School Spotlight: Five Star Horseshoeing School

Even after training hundreds of successful farriers at his school, Five Star Horseshoeing in Minco, Oklahoma, Dusty Franklin, CJF, ASF, AWCF, considers himself first and foremost to be a farrier.

“I still shoe full time,” he says. “I just love shoeing.” 

He also loves teaching, which is why he started this school in 2007. Dusty, an award-winning educator, clinician, and competitor—and one of only 20 AFA examiners who certifies farriers in the U.S—knows he runs his school differently than most horseshoeing schools. It’s an approach he wouldn’t trade. 

At Five Star, Dusty doesn't promise his students they'll be a farrier by the end of their training. “That would be a bald-faced lie,” he says. 

Instead, he promises them this: If students work hard (very hard), they'll be ready to keep a good job as a good apprentice to a great farrier. And they'll be prepared to spend the next 10-12 years mastering the trade. “I've been doing this 32 years and I'm still at about third grade level,” he laughs.

The approach at Five Star is to get students under as many horses as possible, as often as possible, starting within the first few minutes of their very first day. Dusty also exposes his students to as many competitions and learning opportunities as he can, hauling them around the country in a caravan of trucks and paying for them to compete and learn. 

He trains them to be exactly the kind of apprentice any professional farrier would want in their truck. And the approach is working. After 18 years, the numbers speak for themselves.

"If I'm going to send somebody from Five Star Horseshoeing School to apprentice with you, a full-time farrier, and they make your day an hour longer, then why would you have them in the truck?" Dusty asks. "So my job is to make sure I can get farriers home an hour earlier than they would be if they didn't have this apprentice with them."

Dusty Franklin has built Five Star into something different from other farrier schools. We sat down with him to learn more about his organic approach to farrier education.

Your students work on hundreds of horses each week. How does that work?
It's nothing for us to do 200 horses a week. That's a pretty average week for us. We’re lucky to be in an area where there are a lot of big breeding farms. Like, we did the Lazy E Ranch this week—we came in as a group and did 211 horses in a day and a half. Because we do so many horses, our students get to see so many types of breeds, types of feet. 

What kind of instructors do you have?
All of us are working farriers. I still make my living primarily as a farrier. I couldn't imagine ever taking someone's money and having them be taught by someone that's never even shod a horse for a living. And that's 90% of your schools.
 

You offer four different program lengths, from six weeks to 24 weeks. How did you decide on this structure?
Basically, the state requires me to offer some shorter programs alongside my longer ones, but I price my six- and eight-week programs high because I don’t want to promote those. They’re too short. I want to focus on quality education. My six-month program is actually $5,000 cheaper than anybody else's because I want to have a good product and give students the time they need to really learn.
 

You don't graduate your students in the traditional sense. Why?
At Five Star, we don't graduate anyone. If you pass your AFA CF in school, then you get to graduate. That's always been my criteria. You paid me $20,000 to teach you, so who am I to score you? That would be a conflict of interest. I want our students to earn that certification from someone they've never met, someone they've never paid or worked with. That way it's a true idea of what their skill level is.

You're very involved with the AFA and competitions. How does that influence your teaching?
I promote certifications and competitions heavily. What I want the students to see is that horseshoeing is something you're never going to be good at—it’s something you have to work hard at your whole career. If I can teach them to never settle, then I think that's going to ensure the best outcome. Learning how to be a farrier is not a six-month program—it's a 10- to 15-year program."
 

Your placement strategy for apprenticeships involves students leaving their home area. Why?
I tell them, if you go right back home after 12 weeks or even six months of training here, you're just gonna fall right back into the life you were in. You're gonna go back with your old friends, and you're gonna blow away the $25,000 you gave me and six months of your life. But if you go somewhere else and learn to shoe in an apprenticeship and go through your Certified Journeyman, do some competitions, win, and then move to where you want to start your business, you'll be set up to have a full business in three years.

How do you support students in finding mentorships?
I haul them to competitions around the country—I pay for all their certifications, I pay for all their competitions. I really push the importance of networking with other farriers and meeting people. A lot of times, by the time their class is up, they've met enough other farriers at these events that I hardly have to place them.

When I do place our students, I'm very selective about where I send them. I interview the people I'm sending students to way harder than I interview the students I take. I want to send my students with people who have worked hard to arm themselves, and know they're working for an animal that can't speak for itself.

What's your advice for someone considering becoming a farrier?
I tell them just to get in and ride with someone. Just go see what it’s like. Go with whoever's doing your own horses, or whoever recommended the field to you. That's the best way to see if it's something for you. And then, if you do go to school, I give people a list of questions to ask when they call around for schools. Number one thing is, how many people are going to be in a class? Because, again, if there's 25-30 kids in there, there's no way you're going to get enough feet to learn on. 
 

How do you prepare students for certification?Everything we do every day is exactly like you're going to get scored at a competition or certification. It's all the same—uniform requirements, sole thickness, everything. Certification is just being able to follow the rules. It’s about good, solid work.

We also do about 10 hours a week in the classroom, and our students take tests every Monday to prepare for the AFA written exam. Not only do they have to answer the questions, but they have to draw everything as well. They have to turn in tons of drawings, and label all the structures. If you can do that, you’re ready for the exam. 

What are you most proud of at Five Star?
What I'm most proud of is the fact that this is a safe place for a lot of people and it's an opportunity to get better every day. So many people don't want to leave my school once they’ve come here. I think that's my favorite thing. Kids will say "What can I do to stay? Can I work for you?" And I say, just stay and work. 

There's six or seven journeymen farriers that work out of our school that don't work for me. They just have their forge stations here. And there's a guy who flies in from Washington state every four weeks. It's awesome because the students see these other farriers, like Garrett Stark—he's on the World Championship team this year—he's been with me since he was 14 and now he’s 23 years old. So they see him coming in here and practicing two hours, four hours every night. Then that motivates the students to practice.

I’ve always had a real big passion to meet people and put them in a position to be successful. Even if they don’t make it in farriery, hopefully, if they've come here, I've at least taught them how to retain information and put together a plan, and get good problem-solving skills for their life.