Hot Dirty Barefoot Trimmer Hoofcare Products and Services

06/13/2026

🙈

05/23/2026

A brief snapshot of the day of a trimmer, which was sponsored by Dunkin' , Dutch Bros Coffee and Cook It Erica (in collab with The Pickle Guys who I can't tag), who did not know they were sponsoring the day, and alll the horses with the feet who did in fact know they were sponsoring.

05/03/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Dn9pHbosR/

"ISO farrier who doesn't charge an arm and a leg"

This essay will be a compilation of thoughts that have been swirling around for awhile..... in which I'll attempt basic math with loose interpretation of some numbers. If you're going to be a nerd about my numbers, you're missing the point.

First, being a farrier is a niche skill in high demand. The United States has the largest horse population in the world with 6-10 million horses. With only 28,000 farriers estimated by the American Farriers Journal, every farrier should have 285 or more horses on their schedule to ensure all horses have hoof care (assuming an average of 8 million horses).

285 horses = 71 horses/week, 10 horses a day, 7 days a week.
Don't want to work every day with no break, forever and ever?
Then it's 15 horses a day, 5 days a week.

Some farriers can handle that workload. I personally cannot.
Assuming all your clients live 0 minutes away from you, everyone stands well, horses are ready for you, and you have no shenanigans, you're looking at 5 - 7 hours/day for barefoot trims on 15 horses. That's the most unrealistic math I've ever done 😂.

If you're doing half sets, full sets, or glue ons, I'm not sure many farriers could/should do 15 of those a day. And you're looking at a 15 hour day minimum without any travel time or interruptions.

Farriers come to you, so add in realistic travel time and their hours spent working get longer, with less horses they can get to in daylight.

Second, you want a GOOD farrier. General standards would be: shows up, communicates, is reasonably skilled and knowledgeable at the craft, is friendly to you and your horse. Rates will vary. You can have fast, good, and cheap but never all three at the same time.

Out of those 28,000 farriers, not all of them are good.

Third, some of you have never run your own business so you don't understand what happens behind the scenes.

When you go buy a new car and you don't like the price, you shop around or negotiate with the sales person. But you know the salesperson ultimately isn't in charge or control of the market rate. When you go grocery shopping and prices have gone up, you may put something back on the shelf, but you don't yell at the cashier on your way out. They have nothing to do with rising costs.

But those are big corporations. Your farrier is a small business. You're looking at the person who sets their rates. When you say things like "I can't believe what I'm being charged for shoes these days...." you're saying you don't think your farrier should be able to pay their bills and run a successful business. You won't find the email address of the Toyota CFO and write them a strongly worded letter about the price of your new car. But you will fuss and complain about your farrier bill to their face or behind their back.

Make that make sense....

There is a difference between saying "that's not in my budget right now" and "I can't believe you charge an arm and a leg for nailing on some shoes."

I don't personally know a single farrier who is overcharging for their business model. Whether they are talented at their craft is up to you to decide. But farriery is a career. Our business must be profitable for it to be sustainable.

Fourth, hoof care is essential and every horse needs it on a regular basis. So we're back to the original dilemma - millions of horses and not enough (good) farriers.

Solutions?
Farriers: insist on safe working conditions, charge whatever you need to, and take care of yourself so you can go the distance.
Owners: get your horses trained to stand better, don't have more horses than you can afford, and consider yourself lucky (considering the aforementioned math) if you have a good farrier.

If you made it this far - the image I chose is of my new composite toe boots to protect my injured foot. Fitting, I think.

PS - if this comes across as unsympathetic to owners....I can see why. Owning horses is becoming more and more expensive, prohibitively so for many people. But that isn't due to farrier prices.

PPS - if you think my little Grinch heart has shrunk too small, don't worry. I'm still kissing pony noses and loving our equine friends. Perhaps this is just the beginning of my seasonal depression 🙃 summer is almost here.......🐎

04/24/2026

This was one that needing some definite tucking in a few cycles ago, but he is well on his way back to having level feet :)

04/14/2026

So this past weekend I attended my 4th official whole horse dissection - this one was taught by Becks Nairn and Critter, who was graciously shared with us by Sozo Equine, LLC . Its obviously something a little out of the box for a hoofcare pro to attend, but I greatly enjoy learning about the whole horse and it gives me an opportunity to collaborate and learn from more people (and horses), as everyone who attends these always brings something to the table. Everytime I go, I acquire more knowledge of all the things - not just the feet :)

Competition happens at the bottom, the people at the top are collaborating ;)

Picture of some of the group and me on the ladder was stolen from Celeste-Leilani Lazaris :)

04/12/2026

04/07/2026

The million dollar question - why did a lot of us (ok people that I know anyway) get into hoofcare?

To trim our own horses.

Then we get busy. Body sore. Burnt out to the point of being fried. Tired of people (more so than the horses) demanding head space.

So our horses go on the back burner. Even though they stand better than any client horses we are going to do out in the wild. We have control over their diet (most of us anyway). We have bodywork and maintenance dialed in. They are the perfect, ideal horses we should all aspire to have on our books. And yet - we are burnt out and sore and wiped out.

Even though they are the reason we started on this crazy journey in the first place.

It's time to do some spring cleaning, Marie Kondo style, go up on pricing, and make some time for MY horses. My excellent animals (4 of whom got trimmed this evening) who did not pull on me and half of whom I did at liberty. They deserve to have the space made for them.

*I do have some very wonderful clients and I'm not talking about you or your horses in this TED talk*

04/02/2026

Sometimes you find some treasures in a small book resale shop. Time to get my CE on ;)

03/27/2026

for the win to kick off the end of my work week

03/21/2026

This dude was at a trainer (who likes to do her own farrier work) for about a year and came back to where he was previously with the pre trim feet. He cleaned up pretty well, and just seems to be suffering from lack of farrier disease. Hopefully with a few more trims on a tight cycle he will be back to having pretty little feet.

The top picture is why a good cycle length (4 to 6 weeks) is important. If you wait until the foot look bad for a trim to contact your hoofcare pro, it has been too long. And, if you aren't on a solid schedule, it can be hard for them to just work you in immediately. I have had that come up recently with a potential new client that needed them done "right away". Im very rarely available "right away" for a new client. I can make things happen in an emergency setting for my regular clients, but it can be hard to shuffle for new ones who knew their horses were overdue by several weeks and suddenly needed them done "right away". Unfortunately, in that case, their lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.

So, stay on a good schedule and make things easy for your hoofcare pro :)