USEF Horse Show Hoof Rules Announcement: Roadster Pony Heel Measurement

The United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) has selected the six competitions that will be required to take heel measurements from the first and fourth place ponies in Roadster and Hackney Roadster Pony Championships. The 2009 competitions include:

* River Ridge Charity - Columbus, OH (April 22-25)
* Midwest Charity - Springfield, IL (June 16-20)
* Lexington Junior League - Lexington, KY (July 6-11)
* Kentucky State Fair - Louisville, KY (August 23-29)
* Southeastern Charity – Conyers, GA (September 16-19)
* UPHA/American Royal - Kansas City, MO (November 17-21)

If you exhibit, own, or train (or, obviously, trim and shoe) Roadster or Hackney Roadster ponies, please read and understand USEF rules HK116.3 and RD112.2 which state:

“All Hackney Roadster and Roadster Ponies must be re-measured and issued new measurement cards prior to competing in licensed competitions for the year 2004 and beyond. In all Hackney Roadster or Roadster Pony championship/stake classes (except Junior divisions) at selected USEF competitions which will be notified in writing by USEF, the first place and fourth place ponies must allow a heel measurement to be taken immediately following the class to verify the heel measurement is at or below what is indicated on the current measurement card; a copy of which must be on file in the show office prior to the pony competing.

The heel measurement will be taken by the competition steward at a location determined by the measuring official and competition management. The heel measurement must be taken from the left bulb of the left front heel, from the skin line on the lower side of the coronary band with the ruler perpendicular to the flat surface. It is the trainer's or driver's decision and responsibility to determine if the pony will be hitched or unhitched for this measurement.

If the heel measurement is higher than the measurement on the pony's USEF measurement card, an overall height measurement must be performed by two measuring officials (See GR502.4) no later than one hour following the end of the session at the designated location. Any entry that exceeds the legal height limit will forfeit winnings in that class.

In the event there are fewer than four ponies in a class, the pony occupying the final placing will be measured. In the event of an emergency and the steward is unavailable to take the heel measurement immediately, competition management must appoint a representative to remain with the pony until the heel measurement can occur.”

Competition managers and stewards of the selected shows will be sent informational packets regarding how to conduct these measurements approximately 60 days prior to their show.

Any questions regarding these USEF rules or the 2009 competitions selected should be directed to Carrie Mortensen, USEF’s Director of Breeds and Western, via email at cmortensen@usef.org or by calling (859) 225-6986.

Thanks to USEF for this update.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

Heel Bulb Injuries 101: Big Brown's Latest Hoof Malady

Earlier today this blog provided details about the heel bulb injury that predicated the disappointing retirement of champion three-year-old Thoroughbred Big Brown. This post will give some background into the type of injury for those unfamiliar with foot anatomy and injury.

(Double click on photo for a much larger detail view.)

A horse's heel bulbs are similar to the fleshy part of the palm of your hand above the wrist, at the base of your thumb. The bulbs are in the back part of the foot, above the hairline and below the "waist" of the pastern. In this photo, which shows a foot cut in half, it is the brownish zone at the right that bulges out from the hoof. The heel bulbs are comprised of soft tissue, namely the digital cushion, a fat-cartilage mass that fills out the foot and provides multiple cushioning, circulation-enhancing and/or structural functions in maintaining the integrity and strength of the foot. The bulbs are covered with skin and hair and are not protected by hard hoof wall or sole. They are a vulnerable structure. (Photo courtesy of HorseScience.com)

This stakes horse at Keeneland suffered a heel injury that might have been similar to Big Brown's. Technically the heel bulbs are the area covered with hair, just below the horseshoer's thumb. The area was filled in and covered with acrylic and a glue on Polyflex shoe was applied by Curtis Burns. This photo was taken when the horse was well into the healing process. Sometimes the hind shoe scrapes down the back of the pastern over the heel bulbs and ripping off part of the heel or pulling off the front shoe. Thoroughbred racehorses frequently suffer from a grabbed quarter, heel bulb lacerations and coronet bruising and cuts because of toe grabs on their shoes. But, as Big Brown showed today, these injuries can occur even without toe grabs. Frequently a hind foot comes up and strikes the front foot when there is a gait abnormality, such as when horses are galloping on soft turf and the front foot stays on the ground a fraction of a second too long and the hind foot comes forward and strikes it. The injury frequently happens when horses scramble out of the starting gate, and can happen to hind feet when "clipping heels" with another horses. Some horses have conformational or coordination problems that designate them "hitters" and suffer from chronic lower leg and hoof injuries. They usually wear bandages, bell boots and have their hind shoes "set back" to reduce the chance of injury when training. Big Brown wore bell boots when schooling for the Belmont to protect his quarter crack patch.

One of Big Brown's feet in the spring of 2008: His heel bulbs are partially recruited into the hoof wall repair for his heel separations. (Ian McKinlay photo)

How bad can a heel bulb injury be? This is a case at the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital's Podiatry Clinic, as featured in issue #79 of Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Dr. Scott Morrison reconstructed the frog and over time, was able to restore the foot and the young Thoroughbred began its racing career wearing normal raceplates. Heel bulb injuries are common around farms, particularly wire cuts, horses catching a hoof in a cattle guard, pasture injuries, trailer loading mishaps, etc.

Aftermath of a heel bulb laceration: This ex-racehorse shows evidence of a severe injury earlier in its life. The horse is completely sound.


© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. All images and text protected to full extent of law. Permissions for use in other media or elsewhere on the web can be easily arranged.

This post was originally published on October 13, 2008 at http://www.hoofcare.blogspot.com. 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.

Another Word About Toe Grabs

Unless you are embedded in the world of horseshoes, you might not know what a toe grab is. It is cleat, basically, that protrudes from the toe area of a horse shoe. Many people believe that horses need something to push off from, particularly when leaving the gate, and the toe grab was designed to do that.

Toe grabs come in many lengths. The most extreme are Louisiana and Quarter horse toe grabs. Most racehorses wear regular or low-toe shoes if they have toe grabs, and most of them are on the hind feet.

Toe grabs are an adaptation of toe calks used on draft and driving horses that had to go over ice and snow in the old days. Part of a horse's maintenance in the winter included sharpening the calks. One of the major advances in horseshoeing in the late 19th century was the invention of the removable heel calk, which caused such a stir in American industry that federal intervention was needed! (But that's another story...)

Shoes are available with traction devices on the heels and they can also be added to the shoes if the track is slick or wet. Calks can also be forged or the tip of the heel of a race plate can be bent at an angle.

It is often said that the United States is the only country that allows toe grabs, and that is untrue. First of all, most racing around the world is on grass courses, especially Europe and Australia. Horsemen and horseshoers in those country are pretty horrified by the idea of toe grabs, but they also do not race on dirt.

Dave Erb of Victory Racing Plates shared with me a good rule of thumb. I asked him what countries allowed toe grabs. He said, "Anyplace with the word 'America' in it: North America, South America, Central America."

I've never forgotten that.

I think that the shoe manufacturers are a wealth of information about what works and what doesn't. I hope they will get involved in these discussions about shoeing rule changes and join us in Saratoga next month.

Note: "Hoofcare@Saratoga" will host two sessions specifically on racehorse shoes in the news. On August 5th, members of the Grayson Jockey Club Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit's Shoeing Committee will present new research and answer questions from 7 p.m. on at the Parting Pub in Saratoga Springs, NY. On August 12, a double session at both the National Museum of Racing (in the afternoon) and the Parting Glass (in the evening) will cover racing surfaces and hoof injuries.

Please see these other posts for more on toe grab rules; please note that most of the activity has occurred within 30 days of the recommendation from the Jockey Club:

(today)Hoofcare@Saratoga Event Series topics, week by week by 2008

(yesterday)Keeneland and Turfway ban toe grabs and traction on front and hind shoes

(July 16, 2008)Penn National Gaming Tracks to Ban Toe Grabs and Traction on Front Shoes

(July 14, 2008)Kentucky Horse Racing Commission Announces Plan to Ban Traction and Grabs on Front Shoes

(June 18, 2008) Jockey Club Calls for States for Nationwide Ban on Grabs and Traction on Front Shoes

(June 4, 2008) ESPN video clip with Belmont shoer Tim Shortell on basic racetrack shoeing and shoes

(April 30, 2008) Kentucky Derby: Shoewear of the Fast and Famous

(March 13, 2008) Shoes and Surfaces at the Grayson Jockey Club Foundation's 2008 Welfare and Safety Summit

(February 21, 2008) California Reports on Horses Since Toe Grab Ban, Switch to Artificial Tracks

(June 2007) Indiana Bans Toe Grabs in Response to GJC WSS Recommendation
(June 2007) 2007 Grayson Jockey Club Foundation Welfare and Safety Summit Shoeing
Committee

(May 2007) State Racing Commissioners Encouraged to Ban Toe Grabs

Derby Update: Video of Thoroughbred Wall Separation, Shoe Procedure

Ok, racing fans! Things are coming together now! Unless this video crashes the blog once and for all, here is a complete video showing Ian McKinlay's procedure for reconstructing a blown heel quarter / subsolar abscess in a Thoroughbred racehorse. This is very similar to the procedure he used on Big Brown, Richard Dutrow's colt favored in next week's Kentucky Derby.

The second part of this video shows a top Standarbred with a similar problem.

You will also see a lot of detail on the shoe and Ian has provided a voiceover to explain what he's trying to do.

Assembling this information has been a work in progress, but this video puts it all together. Previous posts from this week and last week (scroll down the blog to read more) included a video of quarter cracks, the difference between quarter cracks and wall separations, glue-on shoes worn by Kentucky Derby contenders, and the direct rim glue application technique with copper clips and heel cushions.

Thanks again to Ian McKinlay, along with Conny Svensson, Jimmy Takter, and Richard Dutrow, and to Big Brown's owners, IEAH, for working with us to provide this information that may be helpful to other horses.

The end of the video has a link to the Tenderhoof web site, which has not gone live yet, so save that URL for future reference. This video is not an advertisement for any commercial product; Hoofcare and Lameness has no business arrangement with the shoe or the new company.

This is provided for educational purposes and to hear feedback from other professionals.

Disclaimer: Obviously, Ian McKinlay is a highly skilled hoof repair and quarter crack specialist. That is all he does and he works as a consultant to the trainer, supplementing the work of the regular horseshoer and veterinarian.

This is NOT a how-to video. Also, the problems of these racehorses are well documented, as Ian mentions, and very common. You would probably not see these problems in horses competing at other sports, and if you did, the recommended solution might be very different. Those horses might enjoy the luxury of a layup. Racehorses have work to do.

Thanks to all!

All HoofBlog text and images © Hoofcare Publishing 2008 unless otherwise noted. Video courtesy of Ian McKinlay.

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Kentucky Derby Hoof Tech: Calculated Hoof Repair for Heel-Quarter Blow-Outs in Racehorses

Last week we showed you Ian McKinlay's video clip of a quarter crack, and tried to paraphrase Ian's description of the various types of "blowouts" that can fracture a racehorse's hoof wall, and showed a foot with a wall separation ready for repair. That photo showed a foot that might look something like what Kentucky Derby favorite Big Brown's feet looked like when his injuries occurred. They have now been repaired and the horse's trainer, Richard Dutrow, commented to the press today that he is pleased with the condition of his horse's feet and the recovery that has been made possible by a combination of hoof repair and cushioning of the injured area, coupled with glued on "gasket" shoes.

The shoe design and rationale has already been explained in previous posts but this serious of photos will show you a horse that is NOT BIG BROWN, but that received a similar shoeing solution. Ian McKinlay has provided these additional photos to give people a broader view of how streamlined and non-intrusive the repair process is, compared to the older ways of bar shoes and laced and layered patches.

A blog comment last week brought up a good question, regarding his ignornance that Pyro had won his two previous starts wearing glued-on shoes. A few years ago this might have been a handicap, but that racing observer wondered if shoes shouldn't be disclosed to the betting public because high-tech enhancements might offer an advantage to a horse, similar to the new Speedo "skin suits" with ultrasonic welds instead of seams, which will be used in the 2008 Olympic swimming competitions. That is, unless they are ruled to be performance-enhancing equipment.


The shoe (race plate) package ready for application. The heels are fully cushioned where the wall has been removed. The copper "clips" are not clips in the sense of those used on steel shoes; they are providing more surface area for the adhesive. They are just thin tab-like strips of copper. Remember that this shoe will be glued on, there is no issue with nails having to penetrate the rubber.


The heel is rebuilt and the shoe is on. The temptation is probably to incorporate the heel repair into the shoe but the two have to maintain separate entities so that the shoe can be removed. The artificial heel will be trimmed as it grows down. Only the copper tab crosses the frontier between the shoe and the real/artificial wall. Remember that the padding under the heel is the full width of the shoe only in the heel area, which is why you see the black line fill with adhesive in the quarter.


I am not sure whether or not this horse had blowouts (wall separations) in both heels, possibly caused by subsolar abscesses, hard racetracks, or gait changes, so both heel walls were trimmed out and replaced with artificial wall. It's also possible that the the adhesive and heel cushion were used on both heels to provide symmetrical heel architecture and encourage normal gaits and stride characteristics.

The finished feet. This horse will have the benefit of pain relief from the cushioning and the realigned support of the artificial heel wall to stabilize weightbearing over the entire foot (or where the foot would be). This procedure hopefully encourages normal circulation and a normal gait pattern. The finished job does not look very different from a patch for a quarter crack or a wall rebuild for a thin-walled horse so you can see why a trainer would just refer to the injury as a "quarter crack".

Thanks to Ian McKinlay for sharing this technique, and for interrupting his work to take these photos. Racetrack repair technology is continuing to evolve as more horses are being shod and supported as their needs dictate. Ian is a career specialist in quarter crack repair and is bringing new ideas and materials to the racetrack to help horses stay in training. He is very generous to share information from the racetrack with the world through this blog.

Links to previous stories from last week on Kentucky Derby hopefuls' feet:
Click here for quarter crack explanation and Ian McKinlay's video
Click here for glue shoes on Kentucky Derby favorites and Ian McKinlay's explanation of heel separation
Click here for interview with Big Brown trainer Richard Dutrow about the horse's feet.