Getting work doesn't seem to be a problem for farriers here. But some people just won't work with their horses, and they expect a farrier to show up, catch them and work on them without their help.
I've never expected my farrier to catch my horse and work on it without me holding it. I want to hear their feedback on what if anything might be going on with their feet and I want my horses to be easy to work with. That's my responsibility to put the time in to train them to be that way.
Now, I do put the time into Syringa, but she's not a store bought horse and came with her own issues. I can pick up her feet all day long and pull them forward and backward and tap them and any other weird thing that could happen when my farrier is working on them. But she trusts me. It's a different deal for her having a stranger walk up and pick up a foot. That's her escape mechanism and she just took a long time to give that fear of being trapped up.
I still say it's not a farriers job to train a horse. It's a dangerous enough occupation without having to put up with somebody's spoiled pet.
