EL PASO COUNTY — It’s mid-morning on a hot July day and Todd Weeda is bent over in the blazing sun, his case of tools resembles a cross between what you might find in an auto shop and a kitchen.
His workspace is not a garage or countertop, but a horse.
Weeda is a farrier, more simply, someone who puts shoes on horses and makes sure the horse’s hooves are healthy.
In recent years, the profession has become a part of common vocabulary as millions watch videos online of farriers cleaning out horse hooves.
“It’s become very mainstream,” Weeda said, “I would say it's got more people noticing what we do.”
Weeda has been a farrier for 25 years,“it's probably one of the oldest professions around, it really hasn't changed a whole lot since the Army days.”
A farrier is necessary for a horses’ hoof health, unlike wild horses, whose hooves experience a natural wear and tear, a domestic horse is in a controlled environment.
For most horses, it’s about 6-8 week schedule a farrier visits them.
For a rodeo, the work a farrier puts in can make a crucial difference for athletes.
“My sport literally comes down to the 100th of a second. So even a 10th of a second, um, could make you completely out of place and money,” Emme Norsworthy, who does barrel racing said, “all the individual things, just maybe it's one small, tiny fix, that a farrier could do, could lead me to increasing in speed by, like, even a tenth of a second or two-tenths of a second."
Norsworthy’s boyfriend, Cole Kadrie is a second generation farrier. He’s been running his own business for five years but grew up around his dad fitting shoes on horses.
Kadrie said as a kid watching his dad do farrier work it was “very boring”, eventually he talked his dad into letting him shoe his horses.
Both Kadrie and Weeda say they’ve noticed more people entering the profession as it gains attention across the world.
They also agree, it’s given people a better understanding of what they do.
“Most people when you said the word farrier, they looked at you kind of cross-eyed. Like what? But nowadays everybody knows what a farrier is,” Weeda said.
Weeda added that there’s one downside as these videos get more attention online, is the “monday morning quarterbacks” judging the work of farriers. Often without knowing the full story of the horses needs, it’s hard to say whether or not a farrier did something correctly or not.
The attention has also attracted more people to the profession, which Kadrie said is a good thing, but the videos aren’t the whole picture of the skill that goes into their work.
“It draws a lot of new people into it, but it's such a hard, physical, hard job that most people aren't going to stick with it, but it is a good thing we need more farriers out here, and. And there's enough horses to go around,” Kadrie said.
Viral videos have also brought people to the Equine Lameness Prevention Organization (ELPO) farrier school in Penrose, about 34 miles southwest of Colorado Springs.
Lameness refers to an abnormal gait in the horse.
Jake Keller, the head instructor at the school, said the videos are important in getting new people interested in the profession.
“To introduce the world to it, you kind of show them the aesthetic, show them the blacksmithing, and, you know, getting that kind of cool rhythm sounds, the ASMR stuff that like that kind of gets people educated,” Keller said.
He said he’s even had students come to the school simply because they’ve seen these videos online.
“I was kind of more accustomed to that because we get, like, in clinics and stuff. We get a lot of owner interest. So like, I've been around that, people trying it for the first time,” Keller said.
Despite a lack of experience with horses, it doesn’t play a role in their ability to do the job.
“There is no telling who will make it in this industry, there's no pedigree,” Keller said, “what I have experienced is you start presenting the information to people, and they will either catch the bug or it becomes something they just like to watch.
Much like Kadrie and Weeda, Keller said there’s more than meets the eye, the job is both physically and technically demanding.
“Farriers are called for emergencies as much as vets are, you know,” Keller said, “most farriers I know work 300 plus days a year, it's that much in demand.”
It’s both a science and an art, Keller makes sure his students have an in-depth understanding of gait and anatomy.
“One of the things the videos don't capture, is the absolute changes in the horse's comfort for the day, because once you kind of set the posture and the confirmation of the animal with the trim, they're kind of stuck there for a while, especially if you had a shoe,” Keller said.
As the profession gets more popular, he sees it as helping the next generation of farriers.
“My hope is it holds higher standards across the board and then the horse benefits like that's the end of the game, that's what we want,” Keller said.
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