Mullins Farrier Podcast

Welcome everyone. Today. I'm speaking with Douglas Hogue, CJF, EE. Doug currently runs his business out of a county, close to Houston, Texas.

We cover a wide range of topics and Doug shared his straightforward and honest opinion on all of them. As you will hear, Doug, isn't afraid to be controversial, which seems to be part of his charm.

One of the topics we covered was being fired by clients and I had the unfortunate luck to have that happen to me this very week. As you will hear me say in the conversation, it doesn't seem to matter how far into our careers we get being fired, still stings for most of us. My friend and former podcast guest, Kathy Lesperance and I have had this conversation as well. She has about two decades on me in this trade and she says, in the particular situation from this week, it still hurts.

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

Welcome everyone. As this is being released, we are just past the middle of July. For many of us in the Northern hemisphere, we will be amid our busiest season. Horse shows are in full swing and those clients that tried to get by riding their horses over the roughest rockiest most abrasive terrain barefoot now want shoes yesterday. There aren't enough hours in the day to get everything all done and those of us with partners and children who have normal civilian jobs are now feeling the added pressure to take advantage of the weather and take holidays with them. It's a lot of pulls and several different and opposing directions.

The people pleasers amongst us are never seemingly able to please anyone at this point in the year amongst all of this. Take a step back and reflect on what this is all for. What are your priorities? If you have financial goals and they're at the top of your list, those goals may be the driver that keeps you going but don't sacrifice your health to get there.

Future goals aren't easy to enjoy when you're living in a state of poor health. If your family, your significant other, or your hobbies outside of shoeing are your priority, learn to get good at saying no to unrealistic requests from clients. Sometimes that shoe can wait another day to get fixed. I've been that person who tried to please everyone and failed miserably. I've come to believe that there is no such thing as work life balance. It's not a noun. It's a verb. It's a process. One that constantly needs addressing and reworking. Figure out what your priorities are, what you're doing all of this for and let those answers guide you in the process. I believe we all need reasons to push us forward and without them it's easy to become lost adrift and a sea of never-ending lists of horses to do and barely able to keep our heads above the water.

They say that what you focus on you'll achieve, but I believe if you're not focused on anything, treading water is all you've got. I guess, with all of this, what I'm really trying to say is take care of yourselves and each other out there. It's just that time of year and it too will eventually pass.

Today's guest is Dusty Franklin, C JF, ASF, AWCF. If anybody had the honour to hear Dusty's talk at this year's convention, they will know that he is quite the inspirational guy. It will be no surprise after hearing Dusty's story today that many of the students that graduate from the various programs at his school in Oklahoma, Five Star Horseshoeing School go on to be such successful farriers in their own right. Leading by example, Dusty is always pushing himself to learn more and to achieve more in this trade and he, along with his network of like-minded individuals, instill those same principles in the students that come through the school. Anyway, I am so glad that we were able to have this conversation.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Welcome everyone, a little shopkeeping before we start. If you haven't already, you should pick up Chris Gregory's new book For The Want of a Nail The Shoe Was Lost. It's a fun read and introduces you to several legends of our trade, including my guest today. Look for it on Amazon, or you can order it directly from Chris at www.heartlandhorseshoeing.com.

Also, I'm excited to announce that I'll be travelling to the UK this fall for Farrier Focus, the kind folks at the British Farriers and Blacksmith's Association invited me to come and interview some of the key speakers and clinicians. I'm looking forward to joining forces with my fellow podcaster and friend Daniel Bennett, to give you some insight into the convention, the international team, horseshoeing competition, and all the farrier folks who will be attending.

To check out the details online of the convention, go to www.forgeandfarrier.co.uk and hopefully, I'll see you there.

Today. I'm speaking with Derek Gardner AWCF. This man has been a legend to me since I started shoeing. Many of the folks I looked up to often talked about Derek and his mastery in the forge. Many of my former guests have also spoken fondly of their time under his tutelage, including Andrew DeVisser, Sarah Vanderpol and of course, Chris Gregory. We had a great chat covering everything from Derek's experience during the foot and mouth disease crisis in the UK many years ago, and his journey to the wild west as a young lad to experience ranching firsthand as well as many insights he has had while working on horses' feet.

It was truly an honour to speak with him and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Welcome everyone. A little shopkeeping before we start, I am excited to announce that Chris Gregory's new book "For The Want Of A Nail, The Shoe Was Lost" is now available for purchase. This book is a memoir focusing on the many influential mentors who helped Chris along in his incredible career. There is a series of questions to his still-living mentors and the responses to those as well. Signed copies are available through Chris personally and unsigned copies are available through Amazon.

Today, I'm speaking with Olivier Dufresne CJF. Olivier hails from my neighbouring province in Canada, Quebec. In Quebec, they primarily speak French, the other official language of Canada.

Although I and all Canadian students learn this language in our schooling, my French has become a bit rusty, to say the least. Quebec has a very strong association called the AMFQ, which is strong in no small part because of Olivier. He was the president of this association for several years. Quebec has many clinics, contests and certifications. You will typically find Olivier in the background doing something to make the event better or run more smoothly. Oli is always about education and I knew I had to have him on here to share his story. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Welcome everyone! A little shopkeeping before we start, don't forget to get your tickets for this Saturday's upcoming webinar, Saturday, June 11th with Dr. Simon Curtis and Sarah Logie and it will be on Hoof Horn Infection. With your tickets, you will get access to the interactive webinar, a full recording of the webinar, afterwards, your questions answered in an open Q and a, a certificate of attendance or CPD or CE points and PDFs of studies, papers, and key takeaways.

Also, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Schomberg, Ontario on June 17th from 1 pm to 5 PM - Foot for Thought is hosting a clinic called "Casting Call - Foot Cast Applications for Case Management of Surgical Medical and Podiatry Issues.

The speakers in this one are Dr. Orlaith Cleary, Chris Gerber, Tristan Miles and Elisa Miller. This will be a good one, we haven't been able to have a Foot for Thought event in quite a while. So it will be nice to see everybody there. RSVP to [email protected] to attend.

Today I am speaking with my good friend, Daniel Bennett, AWCF. After hearing a couple of episodes where guests and I were discussing the AW exam, Danny reached out and suggested that we might have a few of our concepts a little misconstrued on what is involved in the exam and he wanted to clear that up.

As you will hear, Daniel is coming at this from a very interesting vantage point and his information is current and very helpful. This whole episode was basically Danny's idea and is in the format that you would typically find on his podcast, the Lockdown Farrier Podcast. If you haven't already, you should definitely check it out and subscribe. You will learn a ton. It is very focused on education and Danny has had many guests who are at the forefront of research in our trade.

I am very thankful that Danny took some time out of his fishing vacation on a Sunday afternoon to discuss all things AW, if you are in the midst of preparing for and attempting this exam, I'm sure you will find a lot of the information here very helpful, and it will help dispel a lot of myths. You've probably heard over the years about what is involved. It could even save you from practicing for the wrong things or surprises on exam day. Now, if you're just at the beginning of your certification journey and the AW seems like a daunting far-off goal, please don't disregard this particular episode.

Ever the educator, Danny shares a lot of information about preparing for any exam. There is also a video version of this episode where you can see Daniel's presentation as well. You can find it HERE

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I've run into him down in the Heartland a couple of times now and his story is quite inspiring. With his seemingly late start in this career, Mike has managed to acquire his CJSF and ASF certifications in a fairly short span of time and as you will hear his aspirations don't end there. Eternally curious, externally calm and ever cracking jokes it is always a pleasure to forge beside this man. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

Welcome everyone, a few shopkeeping items before we start.

Mark your calendars for the 19th and 20th of August, there will be a Sean Robertson benefit clinic at Cascadia equine veterinary clinic in tangent, Oregon. The clinicians will be Riley Kirkpatrick, Jacob Manning, and Chris Wycliffe, DVM Sean, AKA Shrek Robertson was a second-generation farrier who had shot all of his life and was a mentor to many. He was known for his large stature and his kindness. Sean tragically lost his life due to an auto accident back in December. and the proceeds from this clinic will go to support his wife, Wendy, to help with the expenses from the accident and her, as he was their only source of income. For any inquiries about the event or ways that you can help out please contact Quentin Gravelle at 541-749-0861 or [email protected].

If next weekend, May the 13th and 14th, you find yourself in the neighbourhood of Puslinch, Ontario the Ontario Farriers Association is hosting Jan Krogh for a clinic. The title of the clinic is Therapeutic Shoeing for Sport Horses. Jan is a master farrier from Denmark and amongst his impressive list of items on his resume, is the national team farrier. If you want to learn more about Yan and his story, you can listen to his interview with Simon Curtis on the Hoof of the Horse podcast. Visit Ontario farriers.ca for more information.

With today being "Mother's Day" boxing day, we decided to celebrate by having a conversation with a mother we don't often hear from.

Kelly Gregory CF has helped numerous students build the foundational skills necessary to become successful farriers in this trade. Her influence has been great in our world, but she likes to work quietly in the background, so much so that even getting a photo for this episode was a challenge. Just imagine how hard it was to convince her to sit down and do the interview!

She has done some cool things, including being a competitor on Forged in Fire. I completely gapped and forgot to ask her about that whole experience during the interview so my apologies to everyone for failing in my journalistic duties. She had some great stories to share nonetheless, and despite the struggles to get her there, we had a fun time.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Welcome everyone, today I'm speaking with Liz Longworth, CF. I first met Liz a few years ago in the Heartland during a blacksmithing course. What became apparent quite early on in meeting her was the fact that she is probably one of the highest energy people I have ever met. Like an Energizer bunny, she just keeps going and going. The pile of shoes under her forge during that course was the largest out of anybody there and I just knew I had to find out what made this woman tick. As you will hear, that course was the catalyst for Liz's decision to pursue her certifications with the AFA. Now that she has that certification bug, I imagine she will be pursuing those until the furthest reaches that one can. We also briefly touch on her furry friend at home Teddy Bear Longworth who, unfortunately, since recording this episode, has passed on. However, Liz was quite happy that he got included in this episode. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Welcome, everyone! As you probably noticed from the intro some things are going to be a little askew in today's episode.

Before we start a few shopkeeping items. First, my fellow podcaster and the infamous farrier educator Dr. Simon Curtis has been putting on some great webinars over the past few years. I have found them to be very informative and their content applicable to my day-to-day shoeing. For a limited time, Simon is offering a discount to listeners of this podcast. If you enter MULLINS all caps as the discount code at checkout, you'll get 20% off the ticket price for the next webinar.

I have found that even if I couldn't make the time for the actual webinars, my tickets entitled me to videos of them later that I could watch at my leisure. Dr. Simon's next webinar is a live dissection with Mitch Taylor and will take place on the 23rd. You can find the link to purchase tickets to this event on Simon's website at https://www.drsimoncurtis.com/calendar

Also, some exciting news, former guest Heather Beauchemin has written a fantastic book for horse owners. It's titled The Hoof Book, a horse owner's guide to demystifying hoof care. It debuted at number one in new releases in the equestrian sports category on Amazon.

This book could be your best way to quell those questions you get from those clients who like to go online and look up a thing or two about how to shoe horses. I believe that properly informed clients can make some of the best clients. So if you're thinking of getting multiple copies to give to clients, reach out to Heather online, and she can offer you a volume discount on orders over 10 books, you can find Heather Beauchemin's book on the Amazon app or online at www. amazon.com.

Now for today's episode, many of my guests have said that they weren't sure why I had asked them, of all people, to do an interview. Today's guest is no exception. When Chris Gregory suggested an episode where he interviewed me, I was hesitant at first. After I said, yes, Chris made sure to make me nervous about the event. Every time we spoke, he also reached out on social media, asking if people had questions for this interview. Some, I had the opportunity to see in the responses to one of his posts, but most of the others, including his own questions, I did not.

A few months later, we were able to sit down in the Heartland, in the room where it all started with Chris being my very first guest. As you will hear, Chris is a natural interrogator, I mean, interviewer and we had a lot of fun.

Keep an ear out for Chris's latest project as he is starting his own podcast called Final Approach with Chris Gregory. While he plans on interviewing some farriers, Chris's focus will be on professionals from all walks of life. Anyway, here it goes. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Lance was from Alberta, Canada, and he was the onsite farrier for the legendary Spruce Meadows Horse Show.

I had the opportunity and the honour to be able to sit down and have a conversation with Lance back at the Hoof Summit in 2019. We are re-releasing that episode in honour of Lance today. I'm sure the kindness of this man will shine through in the recording. There isn't a single person I have met, that has met him, that doesn't have a story of something kind or helpful that he did for them. He was truly one of the good ones.

Our thoughts and sympathies go out to his family. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.