Extra tools found in a farrier's tool box include crease nail pullers, nail cutters, a dress-off rasp and clinch cutters. Understand the horseshoeing process with information from a professional farrier in this video on horse grooming.
We also carry some extra tools just in case we need to do something. These are crease nail pullers. It's a lot of times very hard to get a nail back out of a set of shoes when the nail head is down in there. You can't get to the sides of it. And you may not be able to get it any other way except for turning the shoe loose from the foot with your pullers. But if you just want one nail out, the crease nail pullers fit down into the crease and will remove the nail one at a time. If you get a tender footed horse off the racetrack you want to take their shoes off. A lot of times just pulling on their feet is uncomfortable. If you take them off one nail at a time it's easier on you, it's easier on the horse. We keep a pair of cutters. Sometimes you end up in a situation where the nail didn't bend, didn't twist. You may want to cut it to a certain length on a sale horse to make them all line up just perfectly. You can grab the nail on the side of the hoof wall, tweak it down to meet the others level. And cut your nails off manually that way. A lot of times you will be in an environment where you have to shoe inside of a stall at the horse sale or a horse show and you can't be out in the aisle way. You'll use the cutters just simply because if you cut each individual nail and catch the head of the nail, the pointed part into your hand and remove it from the stall. We have one rasp here that we use to dress off with. It's called your dress off rasp. It's used for filing your nails down on the clenches. It's used for removing excess shoe from around the edges of the heel. It's a left over version of your trimming rasp. Once these get duller after you've trimmed a certain amount of horses and you've pushing it a little bit you will switch it over and get a new rasp and in this position. We have a hardy tool here that was invented years ago. Basically if you are cleaning out your nail holes in your shoes, if they are full of dirt. You've lost a nail, you want to change a nail hole, you buy a shoe from the manufacturer it's not fully punched properly. You can change that. This is a clinch cutter. If you have a horse like I say that you want to pull with the crease nail pullers, if it's a large nail it's pretty hard to do that also. This can be run up the side of the foot underneath the clinch and tapped with a hammer and raise that clinch up and remove the pressure and allowed to be pulled out easier.
