Mikel, if yiu have been taught well there should not be a problem been a real nice guy wont cut for ya not over here anyway
Smitty, I've taken over customers from farriers who are probably much better than I am, but because they don't keep appoints people are pissed. I've taken time to talk with people, I've heard about that from others. I've heard about the old farrier who had booze on their breath, I am contactable, have heard other wise about different farriers. Yea, doing good work helps, but if people aren't happy with your personality skills, they'll go find some one else if they want.
Mikel, great advice for the farrier, Renchin is discussing farrier school curriculum! I could see your dissertation being vg material in a teaching syllabus about good business practice and personal edict, or tattooed to some of our foreheads so that we see it each day if we wash our face..................but what do you think about Reds ideas directly? Ray
Ray, I pretty much stated my feeling in my my first post. If a school has "X" amount of time to train a farrier, then importance needs to be placed on the skills needed first: Horsemanship, trimming, fitting, finishing, adjustments to keg shoes. Forging shoes is knowledge which will help a person better fit shoes and hone skills, that's why most apprenticeship programs here in Europe are 4 years or so.
Mikel, you did ,thanks for that, your assessment of the school use of time,to me, would go along basically with Reds, wouldn t you say? Thanks Ray
You can't be successful over here if you're an asshole, or if you do poor work, or both. What Mikel wrote is spot on. The school I went to stressed that, as well as anatomy, shoeing basics, and forge work. Most of our time was spent under horses, everyday, all day, except Wednesday afternoon, when we had class work and forge lessons. We had to study the anatomy on our own time, as well as complete our forge work to a standard. We took two written anatomy tests, and were judged on 21 different handmade shoe and tool projects. If we didn't pass the written, or complete all the forging to a standard, we didn't graduate. We also had to test on shoeing a horse to AFA certified standard, within the one hour time limit. Every evening was spent in the forge, as well as Saturday and Sunday. 16 started, 12 finishes, and 8 graduated. Mr Renchin needs to visit a few schools, methinks, before publishing something like that in a national publication. Regards
I can't really comment on the article because a) I haven't read it and b) I don't actually know the curriculum of any schools. I'd love to go to Heartland for their 2 week course sometime. Assuming they still have it.
Bill, if you we're to look back on the farrier you were fresh out of school how would you rate yourself? How would you have compared to your classmates?
Well I read the article and all it seems like to me is that Red is pimping sales of things for people who buy ad space in the rag he works for. I am no hammer head as some call it but I do feel that learning to forge helped me get a damn site better at shoeing. Schools do not have students long enough to teach them everything, but the basics of each area should be covered without sacrificing one just because technology has made it easy to do so. Red wrote an article for a magazine that sells ad space to people who sell shoes more than bar stock by a lot. That's pretty much where the slants leans. Just my opinion.
I can't find the article so it's difficult to comment on its content. There are some interesting comments on here, I will ask though how on earth can you be in anyway competent in 3 or 4 months at any aspect of the job. The aspect that gets over looked in all of this is the welfare of the horse, ( I repeat I haven't read this article ) but careful use of time in learning the subject may be the way forward. I would say that forging improves my shoeing even in the autumn of my career, but I'm not sure that it was CRITICAL if I was on a 12 / 16 week course. I believe that better education on a more confined aspect of the subject would benefit the animal. But on the other hand the students would feel a bit robbed if shoemaking was dropped from the syllabus.
Ok I have read the article and in journalistic style lots of problems are high lighted and a solution to one of the problems is offered. More revealing is the comments after the article. The truth is there are difficulties in all aspects of farriery be it before you commence, while you are learning and 20 Years down the line. I think that it would be an interesting article if someone from the AFJ was to attend a school.
now David, your suggestion is pretty funny. excluding Red the staff attending farrier school could be a reality tv hit, not unlike Survivor...
Don't pick on them folks at the journal. It is very hard to come up with enough stuff every 2 months to fill the space between the advertisements.
I was one of the better students and thought I had the whole Farrier thing figured out. I was too ignorant to know how ignorant I really was.
