04 May 2015
Farrier Licensing- Personal Preface
In the near future the American Farriers Journal is going
to broach the subject of farrier licensing again. Not the subject has ever gone
away but it is once again coming to prominence.
Over the next few posts I intend to say what I perceive isn't going to
be said in any of their articles concerning the subject, but you need to know
where I am coming from so In this brief post
I am laying out my personal experiences with licensing, or as much as I can
recall.
For those who don’t know, I am licensed by the
California Horse Racing Board (CHRB), I am also licensed by Oklahoma Horse
Racing Commission (OHRC). I have been licensed in California since 1993 I think
and got a track license when I moved to Oklahoma as well. The test I took in
California required me to answer a series of general farrier knowledge questions
and to plate a horse before a state steward, the local horseshoe inspector, and
two trainers. In Oklahoma I was asked a series
of questions (by the chief track steward) as to whether or not I had shod
horses in any other racing jurisdictions and if I had any work at Remington
(the track where I applied). The test in California has changed since I have
taken it and I was involved to a finite point in that change, but the experience
I got from that gave me a view of how government actually worked.
At some point shortly after I passed my track test,
the CHRB’s medication committee heard testimony from a disgruntled horse owner
concerning shoeing. As I recall her horse was at either Golden Gate Field or
the now shuttered Bay Meadows Race Course. Her complaint was that the horse wasn't properly shod according to her home farrier and that something needed to
be done to improve the level hoof care at CHRB controlled facilities. The
action took three meetings and was finalized in 1994 the result is a test that
requires forging elements as well as the plating of a horse. This doesn't mean
that the CHRB took a significant interest in the shoeing of a horse or gaining
enough coarse knowledge about the subject to make certain the test was being
proctored properly.
As to the rest of my personal experience with the
topic, I am a bit jaded and yet a bit sympathetic. In 2005 The American
Farriers Association tried to look in to the subject but was met with a level
of hostility from the preponderance of the trade that eventually in 2006 their
Board of Directors, made up of Chapter Presidents (which was a member as
President of the Western States Farriers Association {WSFA}) pushed the
question off the table. In 2013 as
President of the AFA I was privileged to visit England at the invitation of the
then British Farrier & Blacksmiths Association (BFBA) President Gary Burton
and I got to see the effect of controlled education and testing for licensing
and I was astonished at the level of skill and knowledge that the British system produced. That is not to say that its perfect, but it was certainly
impressive to talk to people who were in their 20’s about things that I wasn't required to know when I started shoeing horses.
Labels: Farrier Licensing, Licensing
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