Messy Middle

Being a farrier is no easy feat. Learning to start, run, and maintain a business, managing customers, horses and a schedule. It’s a lot to juggle. Add onto that learning a new skill set that seems ever evolve and shift, and doing so on a living animal.

I started out in 2004 and we didn’t have social media. We barely had cell phones that took grainy photos. Texting and social media wasn’t a thing yet. In today’s world, everyone has a phone, can take nice photos, nearly everyone texts instead of calls, and most people have some sort of social media the frequent.

I don’t know if I can blame social media entirely for this but I have become aware of more and more people that struggle with this trade. Partly, I think that social media gives the appearance that everything can be beautiful and perfect ‘out there’ and when it doesn’t feel and look that way ‘in here’, that we are alone and not good enough. More and more I hear of young/new trimmers/farriers afraid to take on their own clients for fear of doing it wrong and/or hurting a horse with their trim. Those people often quit before they even get going. I have coached people that also are working through the concerns of trying something different with their trim for fear of hurting the horse. I completely understand this.

It is certainly tough and no one wants to make a horse sore, no one. The reality is, there will be times we can’t account for the 16,000 variables in any given day that influences a horse and get it right with the trim 100% of the time. This trade has taught me that perfectionism is a lesson in frustration. We have to make a trim decision with the best and most information we have available and we have try to find more than one thing that supports our reasoning for trying a different approach.

There are a lot of before and after photos that take horrendous looking feet to something that is way more functional and appealing to the eye. While I am all for documenting, there can be this illusion that before and after always works like this, it isn’t reality. When we don’t have the full story, which is not always possible with social media, we forget that much happens behind the screen. The attention to details, the time, the small adjustments to trim; that’s “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say.

More often than not, it is the long haul. It’s a period that I call the messy middle that makes us question our life choices and whether we are any good at this trade. We need to have a little grace with ourselves that the path to functional hooves is not always linear or easy, which may or may not be a reflection of your work. That life happens, seasons change, feed changes, an injury occurs, a new rider comes on board, whatever have you, impacts how those hooves grow and in turn will impact the choices you need to make to continue to support those feet as they are or to help them improve.

Embracing those small wins, the little changes, the new appreciation for a subtle shift that was hard-won, is part of what this job is all about. Instant gratification can happen when a lame horse walks off sound after your work, it helps keep us going when the others take longer to come around. It is no less gratifying when after two years of ups and downs and adjustments to trim, and that horse finally has the foot you knew it could have. Progress over perfection. It’s acknowledging those small wins, trying the trim a little bit different, and keep on going when it gets tough.

Anyone that says they have never lamed a horse hasn’t worked at this job long enough or been under enough horses. Which is tough to hear. I certainly thought I would be better than those that came before me when I started out. That I could be more diligent and horses would never get sore as a result of my choices for a trim and/or shoe. Horses certainly taught me that particular “high horse” was going to be a humbling one and that I had a lot to learn if only I would trust the learning process and keep trying.

The ‘before’ and ‘afters’ on social media can give a false sense of ease and a high horse to sit upon. That messy middle is where true grit and determination keep us progressing and a humble student of the horse. It is the part we need to hear the rest of the story, the part we have nothing to be ashamed of, the part that has us digging deep and trying again, the part that no one wants to talk about because it’s hard. But that’s also life. It’s hard. It’s messy. And everything is perfect in its own way. I am here for the messy middle and all it has to teach me.

A foot in the messy middle of rehabbing.