If they decline he has to put the old tire back on the rim and let the person go. In both cases the findings are documented on the receipt.
I was taught not to rob the foot. I trim and shoe the horse with just little extra about 1/16th of an inch more; that way if the client says, I change my mind; "No Shoes, No Problem" ...............left a little extra for leaving it barefoot. also check out the shoeing work on WCB; you will not see that the feet are chopped down like here in America. you notice on the track that some horses that are plated are always coming up sore, bruising, ect....it's because some of the platers are knife happy..........and I see it out in the farms in different shoeing styles. "KISS....No Problems" .......and you will better off in your shoeing/trimming.
.......................... Depends .... Yes and no...I do some things a bit diff but no I damn sure don't trim to the point of a shoe MUST go on or a boot for him to go sound...I burn a bit hot so I leave a little extra ..I don't knife the hell out of the sole shoes or not.. when trimming I trim over growth I may float a flair if need be and round up the hoof wall ...I do the same for a shoe other than round up hoof wall....m not part of AFA so do the have any info in any guide on how to trim a foot and anything in print saying the two trims at that much diff........
I wouldn't go against the owners wishes, Justin. If ever a client thinks I don't know what I'm doing and decides they need to tell me what to do, the business relationship ends right there. I have no interest at all in doing business with people who think I am incompetent. If the owner want's to stop me in the middle of a job and fire me before I complete the job, they have every right to do that because the minute they fire me I am relieved from my duty of care and I don't need a piece of paper saying I knowingly violated my duty of care in order to go along with what the owner wanted.
I've never heard of a tire salesman being accused of vehicular neglect or vehicular cruelty. The owner of a vehicle is responsible (by law) to maintain a safe vehicle. Some states have safety inspections. What a service station cannot do legally is disable an air bag or safety restraint system - and having a written order from the vehicle owner does not absolve the mechanic from that violation of federal law. Putting the exact same tire back on the exact same rim without changing anything is not negligence. The net effect is that the mechanic performed a partial dissemble and inspection and made a recommendation. If the owner does not go with the recommendation then the item is reassembled exactly the way it was found. The net effect is that the mechanic did not make any "changes." To make that analogous to horseshoeing, you looked at the horse, picked out the feet, used hoof testers, and maybe pulled a shoe to inspect the part of the foot covered by the shoe. If the owner rejects your recommendation, then all you can do is nail the exact same shoe back on the foot in the same nail holes and walk away. You didn't change anything, all you did was perform an inspection and make a recommendation. As such, nobody incurs liability for an ESTIMATE. Selling a bald tire ( one that has less than the required legal minimum tread depth) and installing it at the owner's request, that's a different story as that falls under the laws of implied warranty or merchantability fitness as well as some other federal safety standards.
Justin, I went to college and took business courses including business law, torts, and ethics. Most of the legal stuff I talk about I learned in college as part of the courses I took or learned from experience in the field as part of a job that required a lot of legally binding paperwork. I worked in the corporate world for 15 years and I have negotiated $multi-million service contracts with attorneys and I have faced litigation and gotten considerable experience in the real world with courts and lawyers. So I'm not just talkin' out of my ass. I've been there done that and as a result, I'm not all that impressed with lawyers as I've met a bunch of them and had to endure a scuffle or two. From my personal experience, very few lawyers are actually competent in anything that doesn't fall within their boilerplate "fill out the forms" regiment.
That's the thing tom ...there's no law ..other than animal cruelty laws and I don't think that falls no where on the relm of what we are talking about...to me it would fall under a mal practice and see I'm no vet and i dont think it will hurt a horse to go shoeless.. I also don't mind a horse owner or trainer having ideas of what they may wanna try... As long as it don't hurt the horse.. but then agian I don't have issues of being stoped and fired or one dictating to me how to shoe the horse as you describe....big lick soreing was brought up but its apples and peanuts to compair the two..and they have laid a law out for that... I think Anthony or someone else said it best you be damn hard to find any farrier to hurt a horse knowing he/ she is doing so..you can't do this and not love horses or care about them..
Don't tell me you "love horses" if you can imagine a situation where you would willingly do something you think is harmful to a horse because you are more worried about pissing off a customer than doing what in your heart and mind you believe is right by the horse. Sorry but the hypocrisy in that situation is way too obvious.
I've had a few customers similar. I used to shoe horses back in college so I could get beer money, but it hurts my back to much so I had to call you out. That's not the way I used to do it!! Doesn't it hurt them when you burn those shoes on, I never had to hotfit the horses when I shod because I could trim them flat!!! I went to vet school but now I work on dogs and cats, so my horse needs a wedge and back the toe way up because the last guy left it to long!! Shouldn't you be using those natural balance shoes because that is what they taught us in vet school because it mimics the wild horse and they have the best feet you can find on a horse!!! I took a couple classes on horses feet and a farrier came and taught us how to apply shoes in a 2 hr course so you should really listen to what I'm saying!!!
