Tyler Jones

Tyler isn’t your typical farrier—and that’s the point.

When Tyler Jones decides to master a skill, there’s not much that can stop him. As a kid, he wanted to skateboard but he lived on a dirt road with no paved surfaces in sight—so he built a half-pipe in his dad’s farm fields and, by high school, became a Pro-Am skateboarder.

Later, when he picked up welding, he reached the highest level a welder can achieve, building nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy.

Now he’s catching the eye of expert farriers and horse enthusiasts alike with his skilled and artistic approach to farriery. 

“I have to be myself.”

Not everyone saw the potential in Tyler. He’s spent his life managing ADHD, dyslexia, and Tourette’s Syndrome. School was a struggle, he was bullied, and traditional pathways weren’t a fit.

Now Tyler leans in to what makes him unique and he’s passionate about inviting others into the field of farriery—especially those who might think they don’t fit in.

Horseshoeing started as an escape.

Tyler’s farrier journey began when he dropped out of school in ninth grade. His dad understood traditional classrooms would never equip his son for the kind of career he’d thrive in, so he agreed to let Tyler drop out, on one condition: He had to go to horseshoeing school instead. 

Tyler agreed to the deal. 

He attended Lookout Mountain School of Horseshoeing, passed easily, and started tending to his family’s horses. But Tyler had never met a farrier who looked like him, so he never considered it a career. 

Instead, he threw himself into welding. Before long, Tyler was traveling the East Coast on two-month stints assembling nuclear submarines. The work required extreme precision but, surprisingly, also left room for creativity. 

“It was an outlet for me,” says Tyler. “I was basically doing graffiti with metal on the side of a submarine. It was wild, dude.” 

One night everything changed.

Then, a few years into his welding career, Tyler found himself sitting in a hotel room in Newport News, Virgina, trying to shake a troubling thought.

“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘I’ve made it.’ And with that thought came, ‘Now what??’” says Tyler. He was 23 years old and at the top of his welding career. “I thought, ‘This can't be it.’”

What happened next changed everything, and Tyler remembers it like it was yesterday. 

“I opened up my phone to watch a skateboarding video on YouTube and there’s a recommended video with a guy—a behemoth of a man—swinging a hammer at a shoe,” says Tyler. “ I'm thinking, ‘What’s this guy doing?’ I had never seen a horseshoeing video. It was Grant Moon. Making a horseshoe.”

Until that moment, horseshoeing had been just a way to make money on the side for Tyler. He’d never even thought about how a horseshoe was made. But as he watched video after video of Grant and others, Tyler realized this career had room for both his skills and his creativity.

His brain was racing. Could this become a career path for him? 

“I want to be a farrier.” 

Tyler pitched his new career idea to his wife, Megan. She had concerns, but she’d been with Tyler since eighth grade. She knew he had to be himself. She also knew he was great at achieving his goals.

The career change came with risks. He took a huge pay cut and lost the security of a good career. But Tyler had a new passion for the craft of farriery, and he threw himself into building his skills and growing a business.

 Bringing together skill and art.

As Tyler’s business progressed, he began adding his artistic flair into his work—mixing in glitter, using his 3D printers to create embellished shoe pads, creating a brand, and posting his work on Instagram. 

Before long, he had a social media following, a line of merchandise, and new clients calling him for work. 

“I’m better than I’ve ever been.” 

These days Tyler works six days a week with a book of over 580 horses. His unique style of shoeing continues to gain attention, and he’s expanding the definition of what a farrier looks like. 

Tyler knows his style is a departure from what’s expected and, partly, that’s the point. He appreciates that he’s able to be who he is, and he believes more people would become farriers if they could do the same. 

“As long as you have the structure there and the horse is sound, why can't you have artistic expression?” he says. 

Q&A with Tyler Jones

What do you want young people to know about being a farrier?

I want kids to see that you can put glitter on horses, you can paint horses, you can stamp the Nike logo on there. Obviously there’s the right way to shoe a horse, and we have to stick to that. But it’s just like if you build a structurally sound house—then, you get to decorate it. That's the way I look at horseshoeing. You can be yourself!

How do you keep up with 580 horses on your own?

Well I'm running on energy drinks and ADHD, so it’s really not fair to compare anyone else's schedule to mine. I don't have an apprentice or a helper because I'm so ADHD that I'm really hard to learn from. (I’ve learned that by trying.)

What’s your specialty?

Ninety percent of my book is dressage horses. With the way my brain works, dressage speaks to me—because the horses are judged on movement. I don't like doing horses that are judged by a clock, because the clock doesn’t care what they look like when they run out on the arena. I want the horse to look good. I want it to move good. 

I also work with the vets locally, and I get most of my area’s therapeutic shoe jobs. I really enjoy that, because of the tools we have available these days—like Mustad’s Hoof Cushion and the Equi-Librium Airs. It makes it really easy to be a hero.

Do you have any secrets to your success as a farrier?

I’ve found that if you can work with people, and you accept their knowledge with your knowledge, you can combine the two to figure out the best path. Two heads are better than one in every case, no matter the situation. So I've learned to work with other vets, work with other farriers, and work with trainers because they tell me the passcode to everything I'm doing.

If you can work with them, and you don't fight them on everything, you get to share their knowledge. The vet paid a lot of money for their knowledge, and I love getting it for free. (They give it to me for free! No dollars exchanged!) I get X-rays, I get everything they know, and I don’t even have to buy a single textbook.

I recently worked with a new vet and he said to me, “Man, did you go to vet school before horseshoeing? Like, you have a lot of knowledge.” I said, “No, you would never believe this, but all the vets in the area just willingly gave me all this information.”

How do you handle demanding clients?

At the end of the day, the trainer has to be happy, and the rider has to be happy. So being an open, energetic person and listening to what they have to say matters. It doesn't mean I have to do everything they're wanting, because I am the podiatrist in that situation, but I definitely want to try my best. If the trainer wants a toe clip on the horse, then I'm gonna put a toe clip on the horse. Why? Because it builds the relationship, it builds rapport, and at the end of the day, I'm the hero. And that's my goal: to help the horse and be the hero. 

Tell us about your family.

I’ve been with my wife Megan since the eighth grade. She’s been along for the whole ride. Our daughter Fallon is autistic—she’s 11 years old—and our daughter Autumn was recently born. I’m a workaholic, but I force myself to take off one day a week at a minimum to spend time with them. I might even get crazy from time to time and take off Wednesdays and Sundays so I get to see my daughters more.

Has anything surprised you about your journey? 

My business is better than it's ever been. My skills are better than they’ve ever been. But rarely does anyone talk about my horseshoeing. People that call me to be a client will say, “Oh, you're the guy that does the glitter. I heard you're funny, and you're a great person.” It goes to show that it's okay to do all the things that would have been a negative in the past. I never thought this kind of creativity would be accepted. Now it's being asked for, and it just blows my mind.

Tell us about what products you use. 

I mostly use Mustad products, and here’s an example of why: I had some shoes sent to me recently from another company and I nailed them on my personal horse to try them out. They asked me what I thought and I said, “These shoes really, really solidified my decision to go with Mustad shoes.” 

That's funny, but it's also so true. With the Equilibrium, I don't have to grind it—at all. If you put a Mustad Equi-Librium or an Equi-Librium Air on any dressage horse, you'll be the hero. Every time. There's no horse that moves badly in that shoe because all the things we do with the grind are pre-made into it. I primarily find myself using shoes that make my time at the truck shorter. And that’s Mustad.

What about nails?

So for nails, it all depends. I shoe a lot of upper-level dressage horses. I have multiple nail fits because I do a lot of imported horses—I do a lot of horses from Sweden, Denmark, all over the UK—and I also do a lot of horses that are born here, and the hoof-wall thickness and the hoof health overall is what determines nails for me at the end of the day. 

Just about 99% of horses I shoe get Mustad’s endura-coated Concave Nails. I don't even buy any other E-head nail other than the Concave nail. I found that the bigger head fits to any shoe and it fills the hole even on a reset. 

I also use the Capewell Slim Blade 5s on Thoroughbreds and horses with compromised walls and/or thin walls. It doesn’t tear the foot up, and it goes in the hoof wall just beautifully. And then it pairs with just about any shoe on the market.

One of the best nails on the market is Delta’s Copper City Head Slim Nail, for multiple reasons but, mostly, consistency. There is no other nail on the market that can match the quality control. They're consistent, and they always drive the same—weather doesn't affect them, the horse’s hardness in the feet doesn’t affect them, and the copper is always evenly coated. Consistency is key for me. 

What rasps do you like?

This is the easiest question you’ve asked me today. It really is. My ADHD forced me to buy every product in the horseshoeing market. I have a stack of it to prove it,  even the junk. For me, the Green Tang, the Heller eXceL Legend, is it. The green tang covers more foot, and it lasts two times longer at the very least. The green tang has been the only rasp I’ve found that continuously lasts for the same amount of horses every time. 

What’s your next career goal?

Well, I'll never stop shoeing horses, but my goal is to have the opportunity to really tell my story. I just want to see the horse industry more inclusive for the youth. I think that has to happen. I also think passion is contagious and I have a lot of it to give. I'd love to give a clinic on how to be passionate about what you're doing.
 

If you’d like to learn more about Tyler, you can find him on Facebook.