World Equestrian Games Farriers: Other Countries Heard From

The World Equestrian Games had a staff of French farriers on staff at the vet hospital; here you see two credentials for Jean Michel Goubault and Fabrice Cave. Nigel said they worked at Haras du Pin, the National Stud in Normandy.

The whole world was there, so there were bound to be more farrier pictures to show you. Thanks to British farrier Nigel Perrott, eventing team farrier for Ireland, who snapped (and shared) these photos.

Hoofcare@WEG: What's Inside the French Farrier's Tool Bag?

Click on an arrow to start the slide show. You should also be able to navigate to the images' pages on Flickr.com to see them in a larger size.

It all started early in the evening. I guess it was meant to be French night. I strolled through the Normandy pavilion here at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. Inside was a poster showing a shoe being forged on the face of an anvil. It was promoting the 2014 World Equestrian Games, which will be held in Normandy. It was just a nice photo until I looked closely at the shoe in the picture and saw how the toe had been creased.

It seems like a good omen that the 2014 Games would include a horseshoe image in their promotion. I was happy as I headed to the show jumping arena. And then I saw him.

He slipped through the barrier without making a disturbance but something made me look over at him. Hundreds of people were walking by. But only one carried a beautiful leather bag over this shoulder. The very same type of leather bag I'd seen used by farriers in France. Made of saddle leather with a long shoulder strap, these bags bounce on French farriers' hips as they walk. You wouldn't fill one with sandwiches or Lego pieces: this is a special bag, a part of a farrier's life.

 I set off after him. 

I had heard that France had sent a farrier, but he had been eluding me for two weeks. I couldn't let him get away.

I felt like a wide receiver on a football team. I zigged and zagged through the warmup arena. Took a left at Sapphire, circled the $8 million Saudi horse, zipped behind a couple of Brazilians. I could still see him up ahead. He was headed to the top warmup ring, tool bag bouncing along through the crowd.

When I caught up with him, I was out breath. And that's when I learned that he spoke no English so I had to interview him in French, which means that none of the information in this article may be what he meant to say. But he was very nice about everything.

David Le Corre lives near Toulouse in France and is his country's sole farrier at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. He has been busy these weeks in America, and tomorrow will be hard at work with all the farriers out on the marathon course. He dutifully posed with one of the French team horses and showed me its left front foot, which was shod with a plastic plad and a frog cutout, for what little frog the horse had.

And that is when things started to fall apart. I asked David about his tool bag, could I take a photo of it?

He obviously thought that I was asking if I could see what was in it, which I would never ask. I realize that the contents of a tool bag like that are personal, like the contents of a woman's purse. But in a split second, the beautiful leather flap was thrown open and shoes were spilling out onto the ground.

Shoes were taped together and clearly marked "droit" and "gauche" (left and right). Nearly every shoe in the bag had a pad attached to it. There were Luwex plastic mesh pads, full leather pads, leather rim pads, and impression material.

David obviously likes two things: leather pads and aluminum shoes. He even likes the two together. In the photo of the single rolled wide-web aluminum shoe, you can see what the studs will go. He has it set up with a leather pad, and if you look closely you can see where it has been scored for the frog to be cut out. The circles marked on the pad on either side of the frog will be punched out so that silicon or some other  support material can be injected under the pad, while the frog stays open to the air and able to touch the ground and be functional, with luck.

I sheepishly helped David put all the shoes back in the bag and thanked him. He settled down to check rider Penelope LePrevost's horse's feet and adjusted the big black band over the heel bulbs.

Like all the farriers here, he had a lot of work to do. The groom chatted happily to him in French. I imagined she was saying, "David, that woman chased you across three warmup arenas, who IS that?" and David answered, "I have no idea."

Note: Be sure to read the comment about David, which is a blog story in itself, in which David's effort to glue a shoe on one of the French team horses is aided and abetted by Alan Orville Dryg, one of the AFA farriers! Just click on the comment link. Alan had a French farrier tool bag experience too!

© 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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Favorite Video: A Horseshoe Is Born

by Fran Jurga, originally published October 28, 2008 at www.hoofcare.blogspot.com.

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I remember the first time I ever set foot in a horseshoe factory. It was in Australia. Carl O'Dwyer was squiring me around. We were off to the races or something when he stopped by the factory (O'Dwyer Horseshoes). It didn't occur to him that I would want to see the factory part of the business. Then he couldn't get me out of there. I remember his shoes were made by young Irish girls wielding huge tongs. I took rolls and rolls of film and not a single photo captured what I felt I really saw in that place.

If you haven't ever seen a horseshoe assembly line, it's quite an operation. There are two popular ways to make horseshoes commercially. One is to drop-forge and the other is to turn. Drop-forging is the "American" style. Turning is the European style, as used by Kerckhaert and Werkman.

American horseshoers were in a real battle in the early 1980s. Many farriers felt that the "keg" (machinemade) shoes available to them just weren't good enough and there was a call for "real" farriers to handmake all their shoes if they cared about properly shoeing the horse. Then two things happened in 1985: The first was that the Carlson family took over the St Croix Forge horseshoe company in Minnesota and pledged to design and make a superior American-made shoe. Which, to everyone's amazement, they did.

The second thing was that a charming Frenchman named Jean-Claude Faure came to an American Farrier's convention with a turned shoe from his Faure factory in Europe. He walked around the convention in elegant clothing carrying shoes in the pockets of his suit jacket. He did not speak English. He would pull a shoe from his pocket and ask a farrier to hold it, to look at it. For most of them, it was the first time they had seen a turned shoe or any shoe punched for E-head nails. (European shoes typically use European e-head nails; American shoes are punched to fit City head nails, but that's another story.)

While the farrier politely looked at the shoe and peered through those big nail holes, the gallant Mr. Faure grinned at them and said the two words he had learned in English, "You like?" in a hopeful voice.

Leading farrier Bruce Daniels agreed to be Faure's dealer in the USA. Kerckhaert was right there and Werkman not far behind. Farrier conventions became international festivals, just as now we have the slick Italian designer aluminums and the Chinese and Malaysian imports from Asia.

In 1985, the European shoes were a revelation; they had clips built into the shoes. They came in lefts and rights and fronts and hinds, with toe clips or side clips: an inventory nightmare. And they fit the new wave of big-footed European warmbloods that were becoming popular in America. St Croix geared up and answered the Euro challenge, inspiring improvements from all US shoe manufacturers. The golden age of horseshoe manufacturing dawned.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

In this clip you see snippets of the line at the Werkman factory in Holland. Most manufacturers are not eager to show their lines and equipment, and you will note that Werkman does not show the process in order, and you do not get to see how they make the clips, one of the steps that has always mystified me.

Two elements are missing from this video: the heat and the noise. Both are off the charts, if Werkman's factory is like others. But this video is a window into the world of horseshoes before they touch human hands, all with the matching mirror of a horse's hoof in mind.

Thanks to Werkman for this video clip; the horses have never had it so good.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online or received via a daily email through an automated delivery service.

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness, please visit our 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.

Comments to individual posts are welcome; please click on the comment icon at the bottom of the post. Comments are moderated.

Hot New French Horseshoe Design Uses Scalloped Onions to Catch Your Eye

Oo-la-la!! The French firm of Michel Vaillant has a hot new horseshoe design that would certainly win any design competition. The new Parabolic Sport Horse Shoe is side-clipped, with onion-esque heels that flow out in a graceful curve from the branches and then are scalloped where the heels meet the frog. They call it "ergonomic heel support" but Hoofcare & Lameness readers will remember that onion heels have their traditional roots, so to speak, in France.

Will it fit every foot? Can the onions be de-scalloped? It's too soon to tell, but the Parabolic Sport is an eyeful to behold. I wonder if they make a hind pattern? That might fit a USA front...Will they find their way across the Atlantic?

Lots more info, in French of course, at the Michel Vaillant web site.