“The beginning of the day starts in my shop at about 7:00 am, doing some forge work clipping up shoes and sharpening knives for the day’s work,” says Certified Journeyman Farrier Dean Sinclair of Kelowna, BC. “I have a young man who is apprenticing with me and we are under our first horses at 8:00 am. I have a mixed practice of shoeing show horses, endurance horses, and pleasure horses along with a handful of jumpers. Lunch is generally a sandwich on the run and we wind up the day back at the shop by about 5 pm.

Navicular disease, now referred to as navicular syndrome, chronic heel lameness, or caudal heel syndrome, was first documented in 1752 by farrier Jeremiah Bridges in his famous book No Foot, No Horse (published some 40 years before the opening of the Royal Veterinary College in London, England).

Sophie is a twelve-year-old seven-eighths Hanoverian mare whose main job is dressage. She is also hacked out for an hour or two a couple of times a week. She is fit and robust, but she has recurring bouts of problems with her stifles. Immediately after being shod, she has no issues. But as she gets further along in her shoeing interval her rider notices that her stifles keep catching.