After growing up around Thoroughbreds and handling race horses for most of his early life, in 2003 J.T. attended Casey & Son’s Farrier School in Resaca, GA. After graduating he served an apprenticeship in Ocala, Florida with a farrier that focused on therapeutic shoeing. In doing so, he gained experience with laminitis solutions, quarter crack repair, lameness evaluation and handling severe conformation defects. Following his apprenticeship J.T. went on to be a licenced track farrier at Presque Isle Downs, Mountaineer Racetrack, and Thistledown for 5 years before returning to his hometown of Cleveland OH.
While he did continue shoeing race horses and held a track license at Thistledown Racino, J.T. focused mostly on therapeutic shoeing while studying the finer points of shoeing sport horses. Another focal point was to further continue his education by attending clinics and conferences such as The Northeast Association of Equine Practitioner Symposiums and the International Hoofcare Summit. It was during this time that he was recruited to work in the podiatry department at Hagyard's Equine Institute.
In 2013, J.T. moved to Kentucky to focus on shoeing upper level sport horses. Though having since moved away from Hagyard's to work on his own, he continues to follow the major show jumping and dressage circuits from Kentucky to Wellington and abroad developing hoofcare solutions for sport horses at the highest levels of competition.