Why does nobody talk about how much you learn watching a farrier work

I spent Saturday morning at a barn outside Lexington watching a farrier named Dale shoe a draft horse, and I went there thinking I already knew my way around a forge pretty well. He let me hold the foot while he fit the shoe, and he kept checking the fit against the hoof wall with just his thumb, no gauge or anything, saying the shoe should sit like a good handshake, snug but not pinching. What got me was how he drew his clips. He heated the toe on the shoe, then tapped it over the edge of the anvil horn in tiny steps, maybe six light hits, and it rolled into a clip without a single cold shut. I tried copying it on scrap when I got back to my shop and got a crack on my second try because I was hitting too hard and too fast. He also quenched in a coffee can of water he kept right at the anvil, said it saves him walking back and forth to the slack tub all day. Do any of you forge clips this way, or do you cut and weld them instead?