Cold temperatures, icy conditions and a 1,000-pound animal that is not eager to have its feet worked on – just another day at the office for farrier Emily Henderson of Hancock.

Dayni, a 5-year-old horse boarded at a training barn in Temple, is Henderson’s customer. Dayni is not a fan of getting her shoes changed, despite her owner, Cathy Weaver of Weare, working to desensitize her to the process.

“She’s injured me, she’s broken some of my tools – I have a nice, new toolbox because of that horse,” said Henderson, matter-of-factly. “Which is part of the game.”

Henderson, who runs Apex Farrier Service and provides services across the Monadnock region, has been around horses and barns her entire life, growing up riding, competing and wanting to be at the barn as much as possible. When it came time to explore what she wanted as a career, she said she had a lot of interests – art and biology were high on the list – but wasn’t sure where her focus should lie. It wasn’t until she met another female farrier that she settled on her goal.

“I got this idea, and never looked back,” Henderson said.

A farrier is a person that specializes in hoof care for horses – trimming and shoeing, but also blacksmithing, creating the horseshoes and forming them to horse’s feet. It’s a profession with a long history, and Henderson said she’s well aware of that responsibility.

“Horses in general have enabled human beings to create empires over thousands of years. They’ve given us transportation, helped with agriculture, warfare, communication – they’ve helped us thrive as a species. Taking this ancient craft that is an art form that’s really unable to be replicated by technology helps give back to them.”

Henderson said that in the United States, while education opportunities are available, they are not required, making continuing education for farriers an individual choice. She said that in other countries, the process is much more rigorous, requiring certification and apprenticeships, as well as examinations before it’s legal to work on a horse’s feet.

Henderson has made the choice to access education, and has reached the level of a certified farrier through the American Farriers Association. She is in the process of obtaining her journeyman farrier certification, which includes a test where she must fabricate horseshoes from raw materials and shoe a horse within a time limit. Once she has reached the journeyman level, Henderson hopes to continue her education in Europe through an exchange program.

“I’ve never had a client ask if I’m certified, but it’s something I chose to do,” Henderson said. “I want my work to get better, and I want to be more efficient.”

She said educating herself and being a good advocate for the trade and the horses she works on is especially important to her as a woman. She said she attended the Kentucky Horseshoeing School to achieve her initial certification level, and in her class, there were 14 people, half of them women. She said she is the only woman from that class that is still active in the profession.

“There’s a high attrition rate; these were promising individuals, capable of the intensity required for this job,” Henderson said. “And I’ve seen them fall off and not stick with it.”

She said, in part, that’s why education is important to her.

“I’m only 110 pounds. I can’t do what a 250-pound, 6-foot tall man is doing. So I need precise, powerful, highly practiced ability. It’s expanding your skill set. And the less limited your skill set, the more you can do to advocate for your horse. You’re less limited with every month and year you participate and learn,” Henderson said.

Farriers have competitions, and in February, she won the live shoeing class at the Southern New England Farrier’s Association Competition and Clinic in Amherst, Mass. in a two-person team with Billy McMahon, another certified farrier who has become one of her mentors in the field.

She said she recently attended the Canadian championships, not as a competitor, but just as a spectator, to watch some of the best in the business do their work.

“I will never stop wanting to work with people that are better than me,” said Henderson. “I don’t think I’m ever going to master this trade, because that’s the nature of it – there’s an ever-increasing level of minutia. I just want to get as good as I can before my body gives out.”

Henderson said that in her profession, it’s not a matter of if someone will get injured, but how often and how badly, and building skills helps to minimize that potential injury.

“I want to shoe horses until I drop dead. I have to invest in taking care of myself – farriers are like athletes. Their body is the most important tool that you have. If your back is giving out, you have to keep going.”

For  information about Apex Farrier or to contact Henderson, send email to emhfarrier@gmail.com.