Mullins Farrier Podcast

Welcome, everyone. Well, at this point, the fires have all cooled and the winners have gone home with their medals from the World Championships at Spruce Meadows Masters Tournament in Calgary, Alberta. Today's interview was recorded back at the beginning of the year at the Hoof Care Summit in Cincinnati, Ohio, and you will hear Jack say that competing at the World Championships blacksmith competition was on his bucket list. I'm happy to report that he did make the list. As I'm recording this before heading out there, and before the competition, I apologize, but I can't tell you how he did.

Speaking of international farrier competitions, do you have your flights booked yet for the International at Stoneleigh in England? It's coming up quickly and you might as well attend the focus convention while you're there. Visit www.forgeandfarrier.co.uk for more details.

Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Spencer and his team at Outwest Design and Fabrication, where they build farrier bodies, custom interiors, vet boxes and just about anything else you can come up with. I have seen many of their finished products and spoken to many of their happy clients. So happy in fact that it inspired me to use them for my next project. Check them out on Facebook at Outwest Design and Fabrication.

As you listen to today's guest, you may think that you accidentally changed your podcast app's speed to double time but that's just the speed that Jack Ketel's mind works. I had only known this man by reputation for the many years that he had been on the Canadian team and it was a true pleasure to finally get to meet him in person and have this conversation. As you will quickly come to realize, dust does not settle on this man and he has a very unique ability to always make life an adventure. I found him quite inspiring, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Outwest Design and Fabrication https://outwest.ca/

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I ran into today's guests at the Hoof Care Summit in Cincinnati, Ohio, where whenever possible they have attended every year as they find continuing education extremely important in their practice. I had first met Connor at this very convention many years before where he introduced me to his father Lance. Those of you who are avid listeners of the podcast will be familiar with Lance's episode from several years back. Unfortunately, we lost Lance just over a year ago, very suddenly and as you will hear, Connor was left with a very large and successful business that he had helped his father to build up over the years. Connor's wife, Ashley joined in to help and now they are a husband and wife team carrying the torch of EquiTerra Ferrier services. For some context, you will hear me mention a horse park and the horse park we're talking about is the infamous Spruce Meadows in Calgary, Alberta, where Connor and his father Lance, had been the horse show farriers for many years.

While Connor and Ashley have decided to focus their efforts more on their private practice and are no longer working for the horse show, you will hear how their unique experience of working there for so many years has really shaped their practice. They have seen some of the best jumper shoeing from all over the world and sometimes not the best, and they got to see that shoeing in practice at one of the most prestigious horse shows in the world.

As with many of the incredible guests I've been fortunate enough to have on the podcast, Ashley Connor and I have become quite good friends. I always look forward to running into them at the various farrier events that bring us from across the country to the same locale. They are incredibly kind, thoughtful, and always yearning for more knowledge.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Simon Curtis Grip and Purchase webinar Promo Code MULLINS

FBA Focus 2023

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Welcome everyone. I've got a few items in the shopkeeping portion for you here. First of all, the BFBA Focus 2023 tickets are now available for sale.

There are live demonstrations as well as a very large trade show. Go to forgeandfarrier.co.uk For more details, just click on the BFBA Focus 2023 link. I hope to see you there.

The folks at the Canadian Equine Hoof Care Association wanted me to let you know that they have an event going on September 30th to October 2nd called The Evolution in Whole Horse Soundness. This is a conference for all hoof care professionals, equine industry professionals, students and owners. On October 2nd there's a bonus wet lab for members only. For more information, go to canadianequinehoofcare.com/conference

The end of September is a busy time. There is also the Ontario Farriers Association's Convention, September 28th to the 30th. Riley Kirkpatrick is the keynote speaker and the judge for the contest.

As I'm sure you saw on our social media feeds, we had an auction last week. Today's guest farrier and toolmaker extraordinaire, Tyler Joos donated one of his handmade hammers for us to raise money for the podcast. Thank you to everybody who bid on the hammer. A special thank you goes out to Payden Underwood who had the highest bid.

My good friend Andrew DeVisser, who you know from several episodes on this podcast, gave me a call and he said, you need to talk to Tyler Joos. As you'll hear in the interview. Tyler reached out to Andrew for some business advice. They have corresponded many times since, and Andrew hasn't led me astray yet. So I put Tyler on the hit list and low and behold, Tyler reached out to me. I wasn't aware, but he's an avid listener of the podcast and he wanted to support the podcast in his own unique way, hence the auction for the hammer.

Now, Tyler is one of those people where anytime his name comes up, everyone has nothing but nice things to say about him. Salt of the earth is actually a term I've heard used to describe him several times. At one point in the interview, you're going to hear Tyler talk about a time where a customer wasn't happy with one of his hammers. So Tyler made a new one and sent it off to him, and he mentioned that gentleman by name, Connor Sloman. At the end of the interview, he was actually concerned Connor might not want that story told, but I reached out to Connor and asked him if he would be okay with it, and as I already suspected, he was.

Tyler and I had a great candid chat. I. And I think there are a lot of great takeaways from it. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

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Welcome everyone, I was introduced to today's guest last year at the AFA convention. Hailey was wrapping up a project that she had done to complete her doctorate in occupational therapy and her research project had some very specific relevance to what we do. A few months later we were able to finally sit down and chat about the details of this research project. In our conversation, Hailey reveals a lot of details about things that we could do to improve the longevity of our careers, just our overall physical health. She offers quite a few takeaways and I hope you find them useful. As you will hear, Hailey is pretty passionate about farriers and helping us to improve our work lives.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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Welcome everyone. Today's guest, Mike Nale CJF, was one of the really cool folks I got to hang out with in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Every time I've crossed paths with Mike, I've been impressed with his wisdom and his willingness to share it. Mike is the type of fellow you can get into a deep conversation with whether it's about the definition of a club foot or the much-underappreciated television series Justified. Mike will have his opinions and some well thought out arguments to back them up but as you'll hear in the interview, he's also willing to change his mind if new evidence is compelling enough to do so. I guarantee you that by the end of this interview, you'll probably want to spend some time with this gentleman. I know I'm looking forward to the next time we get to hang out. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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Welcome everyone. I hope you're all doing well this busy time of the year. I have a lot to cover today in the shopkeeping portion, but the interview is actually quite short, so I feel like the two will even out in the end. As I said just a few seconds ago, it is a busy time of the year for us and as we grind it out and do as many horses as our clients put upon us, sometimes it's hard to remember why we're doing the job we do in the first place. It's easy to get lost in the never ending sea of horses and suddenly this very cool career that we have starts to feel more like a job. As you've heard me and several of my guests say over the years, two of the very good remedies for this problem are competition and certification. But sometimes you need to take a break from horses and horseshoeing altogether, and that's what I have attempted to do this summer by taking up mountain biking.

For years, I have told myself that I didn't have time for a hobby, so I didn't make time. But this summer I've started to, and the results have been pretty cool. I've even been able to go for a ride with Kathy Lesperance who, as you know, is a former guest on the podcast. During one of our many discussions on that ride, we both commented on how much better we felt horse horseshoeing because of the physical activity we were doing in our off time.

Many of the other guests have also shared their off-duty pastimes, like Kenny Hoyle with his dirt biking, Riley Kirkpatrick with his hunting, and of course, Danny Bennett with his mountain biking, although I'm pretty sure he prefers to take a lift to the top of the big hills. So I was thinking in an effort to show your fellow farriers that it's okay to not shoe horses 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to have a pastime after work, that we would do a little social media exercise.

Post a picture of yourself doing your favorite after work pastime, and post it to your social media and tag the Mullens Farrier podcast in your post, along with the hashtag off-duty farrier. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with.

For the next item, I'd like to thank the following folks for supporting the podcast by buying us a virtual coffee, Alexander Werner and Kendall Black, thank you so much for your support.

If you'd like to support the podcast by buying some swag, this is the time to do it until July 4th. You can receive 15% off everything with a $79 purchase. In both the Canadian and the American stores, use the Code Canada 15 to get the discount or you can always buy the podcast a coffee. Please see the links in the show notes.

The folks at the Ontario Farriers Association wanted me to let you know that their convention is from September 28th to 30th, 2023. Riley Kirkpatrick is coming down and he's the keynote speaker and the judge for the contest. Keep an eye out on their Facebook page or go to www.ontariofarriers.ca to get more details on this event.

Exactly one month after that convention I'm heading across the pond to watch the International Horseshoeing Competition at Stoneleigh and hang out with the cool folks at the British Farriers and Blacksmiths Association for their Focus convention. You too can come and I highly recommend that you do. As always, the International will host the best teams the world has to offer, and there's a pretty stellar list of keynote speakers for Focus as well. Look at all the details online at www.forgeandfarrier.co.uk.

Now for today's guest, Alex was another member of Vern Powell's crew of clinicians for the Puerto Vallarta clinic last December, like me, this was Alex's first trip down to Puerto Vallarta, and she fit in perfectly with the group. So well, I think she stole the heart of one of the veteran clinicians. I would refer you to her Facebook page for more of an explanation. As in any situation when a group of farriers spend too much time together, there becomes a plethora of inside jokes and farriers being farriers. Some of them can be inappropriate or dark.

One of those jokes found its way into this interview, and I couldn't let it be omitted. You'll hear Alex mention an embalming table that she purchased from a scrap yard, and the joke was that that embalming table had come from the local funeral home where Alex's late grandmother may have spent some time on it. For the rest of the trip, it was always brought up as Memaw's table. Well, folks buckle up as I'm sure you can already tell you're in for a wild ride. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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Welcome everyone! A little shopkeeping before we start.

What are you doing at the end of October this year?I highly recommend that you attend the International Horseshoeing Competition and the British and Blacksmith's Associations Focus Convention at Stonleigh Park. As I am sure you've heard me brag about before I attended this event last year and had a fantastic time.

What more could a farrier want in an event? You have the world's best competing as teams. You have the convention full of world-class speakers and every vendor represented that you could think of, as well as live shoeing demos by some of the best in the world. I realize that October seems quite a ways off right now, but plan ahead. Get yourself a ticket and hopefully, I'll see you over there. For more information, go to www.forgeandfarrier.co.uk

I'm also excited to announce the release of Chris Gregory's second installment in his series of memoirs titled For the Want of a Shoe, the Horse was Lost. This book covers his time growing up as a child on his family's ranch in New Mexico and his time voluntarily spent at military school. That's right. He wasn't sent there. He asked to go. Anyway, as with his previous book, this one is full of anecdotal stories and humorous misadventures that all accumulate into the legendary man that we all know today. The book is available on Amazon or through the school's website.

As well, if you'd like to hear some more from Chris. He started his own podcast and the first two episodes are out now. Have a listen. It's called Final Approach with Chris Gregory, and it's available where all fine podcasts can be found.

There have been a lot of listeners who kind of poke fun at the way that I talk. My Canadian accent is apparently more prevalent than I think but today's guest is going to top that. His Canadianness is next level, and I imagine that he'd be pretty proud to hear that. I met Brad down in Puerto Vallarta with the rest of Vern Powell's crew, and we got to know each other quite well during that trip. As a podcast first, this interview was recorded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean while we were on a deep sea fishing excursion. Brad is humorous, humble, and handy, all attributes of many of the greats of our trade. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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Welcome everyone. I've changed the format of the episode a little bit this time for you. This will be a sort of an audio documentary of my trip down to Puerto Vallarta Mexico in December of 2022 with Vern Powell and friends for a clinic that they host down there. The music you hear in the background is from a really cool cat that we met on a catamaran tour.

Vern was kind enough to invite the Mrs and me down to Puerto Vallarta with his crew to interview many of the folks giving the clinic as well as many of the folks who attend the La Clinica de Herraje Puerto Vallarta 2022 every year. Enjoy!

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Welcome everyone! Odds are that if you've taken an AFA certification exam in the past several years, somewhere within the Midwestern US, you've probably run into this gentleman. I met Ward McGuire at both of my exams and several others that I've attended, and he is everything you would want in an AFA tester - fair, really good at putting you at ease and letting you know that he's there to help you, not fail you. As someone who has recently retired, Ward has a unique view on what we should be doing earlier on in our careers to set ourselves up for this eventuality. It's always a pleasure to run into this gentleman. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

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Welcome everyone! A little shopkeeping before we start. Well, spring is here and already a few of my local farrier friends have been injured. Seems to be a thing every year, and it just reminds me to remind the folks that are listening from Great Britain that you have a foundation that is set up just for this purpose, a built-in insurance policy created by your fellow farriers. The Farriers Foundation steps in and offers financial aid for those times when you're too injured to work and helps cover your expenses while you heal. The Spring is a busy time for farriers worldwide, and it is a great time when you're flush with cash to put a little aside to help out your fellow farriers in need.

Back home as usual, several farriers stepped up for the folks that were injured here and did the horses so that they could keep them on their books and keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. I must say it's an honour to be part of such a good group of folks in my community here.

Now for today's guest, as you'll hear in the conversation I first met Kenny Hoyle at Heartland Horseshoeing School, and I didn't realize it at the time, but he was just beginning his certification journey. As you will hear, it's never too late to start that. Kenny is one of the kindest human beings you'll ever come across, and as you will hear, he has put a lot back into the industry as a tester and as a board member of the AFA.

It is always great to cross paths with this gentleman as I did in Arkansas at Convention. I was very fortunate to be able to pin him down this time and do an interview. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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