… I’m sorry, the “quality” of their manure?? Oh boy I’m glad you slept on it!
I had a good farrier for years who was doing it FT and volunteering as a FF PT, and when he got a FT FF job he flipped those and cut customers - I was one of the customers, being an hour or so away from his home base, nothing negative. I found a farrier who has all sorts of accomplishments and posts on SM about going to and winning various shoeing competitions and clinics, etc, had a “journeysman” or something from some national farrier assoc, but after about a year I noticed one of my horses was constantly (constantly) tripping under saddle. I have the vet out thinking it was a lameness issue, she doesn’t like the shoe job and in a round about way tells me that this farrier not only tends to do this sort of shoeing job that leaves toes too long in general, but also he does not like working with her as a vet and her other clients have had issues when their horse needs a recommended change based on rads and he learns the rads were taken by her. I get rads and show him, I ask for shorter toes and deal with the macho posturing for a bit. Then my pony trips at the canter and somersaults in the arena and I got a concussion. Then the then-yearling starts tripping while leading her around and probably out in the paddock too. THEN my old man with arthritis starts stubbing his toe often enough that he is wearing it away and it’s actually visible. Each time I point these out, he grumbles and does it but goes right back to the old way at the next appointment.
I tell him I’m trying a new farrier who is married to a friend and just graduating from farrier school (both actually true) to get him going in his new career, absolutely no comment on current farrier’s work at all. He grumbles and then tells me “good luck with that” and “it takes five years to get proficient” and throws his shit in his truck and leaves while giving me this disgruntled/dismissive/condescending sort of glare while going through the gate. Uhhh yikes?
New farrier is new. Some tweaks are needed but he listens to the vet and he’s tolerant of my baby horse who is learning manners and Rory, who was always an ass about the farrier and generally needs drugs. Too tolerant apparently, he got wrecked by another client’s horse that landed him in the hospital in Sept and required several surgeries and he’s just now off a walker as of January. I had to switch to another guy and omg he’s chatty BUT holy shit he does a good job. I mean a GOOD JOB.
So just keep it up, sometimes you have to kiss a lot of farriers. I mean frogs.