At the London premiere of the latest Marvel movie, “Thunderbolts,” last month, the usual crowd was invited: models, celebrities and Hollywood types. Slipping between them, his tattoos peeping out of his button-down, was a less typical invited guest: a 32-year-old man who makes a living nailing metal shoes onto horses’ feet.
No one was more surprised that a farrier from West Yorkshire, England, nabbed an invite to a film premiere than the man himself. For half his life, Samuel Wolfenden has pared and filed horse hooves in relative obscurity alongside his father at his blacksmithing business in Halifax, just west of Leeds, SW Farriers. He was happy to hammer shoes onto the overgrown hoofs of stout Suffolk Punch horses and little Dales ponies, and go to bed in his hometown, satisfied with the polished equine toes he left behind.
Then one day two years ago he propped his phone on his toolbox of rasps and nippers in the barn while he was nailing a shoe onto a shaggy Shire horse and pressed record.
“I wanted a portfolio of what I’m doing to look back at,” Wolfenden said in an interview in May, recalling why he filmed and then posted that 10-second clip on Instagram before going to bed that night. “I woke up the next day and had millions of millions of views; I had one hundred thousand followers,” he added. “It was wild.”
The combination of adorable animals, good-looking men (and some women) and the satisfaction of watching a shabby hoof get scraped and hammered into something seemly, has emerged as must-scroll viewing for the millions of people — many with nothing to do with horses — who appear to be transfixed by farrier content.
Today, Wolfenden’s farriery Instagram account has a million followers; on TikTok his posts have garnered 8.7 million likes. His videos, paring down the frog, or fleshy, central toe on the underside of a hoof, or painting on polish, regularly get hundreds of millions of views. They have thrust the blacksmith into the life of an influencer, with sponsorship deals, glamorous appearances, modeling gigs and even a publicist.
And he’s not alone: a host of blacksmiths, male and female, from around the world have jumped onto the trend, drawing global audiences and sometimes lucrative influencer deals for what was once toilsome work hidden in the back of the barn. Theories abound to account for the appeal: to some horseshoeing is #SoSatisfying, akin to pimple popping videos. Others said they believed viewers find it intriguing because of the window it offers into an esoteric world.
Whatever the draw, some industry leaders say they are beginning to see the impact seeping past the screen, driving new demographics, such as young women and people from nonequestrian backgrounds, to pursue what has traditionally been a male-dominated and insular trade.
“I think a lot of people, they see horses, they understand horses, but they don’t understand what goes into horses,” said Sam Dracott, a farrier from Surrey, England, who has four million followers on YouTube and TikTok. “It is the unknown — and it is quite satisfying to watch; they enjoy escaping reality and watching that and numbing their mind.”
Horse hooves are made of the same material as a human fingernail and grow constantly, necessitating shape-ups about every six weeks to keep the animal in good conformation. Humans began nailing metal shoes onto horse’s hooves to protect them in battle as early as 300 B.C., according to David Chaffetz, the author of “Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires.” When the Roman Empire popularized hoof-bruising stone roads, the skill of farriery rose in importance, only dwindling into obscurity centuries later as cars replaced horses.
Blacksmithing has managed to buck the decline in interest from young people in other trades like heating, ventilation and cooling repair and masonry, Martha L. Jones, the executive director of the American Farrier’s Association, said in an email; in recent years, she wrote, there has been a large influx of young women to the discipline, once a rarity.
“That could be a direct effect of the craftsmen and women posting their work, reels,” Jones added. “Or even drilling down from there, of the ‘so satisfying’ hashtag that really seemed to take off for a while — that drew attention to what otherwise might be seen as menial, day-to-day tasks, or in our case, of hoof cleaning, trimming and shoeing.”
The influencer farriers seem to have heralded a new heyday for the craft. As he travels between polo barns and show jumping stables across the south of England, Dracott now has an entourage working with him to keep up with content demand. He has a dedicated videographer, a social media manager and — naturally — a publicist too. He charges £125 (about $165) for a set of shoes, and can bang out between six and a dozen horses a day. His influencing, he says, has doubled his income.
Wolfenden’s operation is less glamorous — it’s still just a phone propped on a toolbox, he said, or held by his blacksmithing apprentice, Tom Rowbottom, 19. He declined to say how much he earns from either business venture, but said that horseshoeing still made up the bulk of his income.
He did reveal what else his internet fame has attracted: suitors.
Tattooed with a six-pack and unafraid to shoe horses shirtless (like a number of other influencer farriers), Wolfenden said he had to remove his contact information from farrier registries because of an onslaught of love letters, flowers and chocolates. More welcome are the many letters from fans that describe hard times, he said, and how his videos were a soothing distraction that got them through.
About a year ago, Louis D. Bryant, a farrier from Howell, Mich., who is a board member of the International Association of Professional Farriers, was stunned to learn that the doctors at the hospital where his wife works chill out on their breaks by watching farrier videos, he said. “I said to her, ‘I can get a side hustle — if they want to ride with me, I will show them firsthand how to trim a horse.’”
He soon also became a fan — of Wolfenden. “The one guy, he’s just a good looking dude,” he said with a laugh. “Heck, I watch him just for that.”
At the Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School in Plymouth, Calif., Amanda Smith, 35, the lead instructor, has noticed an uptick in enrollment of students with zero horse experience, something she attributes to the proliferation of shoeing content.
“It makes me wonder: How did you think of this? Because you never put a halter on a horse, and now you are thinking of putting shoes on their feet?” Smith said. “I will have to admit, every time they come, my first thought is: ‘Did you see one of those videos?’”
She had her own brush with influence. Recently, she posted a video of a pair of bright pink novelty horse shoes she tacked on a horse. When the views spiked to five million, colleagues began calling, she said, warning her if she influenced their clients to ask for goofy pink shoes, she would be the one they would blame. She quickly took it down.
“I don’t like the attention,” Smith explained. “I like shoeing horses.”
Sarah Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York … and sometimes beyond.
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