The Royal Veterinary College has announced the graduation of the first group of American farrier students to compete the Graduate Diploma in Equine Locomotor Research (Grad Dip ELR). Launched in 2017, it is the first course of its kind, and offers professional farriers in both the US and the UK the chance to gain the necessary skill-set to produce original research and increase the evidence base behind farriery.
Showing posts with label Pat Reilly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pat Reilly. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 09, 2020
First US farriers graduate from Royal Veterinary College's Graduate Diploma in Equine Locomotor Research
The Royal Veterinary College has announced the graduation of the first group of American farrier students to compete the Graduate Diploma in Equine Locomotor Research (Grad Dip ELR). Launched in 2017, it is the first course of its kind, and offers professional farriers in both the US and the UK the chance to gain the necessary skill-set to produce original research and increase the evidence base behind farriery.
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
BEVA Congress 2019 program to focus on sport horse hoofcare, lameness
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
ESP 1.0 Event: First Equine Soundness Professionals seminar details for March 16 in Florida
Veterinarians and farriers have a chance to be part of history on Saturday, March 16 when the new Equine Soundness Professionals ("ESP") organization hosts its first open seminar in Wellington, Florida. Advance registration is required to attend.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Equine Soundness Professionals Organization Launches Credential Testing; March Seminar Planned
After just six weeks of intensive planning and organizing, the new Equine Soundness Professionals group is ready to begin voluntary testing for qualified member veterinarians and farriers.
Monday, December 10, 2018
New farrier/vet podiatry organization launched for US professionals
Texas farrier David Gilliam has a vision. The accomplished hunter/jumper farrier stopped talking about the way he thinks things should be and started doing something about it on December 6, when he launched a website for a new synergistic interprofessional association, Equine Soundness Professionals (ESP).
Thursday, June 09, 2016
Pennsylvania Court Petitioned to Require State to Resume Racetrack Farrier License Tests
The document petitions the Pennsylvania judicial system to direct the Racing Commission to follow its own law regarding the requirements to obtain a license to shoe horses on the grounds of Penn National and other Thoroughbred racetracks in the state.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
AAEP Convention 2015 Podiatry Workshop Announcement
When they talk about hoofing it on the Vegas Strip, the AAEP wants to make sure it's done right.
The 61st Convention of the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) is planned for December 5-9, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year, the convention kicks off with a full-day podiatry workshop on Saturday, December 5. The schedule and registration details are shared here but you should check the AAEP convention website for updates and changes that may be made.
This event is sponsored by Vetel Diagnostics, Akorn Animal Health, and SmartPak.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Hoofcare History: Unravelling the Tangled Past, One Horseshoe at a Time
You'll need a half hour to watch this video. Then you might need the rest of your life to read, research and do your part in documenting the unwritten history of horseshoeing. Thanks to the University of Pennsylvania for videotaping this talk of Pat Reilly, farrier at the University's New Bolton Center.
Horseshoeing history is full of gaps, as Pat Reilly mentions again and again in this talk. It resembles nothing less than a wheel of Swiss cheese. It is full of holes. In fact, it contains more holes than cheese.
Remember that the next time you buy some cheese. Or buy into anyone else's interpretation of the history of horseshoeing.
The Coast Guard employed plenty of farriers during World War II when US beaches were patrolled on horseback; they were looking for German U-boats. (© US Coast Guard image) |
How many people stop to actually read the old books? Most are satisfied with the drawings and plates, and never read the text. Much of the "wisdom" we quote today was not written by farriers at all, but by commercial promoters or agricultural societies bent on improving horse husbandry by advancing farriery...sometimes without ever consulting a farrier.
Pat Reilly lumps together the history of farriers and the history of horseshoeing and while it seems that the two are flip sides of the same coin, they are both huge and separate subjects. The history of farriers is a metaphor for the history of human labor, and can demonstrate all the industrial phases of mechanization of labor, the social and political side of Labor, and the role and status of the specialized laborer within the military of various nations.
Possibly the first non-military farrier schools in America were the "Indian Schools" like this one in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. These Sioux boys were shipped east to learn to be horseshoers. |
People have poked at building a better horseshoe with the same interest as the cliche of building a better mousetrap: if it could just be done, life would be easier, and the animal would benefit from a kinder device.
But here we are, more than 2000 years from those ancient first horseshoes dug up in Europe, and we're still at it, trying to get to the root of hoof problems in horses.
No archeologist has ever jumped for joy at discovering an ancient mousetrap. But the evolution of the horseshoe is a way of documenting progress across centuries.
We can't see where we're going if we can't see where we have been.
I know a lot of people are interested in farrier history, but yet there are not enough of them. Of you. Of me. If you have read this far, you must be interested.
Old farrier books are great, but you need to research the credentials of the authors. Figuring out why a book was written can be an education in itself. |
So you want to learn about farrier history? Have at it. Pick a hole in the past--any hole, on any continent, in any period of history, in any language--and start researching. Stay in that hole until you fill it in, then move on to another one. But when you fill it in, stop and share it with the rest of us.
Farriery has no headquarters. It has no library building with ivy-covered walls. The answers we need are not in books, however. The farrier books are just soldiers at the gate.
The answers are buried in the books of military, social and labor history. They're in the patent office records. They are in the town and state historical museums where old blacksmith shops and horse nail and shoe manufacturers' records are watched over by amateur historians who don't even understand what was manufactured in their own towns.
The answers are buried in footnotes and appendices and boxes of clutter marked "unreferenced manuscripts"--boxes that no one has ever asked to open.
I've always wanted to start a Horseshoeing History Society, but feared it would disband before it even started, out of the sheer weight of the mission, or be dismissed by academic historians who purport that there is no way to validate the lost "history" that farriery lacks, just as we are finding it so difficult to come to grips with the oxymoron of "evidence-based farriery".
Why did the World's Fair in St. Louis have this building with a horseshoe theme? |
If academic historians knew about the gaping cheese holes, they might send graduate students our way. And perhaps, one day, farriery might be freed from the curse of cyclically repeating--or prolonging--its past.
If you're with me, claim your hole in the cheese wheel and climb in. Surround yourself. Nourish yourself by studying the solid cheese that does exist. Then jump off the cliff. Pick a date on the calendar and pledge to report back on what you find. You might come back defeated, you might come back haunted by ghosts, you might come back cynical and confused.
Then again, it just might change your life.
No one--and no profession--moves forward without coming to grips with the past. Remember this, too: It's entirely possible that farriery needs to turn its back on the past, to hold a funeral and declare itself once and for all defunct, so that the real future can begin. If that is so, the past might tell us where to go from here.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Vet School Farriers: Change on the Hoof
An article caught my eye today on the web site of the University of California at Davis College of Veterinary Medicine. One of the largest and most horse-specialist vet schools in the country has two farriers on staff now, Marc Gleeson (in the UC Davis photo above) and Bill Merfy. And former farrier Kirk Adkins is still around, teaching a hoof science course for undergrads. The article started me thinking about how hooves are being served at vet schools.
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