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Friday, June 5, 2020
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Volume 8, Edition 7
Focusing on Today’s Rural Environment
Rousselange’s farrier skills improve life for equine By SARAH COLBURN Staff Writer SAUK CENTRE When farrier Aaron Rousselange first met Denali he’d come from a kill pen in the Dakotas to a farm in Osakis. He and the owner had to physically drag Denali off the trailer, the horse couldn’t walk and could barely get a foot up as Rousselange began his work. Gingerly, Rousselange worked on the horse, getting a package on it that relieved a lot of the leverage on its toe. They took X-rays and
Rousselange worked sideby-side with a veterinarian and the owner. Over time, he continued to change and modify the horse’s treatment based on how its foot grew. Nine months later, Denali had put on some weight thanks to a new diet, gotten regular trims and shoes and began running around the pasture. The owner’s goal was to get him pasture-sound and instead, with the intensive treatments, Denali had a rider aboard his back within the year. “When I first started (as a farrier) it was an emotion-
PHOTO BY DIANE LEUKAM
Aaron Rousselange owns Rousselange Farrier Service out of Sauk Centre. He works on about 200 horses regularly, after completing his daily full-time work as an active duty member in the United States Army, overseeing operations at the armory in Sauk Centre.
al getaway for me,” Rousselange said. As he attended farrier school and learned more about trimming and corrective shoeing, his work became more about satisfaction for the horse. From his teacher he learned how important the work was to improving the life of a horse. The most important lessoned he learned was “To do something for the horse, not just to the horse.” That lesson has become the cornerstone of the Rousselange Farrier Service business and it’s the reason he does things differently. He works with PHOTO SUBMITTED upwards of 200 horses; this Aaron Rousselange nails a metal shoe on a horse’s foot. He purchases most of the shoes he works with, but is able to make shoes from month alone he’s visited 125 of them. He averages scratch if necessary, practicing those skills in his spare time. 20 horses a week after, all
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after he finishes his day at his full-time job overseeing the armory in Sauk Centre. Rousselange is a full-time active duty member of the United States Army. His farrier business adds another element to his life, and his work has grown considerably since he started in October of 2017. “It’s tough to turn people away because there aren’t a lot of farriers,” he said. “The longer the foot gets, it’s like walking around on a ski boot, but when you’re done, they’re more comfortable and it’s like they have a set of Nikes on.” Most of his work is done right on site at the client’s property. Rousselange pulls up in his pearl white
Chevrolet Silverado 1500 High Country. The bed slide is filled with all the tools he needs, from chaps to protect his legs, hoof stands and shoes to nippers, rasps, nails, a driving hammer, a shaping hammer, anvils, forges and a clincher. He picks up the horse’s foot places it between his legs and gets to work. “The hardest part to get down is shaping a shoe and not going back and forth a lot,” he said. In school, he learned to eagle-eye it, memorizing the shape from the toe, through the branches down the quarters of the foot to the heel. Once he memorizes the shape, he heads to the anvil to make the adjustments, getting as precise as
possible to limit the amount of time he’s physically fitting the horse. It’s a skill he learned during competitions at Mission Farrier School in Washington state. Students competed against one another in challenges, each given 15 seconds to look at the bottom of a foot and 15 minutes to create the perfect shoe. Most often, Rousselange works from shoes he orders; even specialty shoes are available online. He begins with those, though he does have the ability to custom make a shoe from scratch, which he does in his spare time just to keep up on his skills.
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ROUSSELANGE continued on page 2
19 Country Cooking
