Triple Crown Hindsight: California Chrome's Hoof Bulb Injury in Pictures

The dream is over, and that's horse racing. The champion is just a horse, after all. But a special one.

Shoeless and Ageless, Tahoe Warrior Wins at Keeneland

Keeneeland Racecourse in Kentucky has a Polytrack all-weather surface that has been used by trainers as a test for a few horses each week to run without shoes. 

It was the last race of the day. Maybe no one will remember it, except it’s not every day that a horse pays $40 on a $2 bet. It’s not every day that a ten-year-old gelding with no less than 84 starts under his girth wins one. It’s not every day that trainer Wayne Rice stands in the Keeneland winners circle, a place usually reserved for the likes of Todd Pletcher and D. Wayne Lukas.

And it’s not every day that a horse with no shoes wins a race.

War Horse Hoofcare: Puncture Wounds Then and Now

While collecting photos of farriers during World War I, I passed over this photo several times without realizing how interesting it was. It took a magnifying glass to appreciate this one.

The sign reads, "'Kindness to animals, 500 horses lamed weekly by nails dropped on roads and horse lines by cookers carrying firewood with nails left in. Please remove nails."

As if the war horses didn't have enough to worry about with staying alive in combat and battling environmental conditions like mud and heat and lice and mange, and diseases like glanders, they had to walk across scorched earth littered with shrapnel, and sometimes even the "friendly fire" of nails dropped from wagons hauling salvaged timber to burn in the cookers.

What's a cooker, you might ask? A cooker was a horse-drawn kitchen--a sort of wood-fired stove on wheels. Here you see some Canadian troops from Newfoundland who were happy to belly up to a cooker as if it was a modern-day urban food truck.

Both these photos were provided by the Royal Library of Scotland.

Puncture wounds from shrapnel and nails are still a problem for horses and donkeys in war zones. They are also a problem for horses after natural disasters like tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves and hurricanes.

What's a simple way to protect hooves from puncture wounds when disaster--or war--strikes today?

Click the graphic to order your poster!

© 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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Racehorse Performance "Not Significantly Affected by Tendon Injury", According to Horse Trust Research

This horse has "bowed" it superficial digital flexor tendon; the tendon protrudes, or bows out, at the back of the leg. This is the most common debilitating tendon injury suffered by racehorses and requires a long layoff for recovery, although new treatments are shortening the time lost from training. (Photo: Dr. Barak Amram/VetMoves)

Data compiled and analyzed in a research project in Great Britain funded by The Horse Trust found that racehorses who recovered from tendon injuries did not have inferior racing performance records compared to horses that had not had tendon injuries.

The research was led by Bryan O'Meara, who is in the final year of a three year clinical training scholarship funded by The Horse Trust. O'Meara carried out the research at Donnington Grove Veterinary Surgery in Newbury, under the supervision of epidemiologist Dr Tim Parkin from University of Glasgow.

Tendonitis is one of the most common musculoskeletal injuries in racehorses, with a prevalence of 11-30%, according to earlier research.

O'Meara examined the clinical records and racing histories of 400 racehorses who had been treated for superficial digital flexor (SDF) tendonitis injuries over a five year period from 2003 to 2008.

The race records of horses affected by tendon injury were compared with 400 matched control horses that had never suffered SDF tendon injuries. The controls were horses training in the same establishment at the time of injury and of the same age and sex as the case horse.

The Horse Trust-funded research looked at the performance of the racehorses in races before and after treatment for the injury, and at the performance of the control horses before and after the treatment date. The Racing Post Rating (RPR), which is published by the Racing Post (a British racing newspaper with charts) after every race, was used as a measure of performance.

O'Meara found that there was no significant difference in RPR before and after the treatment date in case and control horses.

This result is unexpected as in vitro studies have found that healed tendon tissue has reduced elasticity properties due to the presence of scar tissue. This suggests that a horse with a healed SDF tendon would need to work its muscles harder to compensate and would therefore be expected to have lower performance.

O'Meara said more research is needed to back-up his finding that performance isn't significantly affected by tendon injury.

"It could be that using Racing Post Rating to measure performance isn't sensitive enough to pick up a change in the horse's performance," said O'Meara. "However, it's encouraging that there's no marked change in performance after a horse has recovered from a tendon injury. These findings show that there's no need to give up on a horse that has a tendon injury--they can still come back and perform well, or can be used for other, less demanding riding activities."

The Horse Trust-funded research also found that there was no significant difference between case and control horses when returning to racing and completing three races. Only after completing five races, or three years post treatment, was a significant difference found between case and control horses. This finding is a step towards developing a more accurate assessment of tendon-treatment outcome after five races or three years post-treatment is a better indicator of the outcome of treatment.

"At the moment, some tendon treatments state their success as the percentage of horses that return to racing after treatment. However, we've shown that there's no significant difference between case and control horses at this time," said O'Meara. "At the moment, there are a myriad of treatments available to treat tendonitis. Hopefully this finding will be used in further research to learn which treatments are most effective."

O'Meara's research also found a link between SDF tendon injury and the racehorse competing at its maximum performance level: the case horses were significantly nearer to their pre-injury maximum performance level in the race immediately before injury (compared to matched controls), suggesting that they were competing nearer their individual maximum performance level when the SDF tendon injury occurred. (Note: this statement is not explained but would seem to suggest that either the level/class of the race or the distance perhaps was the best the horse had done in its career when the injury occurred.)

Editor's note: Information in this article was provided by The Horse Trust, a British charity that funds equine research and promotes education about horse health and welfare. Hoofcare Publishing likes to support The Horse Trust whenever possible. The research described in this article was published in the May 2010 edition of the Equine Veterinary Journal and is available online as a downloadable PDF file: "An investigation of the relationship between race performance and superficial digital flexor tendonitis in the Thoroughbred racehorse".

Readers should keep in mind that the study included only British racehorses and that the majority of British racing is done on grass. Race distances, conditioning schedules and training methods also vary in Great Britain from methods used in North America and some other countries. But the results are interesting, no matter where you live!

© 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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Racehorse Deaths in USA Continue to Exceed UK and Australia; Did Banning Toe Grabs Have Any Effect?

24 March 2010 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com

A racehorse gallops on the artificial surface at California's Del Mar racetrack. Photo by Nathan Rupert (thanks!).

Yesterday the Jockey Club released numbers for the North American fatality rate for Thoroughbreds. The number is based on a preliminary analysis of data collected over a one-year period in the Equine Injury Database, the North American database for racing injuries.

The statistics were collected beginning November 1, 2008. From 378,864 total starts in Thoroughbred flat races at 73 racetracks participating in the Equine Injury Database, 2.04 fatal injuries were recorded per 1,000 starts.

Eighty-one racetracks and the National Steeplechase Association participate in the Equine Injury Database, representing 86 percent of the flat racing days in North America. By agreement with the participating racetracks, from time to time The Jockey Club may publish certain summary statistics from the Equine Injury Database, but will not provide statistics that identify specific participants, including racetracks, horses or persons.

According to the New York Times, the fatality rate is nearly twice as high in the United States as in the United Kingdom or Australia. Both of those countries race predominantly on turf.

The Grayson-Jockey Club Foundation, through its Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit Shoeing and Hoof Care Committee, works on hoofcare projects to improve all aspects of safety for horses on the racetrack. The attempts at changing rules for toe grabs and other traction devices during the 2008-2009 racing season were part of an overall program to decrease injuries and breakdowns that might lead to fatalities that would appear in this database.

The period of time covered by the statistics released yesterday includes some months when most states were observing a ban on toe grabs, but not all months of the study. Anecdotally, racetrack shoers at some, but not all, racetracks report a marked decrease in the use of traction-equipped horseshoes in the past five years.

One of the projects of the database is to collect more data on the types of shoes that horses wear when racing. Data from a necropsy project at the University of California at Davis was published in 1996 and was able to document what types of shoes were worn by horses who died while racing and training there.

Ongoing hoof research in the Wheat Orthopedics Laboratory at UC Davis by researcher Susan M. Stover, DVM, PhD, ACVS and colleagues adds documentation to the body of evidence that hoof conformation and shoeing affect risk for injury because modifications can amplify loads to bones, tendons, and ligaments. Race surface characteristics, in turn, affect the magnitude and nature of load transferred to the hoof.

While separate tracks and states cannot be segmented from the national study, California does keep its own records. Accord to Dr. Rick Arthur, Equine Medical Director of the California Horse Racing Board, that state has seen a 40 percent reduction in racing fatalities on its new artificial surfaces when compared to statistics for the dirt surfaces in that state going back to 2004. (Plans are, however, for Santa Anita to return to a dirt surface next year.)

At Santa Anita in California and at some other tracks, the meet's horseshoe inspector has started keeping records of the various types of shoes worn by horses as they reach the receiving barn in advance of a race. This practice will hopefully become a national standard, so that shoeing information correlated to racing injuries on a much larger basis.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. Please, 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.

New York Vet Injured While Treating Horse, Remains in Coma

Theriogenologist John Steiner DVM, Dip. ACT is hospitalized in Albany, New York this weekend after being injured in the head during a procedure on a Morgan stallion.

Dr. Steiner is in a medically-induced coma, according to local newspaper reports, with severe brain injuries. He is reported to be in critical condition.

This news brings home the message to all professionals that working around horses can be (and is) a dangerous job and that every precaution should be taken while on the job.

Dr. Steiner was a very experienced veterinarian and certainly this was a freak accident.

He is known for his work for many years in the field of equine reproduction while on staff at the Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington, Kentucky and had recently moved to New York where he joined the Rhinebeck Equine group practice in the very horsey Dutchess County area, outside New York City.

A statement from his family said that notes and cards may be sent in care of the Rhinebeck Equine Clinic at 26 Losee Lane; Rhinebeck, NY 12572 or to the New York State Veterinary Medical Society.

(By the way, a theriogenologist is someone who specializes in reproduction.)

Kind, healing wishes to Dr. Steiner. And be careful out there, friends.

Still Thinking About Eight Belles? Leading Vet Hogan Suggests That Thoroughbreds Could Learn A Lot From Standardbreds

Dr. Patty Hogan in surgery

Carol Hodes, former media relations director for the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, New Jersey, has posted a terrific interview with one of my favorite sources, Patty Hogan VMD, ACVS of the new Hogan Equine Clinic LLC in Cream Ridge, New Jersey. Two years ago, it was Hogan who testified against her veterinary brethren in front of the US Congress, and explained why she was not aligning herself with AVMA and AAEP political positions regarding slaughter of horses for meat. She didn’t like the idea of the whole horse meat slaughter industry and she gave poignant compelling reasons why. Congress listened. So when Eight Belles died tragically on the track at the end of the Kentucky Derby, journalist Hodes turned to Hogan for insight. Hogan, after all, is often described as the veterinarian who saved Kentucky Derby winner Smarty Jones, and she is the AAEP’s “On Call” veterinarian for some harness races that are televised. Carol’s entire interview with Hogan is posted on the HarnessLink web site in New Zealand. I highly recommend you follow this link and read the entire interview, but here are a few savvy comments from one of the best industry’s most independent thinkers and leading surgeons. This fall, Hogan will take over as head surgeon of the new Ruffian Equine Medical Center at Belmont Park, owned by IEAH, who also own 2008 Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown. Hogan: “I’ve seen horses break both ankles, in fact I repaired one this past week that came to me with a fracture in one hind leg, and I repaired it. When he got up, the other leg was broken. He was a thoroughbred with bilateral injuries, similar to hers, but not so severe. But that’s so rare. “For it to occur at the end of the race is very unusual. She [Eight Belles] must have had enormous fatigue, and that’s just puzzling. I know she was very well taken care of. I don’t think there was any smoke and mirrors there. That trainer [Larry Jones] is very honest. I don’t think the jock [Gabriel Saez] deserves the criticism he’s received at all.” “I’m sure genetics has played a role because [catastrophic injury] has increased in recent years. A lot of horses that have retired to be bred are not necessarily the most durable horses. They’ve hurt themselves after one or two races, and then they are sent to be bred.” From there, the interview heads in a new direction: why don’t Standardbreds break down the way that Thoroughbreds do? Hogan’s practice is evenly divided between the two breeds. Hode digs for some answers and Hogan supplies some good ones: “(Standardbreds) are being bred for speed and they’re getting sore, but they don’t kill themselves. The horses that end up going to the breeding shed, at least with the stallions, they’re the ones that have performed incredibly well and raced well.” “The prognosis is always better for standardbreds than it is for thoroughbreds. They always come back from everything. I definitely have a different set of prognoses that I can give for a standardbred vs. a thoroughbred even if it is exactly the same injury. It’s rare for a standardbred to founder or have laminitis as a result of having an injury in the other leg. With a thoroughbred it’s a huge priority.” Thanks to HarnessLink.com and Carol Hodes for the good work on this interview.