Vampire Bats: Why horses should be afraid of vampires--and not just on Halloween

Vampire bats in South and Central America love horse hooves. They frequently feed at the coronet, where the blood is close to the surface. Besides being creepy, vampire bats are the leading reservoir of rabies virus in Central and South America and have recently been identified as a host that easily spreads bartonella bacteria. Newly deforested landscapes are now home to domestic livestock; vampire bat populations have flourished with the captive animals so easily available to bite. Officials in Texas are now warning that common vampire bats have crossed the Rio Grande into the United States.

Until recently, most of us only thought about vampires once a year, on October 31. But that is about to change. While Count Dracula may be a figment of literary imagination, the real-life inspiration for his story is alive and well and spreading rapidly through recently deforested regions of South and Central America.

Horses, horseowners and horse professionals: Consider yourselves warned. Like the killer bees who paved the path, vampire bats may be headed your way. And they're bringing dangerous diseases with them.

Halloween: The Original "Jack o'Lantern" Was a Grumpy Blacksmith with a Glowing Lump of Coal

by Fran Jurga | 31 October 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog


So here's the way the story goes...I'll tell the short version because it's an Irish story and you know how long they can be.

There once was an Irish blacksmith named Jack. He was a miserable man, and he spent his nights in the pub trying to make everyone around him miserable, too.

One night he made a deal for one more drink, but he had no money so it had to be paid for by the Devil.

The devil demanded to be paid back, but Jack tricked the Devil. That's never a good idea. The Devil promised Jack that he'd take his soul.

When the blacksmith died, he was refused admission to heaven for all his evil, selfish deeds, and foul moods. He was sent straight to the gates of hell.

Whom do you think was waiting for Jack? 

The Devil was standing at the gates to Hell. He immediately recognized Jack as the Irish blacksmith who had cheated him. The devil crossed his arms and refused to let Jack into hell.

Where was Jack supposed to go? The Devil didn't care, but Jack had better get going. Jack pleaded for a coal from Hell's fires so he might see his way as he wandered out through the darkness.

The Devil granted his wish and squashed a glowing coal into a half-eaten turnip. He handed it to Jack with a smirk.

The grouchy old blacksmith wandered off and guess what? He wandered forevermore. He's still out there, they believe in Ireland.

It's said that Jack's piece of glowing coal in a turnip could be seen across the Irish countryside at night as he wandered aimlessly, the ultimate ghost.

And of course, as a smith, Jack would have had the skill to keep the coal ember going. He made the most of the devil's generosity.

Irish children began to imitate Jack's lantern and Irish-American children switched from turnips to pumpkins on this side of the Atlantic.

And so it is that so many of us still place glowing vegetables on our doorsteps on Halloween to scare away the haunted souls...like Jack, the grumpy, cheapskate, old blacksmith who is out there somewhere, tonight.

--Fran Jurga

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She Strolls Through the Horse Fair on Halloween...

by Fran Jurga | 31 October 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog


I've been saving this picture for today. It's from a portfolio of images, mainly farriers, taken at the Smithfield Horse Market in Dublin, Ireland, one of the last urban horse sales in western Europe. The travelers bring horses and ponies and donkeys into the city the first Sunday of each month to sell or trade them. They've been doing it exactly this way, in the shadow of the Jameson's whiskey distillery, since 1665, as much as the city has tried to stop this chaotic manure-producing festivity. Dublin is one of the last cities where horses are kept within the city by private owners, many by young boys who tether them on any available greenspace.

One Dublin photographer, Teresa O'Brien, is especially taken with the farriers who skip church and show up to shoe the horses at the market before they are sold. But she only photographs their hands. I've never seen the rest of these men. Later, she moves through the crowd and her lens finds a hand on rusty hames or in this case the hand of a traveler (gypsy) matriarch's multi-ringed fingers.

Imagine this woman draped in her long dark hooded coat and leaning on her cane. She is walking among the horses on a chilly October morning. She speaks to no one. Is she buying or selling or is there something spooky going on here? Is she the ghost of horse markets past?

Click here to read a little more about and see a little more about Smithfield Horse Market.

Smithfield Horse Market and the gypsy horse fairs of Ireland and England are some of the last horse fairs. I grew up staring at a print of the painting The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur (above; the original painting is 16 feet long and hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City). It is still one of my favorite paintings because there is so much going on and the horses are so well-formed.

But if you think about it, what will go on this Sunday morning at Smithfield hasn't changed much from Bonheur's basic scene, which shows the horse market in Paris in the 1800s. Someone should document the few horse fairs that still exist. I know there are still big ones in India and Mongolia--where else are they still held?

Boo! Halloween Hoof Face in German Farrier Shop

There's nothing funny about a keratoma but German farrier Loic Entwistle couldn't resist the temptation to turn this hoof into a jack o' lantern. Or is it the face of a ghost that made this photo suggest Halloween?

It looks like this foot may be growing out after a keratoma (hornsaule in German) in the toe of the hoof wall was surgically removed, and was brought back to the hospital for a trim and clean-up of the wall defect. The veterinarian probably marked the hoof wall area to be cleaned up with a marker...and it became a face!

A keratoma is a benign or non-cancerous tumor made of horn. I think they are either more commonly found in Europe or they are more aggressive in removing them as European farrier textbooks always have lots of photos of keratomas and they even explain the different types based on where in the wall the tumor is located and describe the common shapes the tumors will take depending on location.

Even though a keratoma can reside uneventfully inside a horse's hoof wall for a long time, it can also sometimes grow large enough to press against soft tissue and/or the coffin bone, or cause chronic abscessing.

To learn more about keratomas, read "Hoof Wall Resection and Reconstruction for a Tubular Defect" by Andrew Poyntom FWCF in Hoofcare and Lameness #78, and the chapter on different types of keratomas in the book Hoof Problems by Rob Van Nassau, available from Hoofcare Books. (Click here to learn more about this book and order your copy.)

If you read German, another excellent treatise on keratomas is in Uwe Lukas's Gesunde Hufe-kein Zufall available from the German Equestrian Federation's online bookshop.

Many thanks to Loic Entwistle and his amazing photo library for the loan of this image.