From Post Parade to Rose Parade: Ada Gates is Underfoot as Pasadena's Official Horseshoe Safety Inspector

 From ABC News in Los Angeles: Would your horse's hooves pass the Ada Gates inspection?

It's not unusual to find Ada Gates behind the scenes at a parade but it would most likely be the post parade at California's Santa Anita racetrack. She's at a different parade today.

The first woman licensed to shoe racehorses in America picked up the feet of 236 horses--including Budweiser Clydesdales, silver-draped Andalusians and military mules--this morning as she made sure their hooves were in compliance with the rules of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. The parade has specific rules for hoofcare that must be followed, as they hope to both prevent slipping on the pavement and lameness problems along the parade route. I did notice the horse trailers in the parade, ready to pick up any horses in distress or in need of relief.

NBC also has a video featuring Ada Gates and several of the equestrian units in today's parade, filmed at the parade's stabling at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center at Griffith Park in Burbank, but it did not have an embedding code so it can't be seen here on the blog. If a code becomes available, you'll see that video here, as well.

The Hoof Blog had a report from Ada after the 2008 Rose Parade with her observations about the hooves she sees at the parade: Traction Counts at the Rose Parade (Just Ask Ada).

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.
 

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Hoofcare@WEG: Educational Events for Hoof Blog Readers

Ok, horse world, it's time to plan how and when you're going to take in the opportunities waiting for you in Lexington, Kentucky over the next few weeks. And the opportunities abound, with more events being announced each day. Whether you come for a day or a week, and whether you stay in a penthouse or pitch a tent, you'll never forget this.

Think of it as Woodstock for the horse world.

The World Equestrian Games, along with downtown Lexington's International Equestrian Festival, have a great lineup of both hoofcare and lameness related events coming up over the next three weeks. Both events have trade shows with horse health exhibits; there is a third horse expo in Georgetown, Kentucky (on the north side of the Kentucky Horse Park) as well (featuring legendary trainer John Lyons), and the wonderful Secretariat Festival on Saturday, October 2 in Paris, Kentucky sounds like fun.

The education kicks off on Wednesday with the AAEP/Rood and Riddle/Alltech Veterinary Sport Horse Symposium . Familiar speakers from the Hoof Blog at the conference include Drs. Jean-Marie Denoix, Scott Morrison, Scott Pleasant, and Jeff Thomason among many others. Dr Simon Collins from Dr. Chris Pollitt's Australian Equine Laminitis Research Unit at the University of Queensland was a late cancellation.

On Friday, the AAEP and Rood and Riddle will host A Winning Edge: Promoting Peak Performance in Equine Athletes with speakers like Dr. Hilary Clayton and farrier Rodney King on the roster of widely respected names.

The Games begin on Saturday at the Kentucky Horse Park, with the opening ceremonies. The hoofcare education continues with daily lectures and demonstrations at Rood and Riddle's pavilion within the huge Alltech exhibition hall. Farrier Michael DeLeonardo will be working on thermography imaging demonstrations for Equine IR, the company that is providing free scans for the competition horses. USA team farrier Steve Teichman is speaking at the Draper Equine Therapy booth, and the Horse Park's farrier shop has just received a decor upgrade, thanks to Farrier Product Distribution.

In downtown Lexington at the International Equestrian Festival, hoofcare activities range from the Kentucky Horseshoeing School's live demonstrations to a six-lecture full seminar by Dr. Ric Redden and the heart-warming encore of Ada Gates Patton's Hoofcare@Saratoga presentation, "Debutante to Blacksmith".

The American Farrier's Association has assembled a rotating able-bodied crew of volunteer farriers who are covering various phases of the Games. Watch for farrier chairman Thom Gabel and his crews to be both providing services to teams as needed in the barn area and to be standing by ringside during events in their "official farrier" capacity. And if they need administrative support, they won't have far to go, since their national headquarters office is located right in the Horse Park.

Last but not least, Lexington opens its heart on Sunday night, October 3rd, for the premiere of the new Disney film, Secretariat, starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich. You can bet there will be plenty of Secretariat fans among the eventing spectators in Lexington that weekend. Ironically, the premiere will be the night before the anniversary of the day that Secretariat died, October 4th. Surely this will bring to mind why Secretariat died--he had laminitis--and stimulate discussion about how progress is coming on preventing and treating and understanding one of world's most elusive, painful and frustrating diseases.

Watch the Hoof Blog for lots of news and a full schedule about all these activities and many more as they approach. No matter what your interest in horses or hooves, the new few weeks in Lexington will be a feast for your senses and your mind. I hope to meet you while we're there! Send an email if you'd like to get together: blog (at) hoofcare.com. Follow the Blog's hoof-related Tweets from WEG on Twitter.com under @HoofcareJournal and general WEG Tweets under @FranJurga.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

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Hoofcare@WEG Begins: British Team Farriers Interview

The Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games haven't quite begun yet, but around the British stables, the farriers were hard at work this weekend. Except they weren't shoeing horses; there were no horses no shoe, as the European horses were still in quarantine at the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport 80 miles away.


No, Haydn Price (team farrier for dressage and show jumping and lead farrier for the British "Equestrian World Class" Program) and Brendan Murray (team farrier for eventing) were pitching in just like everyone else in the British organization. They were laying stall mats,  fluffing bedding, assembling wheelbarrows, and sweating in the Kentucky sun.


Thanks to our colleague Samantha Clark of the 2010 Radio Show on Horse Radio Network, the Hoof Blog is able to share this video interview with Brendan and Haydn with you. It's probably a good thing--in a few days they'll be way too busy to stop and chat.


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© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

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Another Shed Row Heard From

Yesterday's blog story about the things that people see every day but don't stop to capture in photographs prompted Ada Gates to send in this photo from California. What do you see here? Two men in aprons. One working, one watching, right? "Here's my shed row picture," Ada wrote. "The apprentice learning from his boss farrier. I just thought it was sweet, and thankful the learning goes on." This is a timeless pose; apprentices have stood just like that with their hands on their knees for hundreds of years. Farrier apprentices aren't supposed to blink. Thanks, Ada!

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Video Humor: David Letterman Shoes a Horse with Farrier Ada Gates Patton

14 February 2010 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com

Here's my Valentine to the hoof world: the ultimate weekend humor video. I'll never top this one. Where were you the night when farriers stayed up late to watch one of their own on the big stage in New York City? The night one of their own upstaged the great David Letterman? The night David Letterman lost control of his own show? Ada Gates Patton is in a league of her own. The fact that she was the first woman licensed to shoe horses at a racetrack in the United States is only the beginning of the story. A few years ago, we were in Kentucky for a convention and she made a special trip to Three Chimneys Farm to visit Wild Again, one of the horses on her list back in the 1980s, when he won the Breeders Cup Classic. Ada was international horsemen's liaison for the Breeders Cup in California, and coordinated farrier services for the 1984 Olympics in California. She tells wonderful stories about being shunned by trainers from the British Isles during the Breeders Cup; they went looking for a man to shoe their horses. When the call came for shoes from a French trainer, Ada picked up her shoeing box and headed over, expecting the worst. Instead, the Frenchman had the opposite reaction and welcomed her as if she had been sent by the gods.

Ada is originally from New York; she is a descendant of Henry Burden, a Scottish immigrant who invented the first machine to manufacture horseshoes. His machines are credited with helping the North win the Civil War; his factories stretched forever along the banks of the Hudson River in Troy, New York and Burden horseshoes supplied the US cavalry for decades. Henry would never have dreamed that women would someday shoe horses, let alone one of his descendants, but Ada made the history books too.

Today, Ada owns and runs Harry Patton Horseshoeing Supplies near Santa Anita, and serves farriers all over California. The business was started by her late husband, the famous racetrack shoer Harry Patton, and she has built it into a multi-store retail chain, with business partner Michael De Leonardo in northern California.

Ada stares up at the derelict but grand church built by her great-great-grandfather so that horseshoe factory workers had a place to worship. She saved the church from demolition through a loophole in the deed that made a provision for a descendant of the founder to lay claim. What would Henry Burden think of one of his descendants selling horseshoes?

Ada is originally from New York, and she is the great great grand-daughter of Henry Burden, the inventor of the horseshoe-making machine. We reconnected her with her roots a few years ago by explaining that her family's church would be torn down if she didn't claim the deed and save it--which she did, and subsequently opened the beautiful old church and invited our Hoofcare@Saratoga tour group of farriers in for lunch as part of one of our tours of the Burden Iron Works.

Last year Ada was honored in her family's church by the Burden Iron Works Museum and its preservation efforts. The image at right is the outline of the Burden horseshoe company's office building, which now houses the museum. The museum and Ada found each other through Hoofcare & Lameness Journal and our Hoofcare@Saratoga program and tour of the museum. The museum is dedicated to preserving the history of horseshoe manufacturing in Troy, New York.

Today, Ada is busy selling shoes. But she recently "joined up" with one of her old shoeing clients, California horseman Monty Roberts, and the two made a DVD together on hoofcare and horsemanship for hard-to-shoe horses. She teaches simple hoof balance principles at horse owner events and markets a hoof ruler to help them keep track of changes in their horses' hooves' dimensions. Horse Illustrated profiled Ada's pioneering career spirit in this tribute article. Ada is one person who never forgot where she came from, and is not done getting to where she's going. She's still giving us all a lot of laughs along the way, and digging this video up out of the 1990s will insure that more people around the world join in. Monitor Hoofcare News on Twitter.com! Follow @hoofcarejournal!

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

"Women and Horses" Expo Includes Hoof Clinic with Ada Gates Patton

Those were the days: Ada Gates Patton dragged her stalljack, tool box, apron, and a horse from the Metropolitan Opera's production of Aida onto the stage of Late Night with David Letterman. Once she buckled her apron onto Letterman, they got to work nailing a shoe on the saint of a horse. This weekend, Ada will teach women to use her new hoof measuring ruler to keep records of changes in their horses' hooves.

Whe Women and Horses Expo premieres this weekend (October 24th through 26th) at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Missouri with three days of great equestrian entertainment, education and exhibitions, there will be one woman in the crowd who will be proud to be wearing an apron.

At an event like this, you'd expect demonstrations and clinics by respected horse trainers such as Julie Goodnight, Sue de Laurentis, Cheryl Childs and Donna Maye West. Entertainment from someone like Templeton Thompson, the Texas-born singer/songwriter would be a real bonus. The Women and Horses Expo will deliver three days of equestrienne-oriented programs and attractions!

But wait, there's more! Ada Gates will put her apron to good use and share information about horseshoeing and trimming with the audience.

Ada Gates Patton was the first woman in the United States and Canada to be licensed to shoe Thoroughbred race horses on the track. She shod horses for Monty Roberts at Hollywood Park and at Monty's Flag Is Up Farms during the late 70's and through the 80's. Ada has received advanced training in the Join Up methods and is currently being filmed for a DVD with Monty Roberts on hoofcare for his education series.

Ada should be quite at ease on stage; she has had more publicity than any other American farrier because of her burst through California's anvil ceiling back in the 1970s. She's been on the Today Show and old-time tv shows like "What's My Line" and "I've Got a Secret", not to mention a hilarious stint on 1980s late night television when she taught David Letterman to nail on a shoe.

Ada owns Harry Patton Horseshoeing Supplies in Monrovia, California and works on educational projects with Monty Roberts. Harry Patton was Ada's late husband, and a well-known racetrack horseshoer in California.

With Sedalia only half-a-day's drive from some of the biggest cities in the eight states bordering Missouri (and only about 375 miles from Dallas, Texas, for example!) and a region containing one of the largest horse populations in the country, the Expo is a great choice for a short weekend trip for all horsewomen in the eight state area, and a super source for holiday season shopping, with vendors offering everything for horse and rider as well as horse lovers of all ages!

© 2008 Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing

Monty Roberts Joins Up with Farriers, Hosts Clinic at California Ranch

Join-Up® With Your Farrier! Is the title of an interesting new clinic to be hosted later this month (January 19-20) by natural horsemanship maestro Monty Roberts at his Flag Is Up Farm in Solvang, California, near Santa Barbara.

In fact, Monty has “re-joined” up with his former farrier, Ada Gates Patton of Pasadena, and the two will offer expertise to both farriers and horse owners.

Both Ada and Monty are concerned about farriers being injured by frightened or untrained horses; they are also concerned about the safety of nervous horses who are often on cross-ties.

Here's what Monty has to say about people whose horses won't behave for the farrier:

"In every country I have visited, I have found that some people believe that the farrier can educate the horse himself when it comes to standing and behaving while the footwork is done. This is an unacceptable mind-set. A farrier is a professional and should be treated as such. His expertise is to care for your horse’s feet, not to train him.

"While it is true that some farriers are also good horsemen and quite capable of doing the training, most horse owners do not plan to pay the farrier for training services. The farrier often feels that he is being taken advantage of and should not be required to take the time necessary to train. This can result in short tempers, and horses dealt with in an inappropriate way. While farriers are generally physically fit, muscular and capable of administering harsh treatment, should something like this occur, the blame should rest with the people securing their services, and not the farrier."

In his book, Monty describes a mophead-like tool that he uses to get a horse accustomed to activity around its feet from a safe distance; he describes it on his web site, too.

Monty and Ada will work with farriers and horse owners to demonstrate simple training and handling techniques, with the aim of conquering the specific fears that some horses have of farriers and/or having their feet handled.

Ada will also demonstrate simple methods of hoof measuring that she uses to evaluate hoof balance and achieve a more level, balanced trim.

The fee is $150 per day, and the clinics will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.

Please call Flag Is Up Farm at (805) 688-3483 for more information and to reserve space.

Flag Is Up is located at 901 East Highway 246 in Solvang.

Traction Counts at the Rose Parade (Just Ask Ada)

In 1932, movie star Mary Pickford rode in the parade.

It wouldn’t be New Year’s Day without Pasadena, California's Rose Parade, America’s most extravagant (and fragrant) parade. It’s mostly about flowers—every float in the parade is made out of flowers, but it's about horses, too. Hundreds of them!

Draft horses pull floats. Four matched chestnut Quarter horses pull a Wells Fargo stagecoach. Mounted posses. Painted Indian ponies. And, this year, even some of the US Equestrian Team riders hopped on borrowed horses and joined in the parade.

What do all those horses have in common? At sometime during the night last night, each and every horse was visited by a woman with a flashlight and a clipboard.

For the seventh year in a row, Pasadena resident (and farrier) Ada Gates Patton was up way before dawn and marched through a half-mile long string of vans and horse trailers and picked up the left front foot of each and every horse. (Ada is an icon of American farriery and was the first woman licensed to shoe horses on a racetrack in America.)

This morning, Ada was looking to see what was on the bottom of the horses’ feet. The parade route is five miles (not counting the staging area) and a horse slipping on the pavement or worse yet, falling, is not something that would enhance the image of the parade.

So, Ada checks that each horse is either a) barefoot or b) shod with either Borium or Drilltek hardfacing or c) nailed with Duratrack “hard head” nails. Plastic shoes are also an option. I asked her if hoof boots were allowed; she said they are not on her list.

Here’s Ada’s report:

1. No increase in barefoot horses this year. As usual, the minis, the Peruvian Pasos, and the Bashkir Curlies were barefoot.
2. The Marines used Borium on the shoes of the Palominos in their color guard that led the parade.
3. No Drilltek was seen by Ada who then quipped, “Well, it was pitch dark out there and it’s hard to tell in the dark if it’s Borium or Drilltek.”
4. Draft horses tended to wear rubber shoes, like you’d see on city carriage horses.

“The biggest increase is the move toward Duratrack nails,” Ada said. “I’ve been pushing them in that direction. I was surprised to see that some used as many as six Duratracks in one shoe. It's a no-brainer. The Duratracks (nail heads) are good for about five miles on pavement, which is the length of the parade.”

Ada said that no horses slipped and there were no mishaps, as far as she knew, and there haven't been any since she has been inspecting the horses for the Parade committee.

Ada said that she had full compliance today from the horsemen. No one needed to have their horses re-shod. She mentioned that one group of silver-saddled Palominos from Long Beach brings two farriers "just in case" but there was no official farrier on hand. There were, however, three veterinarians and a humane society horse ambulance standing by.

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