Hot Shoeing
Hot shoeing refers to the practice of heating a horseshoe red hot in a forge, then shaping it on an anvil, then holding it against the horse's hoof while it is still hot. This process may be repeated until the shoe is deemed to be properly shaped and ready to nail on, at which time it is usually held against the hoof for a longer period of time and "burned in." The shoe is then dunked into water and cooled before being nailed on.
In the past, before commercially made horseshoes were available, a blacksmith made each shoe from plain bar stock metal. That means that he had to take a length of straight metal, form it into the shape of a horseshoe, and punch nail holes in it. Since metal is so hard to shape, blacksmiths heat the metal to make it pliable and easier to shape, so in the process of making the horseshoe, the metal would be heated. Fitting the shoe to the horse required that the fit be checked as the shoe was being shaped, and since cooling the shoe and then having to reheat it after each test fit would have been too time consuming and inconvenient, the hot shoe was taken over to the horse and the fit was checked by holding the hot shoe against the hoof. So hot fitting developed as a result of the necessity of heating bar stock metal in order to be able to form it into a horseshoe shape and punch the nail holes.
But then along came commercially made horseshoes, available in a wide range of shapes and sizes, so that it was no longer necessary to make shoes from scratch out of bar stock metal. But the process of hot fitting had become a tradition, and over the years the simple reason of hot fitting just to make the metal easier to shape had been more or less forgotten, and all sorts of myths had grown up around hot fitting. Traditional farriery is all about tradition, and so even after hot fitting was no longer necessary, it continued.
Are there advantages to hot fitting? For the farrier, yes. Even though horseshoes come in a wide range of sizes, farriers basically shoe the hoof wall, which means that each shoe must be shaped to some extent in order to fit the hoof wall. That means that some anvil work will be necessary. If you imagine yourself standing out in 20-degree weather trying to shape cold metal on an anvil, you'll understand that it wouldn't be easy...and even if you did pound away until you got the shoe to fit, chances are that all the pounding would have made the shoe surface uneven and wavy. But if you heated that shoe, it would be a lot easier to shape and wouldn't be so distorted by all the pounding. Another advantage to hot fitting is that when you fit the shoe, you want the nail holes to line up with the lamina, or white line, because that's where the nails should enter the hoof. When you burn the shoe in, the nail holes won't burn, which means that you'll be able to see exactly on the burned hoof where the nail holes will line up...you won't just have to try to guess by estimating underneath the shoe where you can't see. There's another advantage if you're putting on shoes with clips: The hot clips will burn a channel in the outer hoof wall where they will fit, which avoids the necessity of the farrier manually doing that with a knife. Another advantage for farriers is that they claim hot fitting reduces the chance of what's called sole pressure. (Please see the article on Sole Pressure for an explanation of this.)
But are there advantages for the horse? No. Some farriers claim that hot fitting gives the shoe a better fit against the ground surface of the hoof. But, despite what many believe, shoe fit is not that critical. After everything's nailed up, a few imperfections here and there won't matter. If you look at the big picture, whether the shoe and the hoof fit together like machined surfaces is not an issue. Some farriers claim that hot fitting kills bacteria and fungus that they say are there in what they term "white line disease." While hot fitting may kill bacteria and fungus, it obviously has no effect on the ubiquitous "white line disease," for if it did, white line disease would not be an issue. The fact that so many farriers struggle against this thing they call "white line disease" even in the face of hot fitting is evidence enough that hot fitting has no effect on it. If hot fitting "cured" it, it would have disappeared long ago. The fact is that there are no advantages to the horse from hot fitting, despite the fact that farriers who hot fit are generally regarded as more skilled than farriers who don't hot fit.
Does hot fitting cause pain for the horse? No. Horses don't have temperature sensations in that area. Are there disadvantages for the horse? Probably. If you think of the energy flow through the horse's body, the beginning and ending points of the energy pathways responsible for the flow of energy throughout the horse are located in the hoof. This burning in of the shoes can cause disturbances and imbalances in the energy flow.
Should you let your farrier hot fit your horse's shoes? That's up to you. Just don't think you're getting a better shoeing job from hot fitting and don't think your horse is getting any benefit. That may not be what conventional wisdom in the hoof care world says ... but it's the truth.
