Veterinary and Farrier Federations Join Forces to Promote Best Practices for Equine Welfare Across Europe

The Federation of European Equine Veterinary Associations (FEEVA) and the European Federation of Farriers Associations (EFFA) have joined forces to promote best practices in farriery across Europe.

The initiative, according to a press release issued today, is the result of recognition by both organizations that "equine welfare is best served with the use of only properly trained farriers, working closely with veterinary surgeons as and when needed."

Professor Slater of the
Royal Veterinary College (UK)

The main aims of the new partnership include:

• Improving the welfare of the horse by encouraging the highest standards of hoof trimming and shoeing by means of a certified farrier;
• Encouraging close working between farriers and veterinary surgeons on the therapeutic treatment of horses’ hooves; and
• Encouraging the education of the horse-owning public to make use of certified farriers who guarantee the art and science of farriery.

The President of FEEVA, Professor Josh Slater of Great Britain was quoted as saying: “We look forward to working together at European level and encouraging member associations to do the same at national level, with the primary intention of enhancing equine health through first-class farriery.”

FEEVA and EFFA have 17 and 15 member nations, respectively. EFFA was formed in Paris in 1997 while FEEVA was created in Strasbourg in 1998.

EFFA sanctions the Europe-wide qualification of "Certified Euro-Farrier" as announced by Hoofcare and Lameness in 2008. Some individual nations have designations of qualifications as well.

Certified Euro Farrier statistics for Europe at the end of 2011 were: Austria 58; Czech Republic 8; Denmark 115; Finland 78; Germany 108; Netherlands 261; Spain (Catalonia) 8; Sweden 17; Switzerland 87; and United Kingdom 29, for a total of 769 qualified Euro Farriers across the continent.

In late 2011, EFFA also approved the Irish Farrier Education and Qualification Program for Euro Farrier designation.

In most EFFA member countries, farriery is regulated; only France and the Czech Republic have advanced farriery to a protected professional level. Only one member nation, Hungary, has no regulation of the practice of farriery.

Photo of Professor Slater is from the Hoofcare + Lameness Journal archives.

© 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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Postural Sway Research for Lameness Examination May Be Relevant in the Future

by Fran Jurga and Sarah Miles | 29 December 2008 | Fran Jurga's Hoof BlogSarah Miles reports on some of the latest research being conducted at the McPhail Center for Equine Peformance at Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine:

While attending Equinology's gait analysis class at the McPhail Center in October, our group was privileged to attend a presentation by McPhail researcher Dr. Sandra Nauwelaerts, a Belgian biologist.

Nauwelaerts gathers up foals soon after they are born and puts them on the force plate to see how they stabilize themselves and then continues to measure this throughout their development. The resulting pattern of data is called the “stabilogram.”

She has just begun to collect her data, so her project still falls strictly into the category of hypothesis, but the potential for impact on the world of equine performance seems profound.

The stabilograms, thus far, show that foals show greater instability, or rocking, cranially to caudally as opposed to laterally, while adult horses — though clearly designed for forward motion— show more lateral sway.

While Nauwelaerts does not offer a hypothesis for this (yet!), she did make the connection between these findings and observing the stability of both lame and neuropathic horses. Thus far, stabilograms from horses with diagnosed neuropathy show a higher instability and more cranial/caudal deviation, than the stabilograms of normal horses.

Further, when blindfolds are placed on both sound and neuropathic horses, thus far, those with neuropathy show greater deviation than the sound horses. Additionally, lame horses could potentially show greater instability around the limb that they avoiding loading.

The data is still being collected, marker by marker and horse by horse at The McPhail Center, so it is premature to get excited. But for a moment there, in the glow of the gait analysis runway's infrared lights, it was possible to imagine a world where lame horses do not have to be injected with nerve blocks and run in circles, but just asked to stand quietly on a force plate to identify the compromised limb, or where horses with neuropathy can be easily and confidently identified before lengthy and expensive diagnostics are employed.

These ideas are, again, only hypotheses and have yet to be borne out by the extensive data collection and analysis that will be necessary for the research to be published.

Equinology’s next course in Biomechanics and Gait Analysis (EQ300MSU) with Dr. Hilary Clayton at The McPhail Center is Oct. 12-15 2009. An understanding of basic anatomic and veterinary vocabulary is a prerequisite for this class. Visit www.equinology.com for more information.

Hoofcare Publishing would like to thank Sarah for her work as stand-in journalist during the 2008 McPhail Equinology course.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. 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.

Best of 2008: A Class Act at the McPhail Center's Equinology Gait Seminar

by Fran Jurga | 29 December 2008 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

I had a wild plan and approached Dr. Hilary Clayton of Michigan State University's McPhail Center for Equine Performance with my proposal: a camp for professional at her research center, where we could learn about high-tech gait analysis and help her with a research project.

With her usual British chipper nonchalance, she replied. "Ok, come in October then. It's already in the works." The Equinology group had a course planned at the McPhail Center and it was to be open to equine professionals in search of a deeper exposure to the high-tech side of equine biomechanics.

As it turned out, I wasn't able to be there, but Sarah Miles provided a wonderful report, from which these comments are taken:

The McPhail Center, located at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University in East Lansing, is one of the few university labs designed expressly for studying equine biomechanics. It is a fantastic facility — our classroom looked into the covered riding arena where research staff and students collect data with the horses.

When Dr. Clayton dramatically lifted the curtains on the riding arena the first day, a collective gasp of awe went up from the group. She told us that the building's vaulted ceiling design actually is borrowed from church architecture, so we really were having a religious experience, of sorts! But perhaps that explains the sense of “entering the inner sanctum” that one gets from learning from this world-renowned equine biomechanics expert and her staff and students in the lab designed just for their research.

Of course, what is really interesting about the arena is primarily along one side, where eight infrared video cameras collect data from horses lit like Christmas trees (Dr. Clayton’s words), as their anatomical markers move through the cameras’ shimmering red field of vision. It is one thing to hear Dr. Clayton describe the process of research and data collection, and another to experience it for yourself.

Horses' joints are marked with photosensitive styrofoam balls that will light up under infrared camera exposure. (McPhail Center photo courtesy of Dr Hilary Clayton)

The end result of the gait analysis is a stick-horse animation showing the horse in motion on the computer screen. A further sophistication of this system creates a 3D rendering. (McPhail Center photo courtesy of Dr Hilary Clayton)

Dr. Narelle Stubbs, the equine physiotherapist who co-wrote Activate Your Horse’s Core with Dr. Clayton and lab manager LeeAnn Kaiser helped us to tape all the markers on the horse in the right spots. LeeAnn showed us how they calibrate the cameras, create a template, collect the data, connect the dots, and generate three-dimensional computer animation of the horse in motion. The data is also logged into spreadsheets and analyzed for the results of any given project. Dr. Clayton explained that this technology is very similar to how they created “Golem” in Lord of the Rings.

A lecture by Dr. Clayton on the function of the stifle offered her untested hypothesis (stemming from the fact that the torque on the stifle joint is in the back of the joint) that the horse’s hamstring muscles are more important in the action of the stifle than the quads. Her thinking on this was that dressage horses are asked to work as though they are “sitting.” A student with experience in ballet volunteered the ballerina's plie support system of standing on the toes while engaging the hamstrings and adductors so that the quads are more relaxed and not the sole source of support. He even demonstrated the plie for the class!

In this research project, a rider's rein tension in measured. Rein tension can be compared between riders or to understand how different bits or the components of a bridle and reins are working. (McPhail Center photo courtesy of Dr Hilary Clayton)

Other highlights of the course included how the force plates work, and a riding demonstration of an electronic pad placed beneath the saddle to measure the pressure it puts on the horse’s back as he performs different activities, and an afternoon spent practicing core mobilization and strengthening exercises for horses with Dr. Stubbs.

The winter edition of this Equinology course is held at Writtle College in England in January and is sold out. Equinology’s next USA course, Biomechanics and Gait Analysis (EQ300MSU), with Dr. Clayton at The McPhail Center will be held October 12-15, 2009. An understanding of basic anatomic and veterinary vocabulary is a prerequisite for this class. Visit www.equinology.com for more information.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. 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.