New England Horses Test New Shoe Design for Frozen Landscape

Posted by Fran Jurga | 16 December 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

I hope these shoes fall within the parameters of the model rule for toe grabs and traction devices. Would you classify this as a rim shoe?

All we talk about around here is the weather, it seems; the forecast is for more ice and frozen rain here in New England. There is a storm predicted to hit here every two days for the next ten days.

For those of you unfamiliar with US news, the northeastern corner of the USA, where I live, is a tangled mess of frozen, solid and increasingly immovable debris. The worst ice storm in a century has changed our landscape forever. I wonder if we will ever trail ride again! There will be a lot of work to clear pastures, let alone trails.

Well-known farrier John Blombach told me tonight that the roads are so blocked where he lives that they literally plowed the treetops, branches, telephone poles, and power lines out of the roads. There are no ambulances, no firetrucks, no open stores.

A tree went through the roof of the porch of John's lovely old house, and another through an upstairs window; he was coming and going through the cellar. But he has a generator now, and lights, and he sounded very upbeat.

Southern New England Farriers Association President Garth Bodkin lives on a beautiful lake in central Massachusetts. He said he has trees "all over the place" and no power. It took him three calls to get through but he too was upbeat; as John said, "No matter what happens, it can't get any worse."

Farrier/microbiologist Shirley Fraser of Pepperell, Massachusetts, had been out using her truck for friends who needed to get water to their horses. She may be in great demand: she was hitching up her Percheron to "go move some trees around".

Only one of the farriers I heard from today has had power restored, and that was Allie Hayes of HorseScience, who lives about 25 miles from here. She rehabs wildlife, in addition to makeing leg models, and I wondered how she was coping. The key to her business is a huge freeze drier that she uses to prepare her hoof specimen; it runs on electricity. I was envisioning a big defrost event, but luckily I was wrong.

"The cold weather was my friend and there was no damage to product in the dryers and they survived the outage and are up and running again." she wrote in an email today. "We got power back some time in the wee hours Monday. I was up at 3 a.m. restarting the freeze-dryers."

Over in New York state, things were pretty bad in the Saratoga area, and it sounds like Troy was hit particularly hard.

In many communities, schools are closed until sometime in January. (A good thing, since people are living in the gymnasiums.) Some people may be without power until the end of the year.

This image was entered in the "Photoshopped Horses" contest at Freaking News, and brought to my attention by theequinest.com. I hope to show some of the others in the days to come. This one is by Michael Bendler of Seymour, Connecticut. I hope he won!


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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).

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Ice Capades: New Englanders Are Still in the Dark Tonight

APTOPIX Ice Storm "IDYLLIC", originally uploaded by nike6.

Throughout New England, more than 600,000 households are still without power following Friday's horrific ice storm that laminated the landscape, sent trees crashing into homes and barns, closed roads, blocked driveways, damaged vehicles, and sent the normally hardy residents of New England into candlelit darkness in their cold, cold homes.

Sure, lots of resourceful people have generators and the old-fashioned types of wood stoves and fireplaces that still burn real wood. But all those who own horses and livestock are experiencing the double challenges of meeting their own needs as well as those of horses who may not have on their winter shoes with ice calks. Horses that should be turned out, but the paddocks look like a hockey rink. And the fences are electric, anyway. Horses that need water, but the pumps are electric too. Horses that need hay or grain, but the driveway is blocked and the feed store is closed, without a doubt.

For many people, a horse is the only way to get around. Tree branches still lie on top of cars and trucks and block driveways.

December is a busy month for the farriers around here. The show- and sport-horse customers want a final set of shoes before the horses leave for Florida or Aiken or Southern Pines. And the grin-and-bear-it stay-at-homes want to delay putting on expensive winter shoes for as long as possible. They gamble for another week, another month, especially this year with so many people losing jobs or having just taken a heavy hit on the stock and real estate markets. They remember hacking out throughout the winter on bare ground last year, the year it forgot to snow.

So far, I have only been able to speak with one farrier. Phones are out everywhere, and cell phone chargers dangle uselessly from dead outlets. Not so for one farrier: Tom Maker has 50 Morgan horses to take care of at the beautiful old Townshend Farm atop a hill in Bolton, Massachusetts. The town, which is about 30 miles west of Boston, has been shut down since 10:55 p.m. on Thursday night, the exact moment the power died. Law enforcement has all roads closed in the town: no one goes in, no one goes out.

Tom said that, even today, if you stared at a tree line in any direction for a minute or two, you'd see a treetop break off. He said that virtually all the trees had been topped off, as if a helicopter flew over and trimmed them. Falling limbs buried the fence lines...and became fences themselves.

Unfortunately, Tom said, his clever Morgans are learning that the juice to the fences is off. He has one generator to use at two houses, an apartment, and a big barn, in an attempt to keep all the water pipes and drains from freezing.

Another handicap is that we are approaching the shortest day of the year. It gets dark in New England just after 4 p.m. this time of year, and stays dark for about 15 hours.

"Maybe tomorrow," Tom said optimistically tonight from a candlelit farmhouse on an icy hillside.

It's a sentiment echoed from all over Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, although power company officials say it may be another week for some towns.

Thanks to the Associated Press for the beautiful photo. Click on this link to read a story about the widespread darkness that continues tonight here in New England.

You wouldn't believe how bright the stars are.