What do you get when you cross a sheep farmer with a gunning engraver who used to work as an EMT?

You get Travis’s personal pedicurist.

Indeed, Southern Pines farrier Dave Richards brings elements from each of his previous professions to his current line of work. He’s gentle as a lamb with his patients, painstakingly precise when affixing a shoe or casting tape and conversant in matters related to equine physiology.

Richards, 58, has been soothing the soles of Moore County horses since 1988, when he moved to North Carolina from his native New Hampshire. The following year, he began crafting hoof orthotics that would evolve into what are now known as Equicasts. The Equicast method can be used to reshape the foot, encourage growth in particular areas and as an alternative to glue-on shoes for hooves that won’t tolerate nails.

Richards has also been successful treating laminitis, the painful disease that claimed the life of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, by using Equicast material in conjunction with EVA and wooden shoes developed by Dr. Mike Steward, of Shawnee, Okla.

Genetics, conformation and environmental factors can conspire against the horse’s hoof structure, but Richards believes most foot problems can be offset with proper shoeing.

“Every horse is different,” said Richards, who has worked on the horses of numerous high-profile event riders, including Denny Emerson, David O’Brien and Mike Plumb. “Casting is a means, but you have to do it in concert with other means.”

Richards cites the bone mass-to-weight ratio as the most important diagnostic factor in his work.

“When you have a heavy horse on skinny legs, you’re going to have to make up, on that foundation, for the lack of continuity to bone mass/weight ratio,” he said. “That’s first and foremost. The foot has to have concavity, in my opinion.”

Ideally, Richards said, casting is a temporary fix designed to encourage proper weight distribution across the foot and encourage growth in a particular area.

“The single biggest problem we have with feet are hoof wall issues,” Richards said. “We’re addressing the failure of the hoof wall. Adding casts addresses the site of failure.”

Travis is a good representation of the typical Richards case — a horse with chronic soundness problems caused by any number of hoof issues, like flat feet, thin walls, no heels, that can plague horses. Jim Hamilton, an equine veterinarian at Southern Pines Equine Associates, acquired the thoroughbred gelding in 1994.

Now 31, Travis had raced in flat and steeplechase races, evented and briefly fox-hunted.

“He wouldn’t stay sound for hunting,” Hamilton said of Travis, who was given to him by local huntsman Mike Russell. “He’s always had horrible feet. My horse has lived in casts with shoes and without the shoes. And now, he’s completely barefoot. We have reshaped his foot and developed concavity ... and we’ve got heel growth.”

A jocular man with a hearty laugh, Richards said his approach to shoeing is based largely on what he learned as an EMT.

“I use so much of what I learned as an EMT with horses,” he said. “The EVA shoe, the casts ... all of it came from being an EMT.”

After eight years in the medical field, Richards became an engraver. He also owned a sheep farm and a couple of draft horses.

“I wanted to learn how to shoe my horses,” Richards said. “My shoer wanted to learn how to carve metal. So we switched, and I did an apprenticeship with him.”

In 1988, Richards followed O’Brien to Southern Pines for the winter, fully intending to return to New England the following spring. But when an unruly horse kicked him and shattered his thumb, Richards decided to stay for the summer. And he never left.

In 1989, local vet Fred McCashin showed Richards how to apply his first cast.

“They were making them out of different materials,” Richards said. “Plaster of Paris casts go back a long way.”

As he experimented with different casting materials, Richards relied on his patients for feedback.

“The minute I started doing this type of casting, there was no one to ask for help,” he said, laughing. “But I ended up getting a good rapport with the horses and opening up those lines of communication ... looking at the little nuances that over time gave me great insight into feet.”

In the early days, Richards kept his emerging philosophy to himself.

“The minute I started doing this, a few people started saying, ‘This won’t work, the foot can’t breathe, it’s too restrictive,’” he said. “I made sure I worked on horses that were not high profile so I could check on them regularly. And they were getting better and better.”

One of Richards’ earliest customers was Adele Baker, who became so impressed with the casts that she learned how to apply them herself.

“He experimented on my horses,” Baker said. “Whenever I have a horse that’s lost a shoe, or has a bruise or some instability, I put one on. And I’ve competed in them. It really works.”

In 1999, Baker imported a 6-year-old Irish sport horse named Point Clear. Two weeks after the gelding’s arrival, he began having hoof problems.

“He was used to a certain climate over there, and when he got here his feet fell apart,” Baker said of the gelding, now 17 and still competing with Raleigh-based eventer Foy Barksdale. “I used casts on that horse extensively. They are the reason he’s still going.

“There are a lot of naysayers out there so afraid of trying something new, and so ready to say, ‘My way is the only way.’”

As Richards’ clientele grew, so did his awareness that casting was becoming an important component in a horse’s ability to stay sound while in hard work.

“Here’s the reality,” he said. “If you have a shin, a tendon, a suspensory, you give them time off. If you have a foot problem, you keep going. That’s just a fact. Casting gives the horse immediate gratification and allows them to go on.”

Richards’ work with laminitic horses gives him the most satisfaction. It has also put him in the position of defending his treatment method, which addresses the problem from the bottom of the foot.

“It’s not rocket science,” he said. “Laminitis is simply the inflammation of laminae. And the only way for it to go is away from the bone. You want to add resistance to that migration.”

In the most serious cases of laminitis, the coffin bone, which lies within the hoof capsule, begins to rotate, sink or both. Dr. Ric Redden, a pioneer in the field of equine podiatry, treats most laminitic horses by raising the heel dramatically with a special shoe, thus relieving tension on the deep digital flexor tendon (DDF), which flexes the coffin joint. The DDF, if overloaded, contributes to rotation.

Redden detractors, and they do exist, question the logic of temporarily minimizing one cause of rotation by forcing pressure on the hoof’s weakest area — the toe.

“To me, adding sole pressure is the only option, because there’s nowhere for the coffin bone to go but down,” Richards said.

Richards often treats laminitic horses using casts in conjunction with wooden or EVA shoes.

“Everything we do to treat laminitis is controversial,” Hamilton said. “There are schools of thought that would discourage almost everything we do. Dave’s casts are a reasonable alternative support device for a laminitic foot.”

Richards would like to see laminitis defined in terms of sole thickness.

“If you have rotation, it’s going to be thinner,” he said. “If you have a sinker, it’s going to be thinner. We need to come up with a standard, like, if you have less than 15 millimeters of sole, you have a problem.”

Richards, who travels throughout the U.S. giving presentations and teaching horse owners and farriers how to apply casts, is in favor of licensing equine podiatrists.

“This would be for people who are going beyond mere protection, such as what a classic farrier would do,” he said. “The license should be predicated on your exposure to new technologies, because if you’re exposed to these technologies, there’s a high likelihood you’re going to use them.”