Budweiser Clydesdale Super Bowl Commercial Teaser: A Hero's Welcome

Many people were moved by the Budweiser Clydesdales' special commercial--it only aired once--for the heroes of the 911 tragedy in New York. Get ready to be moved again during this Sunday's Super Bowl, as the Clydesdale perform a hero's welcome.

Farrier Axes Out in Force at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Parade

Only a few people in the world noticed them. They were at the back of the column. Only they had black plumes on their helmets. Only they carried big bad farrier axes instead of lances.

Only they made the Hoof Blog.

They were, are and possibly always will be the farriers of the Household Cavalry, stationed at Hyde Park Barracks in inner London. The unit serves the Queen and the farriers serve the unit's horses.

The Household Cavalry of Buckingham Palace requires the services of no less than 11 farriers, plus the regiment's Farrier Major, Staff Corporal Neil Sherlock, who oversees his men's work on 120 horses per week.

One of the interesting aspects of the job is that they don't enter the military as farriers. They may be sent to Afghanistan or any number of assignments in the military world. When they rotate through London, they all ride. Some are interested and step forward to start farrier apprenticehips, but they already know how to ride.

Part of the duty of farriers is not to just stay in the forge and work hard, but to stay in training as riders as well so that they can accompany their regiment in their ceremonial role as carriers of the axes. The pole axes were used to lop off the feet of fallen horses after battles--the feet have numbers burned into them for inventory control purposes. You can imagine what the spike was for.

The farrier's ax has been featured on The Hoof Blog quite a bit--we followed it during the Royal Wedding last spring and watched one being restored at the Army Museum for the War Horse exhibit there.

We've seen quite a bit of interest in the ax--and not just from farriers. The world wants to know more about the ax and the men who carry them: when was the last time one was used? how do they decide how many axes are needed? Who shaprens the ax?

I can't answer your questions but I will try to find someone who can if you keep sending them in.

Photo kindly loaned by Alexandra Wade, a London-based photographer who thinks of this blog whenever she hears hoofbeats on the street--and has taken some spectacular photos for us!

To learn more:


Why Is That Guy Following Prince William and Kate Middleton Carrying a Big Shiny Ax? Because He's the Farrier, That's Why!

Farrier's Ax: A Museum Restores a Gruesome Tool of Mercy Designed to End the War for Horses

© 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.  

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

Read this blog's headlines on the Hoofcare + Lameness Facebook Page

 

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.

An Unusually Silent Anvil: Ron Dyer ("The Horseshoer")

 I learned tonight, completely by accident while researching something on the web, that Ron Dyer the Horseshoer (as he called himself) died on April 23, just shy of his 84th birthday. I don't have much information, perhaps other people have already announced his passing, but I had no idea.

When I knocked on the door of the farrier profession, I immediately noticed that people tended to cluster around certain individuals. Were they hoping to pick up some sage advice? Not really, they were more likely souvenir story collectors. These people stood close enough to listen, memorize and then go home and re-tell the best stories, again and again, until the stories became legends. And the people who originated those stories along with them

Ron Dyer The Horseshoer 1927-2011

Ron Dyer, a.k.a. Ron Dyer The Horseshoer was one of those people whose stories were and still are re-told.  Here was someone who'd been there, done that and definitely had an opinion about it that he didn't mind sharing. People were a little timid around him; some might use the word "gruff" to describe him, but I also saw him be generous and kind and help people.

Ron was a horseshoer, all right. According to his obituary, he worked for the Budweiser Clydesdales, he worked on the midwestern harness racetracks of the Grand Circuit, he traveled with the circus, he was part of The Great Milwaukee Circus Parade...he did it all.

To hear him talk, he might have been around to shoe Dan Patch or Man 'o War. He pulled history out of the past and made it sound like he'd been there. I never could tell if he was giving me a history lesson or telling me about something he'd seen with his own eyes.

Case in point: The Galesburg, Illinois horse sale barns were one of the biggest horse yards in America in the early 20th century. It was right there in Ron Dyer's hometown that the French military, and then the British, came to buy artillery horses and mules for the First World War. Thousands of them. Reading the history of the sale barn tonight in Ron's honor, I realized it closed seven years before Ron was born. But he told stories about it as if he'd be there.

"By 1910, (the Galesburg Horse Sale) was receiving 25 carloads of horses a week and the same number of 25 cars would be shipped out—making a total carload business for the two railroads of 50 cars per week.  The sale employed 25 regular men. and always had 40 to 50 extra men for Friday and Saturday. Five hundred horses per week consumed about all the hay and straw raised in the adjacent counties. Five hundred horses per week  had to have 500 new halters. Each horse had to have two shoes on his front feet, which made a total of 1,000 horse shoes per week. From 7 to 10 blacksmiths were busy the week around making the shoes." (From Galesburg's Mighty Horse Market by Cornelia Thompson and Fred Dunbar)

I found a story about Ron Dyer in the archives of the Chicago Tribune. It included this gem: Once--possibly many more times than just  this once--Ron Dyer was judging a horseshoeing competition. The anxious competitors awaited their precise instructions of what the esteemed judge would be looking for in their work. Ron told them simply, "I want to see a commercial job; something you can charge for." End of subject. 

Farrier Henry Heymering, the visionary founder of the American Farriers Journal and my colleague in our early years of publishing that magazine, offered a few memories of Ron, who was also an author of articles in that magazine in its early days. Thanks, Henry:

• Ron left quite an impression on me. Florida formed a farrier's association and started a certification test before the AFA. When Ron took the Florida test he made four shoes and shod the horse with them in about 40 minutes, and did a damn nice job!
• Ron said the Illinois association was started after a shoer had a heart attack. Two farriers worked in the same barn, but they (as was the custom then) worked at opposite ends of the barn and wouldn't talk to each other. One day one of the farriers collapsed under a horse. The other farrier went up to the owner to tell him there was a problem.
• When Florida started having contests, Ron was so good he won most everything. Other farriers before signing up would ask if Ron was going to be there and if he was, they would't compete. Ron got wind of this and stopped competing. He would only judge and/or demonstrate, and help the others improve.
• Ron was too young for the French remounts, but I bet his father and grandfather worked on them. I believe Ron was a 4th generation farrier.

Probably Ron Dyer never wrote down any of his stories, and probably no one ever tape-recorded them for him, either. Like so much of the history of the horseshoeing profession, it's just going away with him. Horseshoers wear their stories well. Maybe if he'd written his life down, no one would have believed it anyway.

Except those of us who knew Ron Dyer The Horseshoer.

To learn more: Ron Dyer's obituary in the Galesburg Planet

and

Funeral home page and guest book for Ron Dyer

If you have a favorite memory of Ron Dyer, click the comments button below and share it with the rest of us or email it to blog@hoofcare.com and I will post it for you.

 © 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.  
 

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal
 

Read special Facebook-only news and links when you "like" the Hoofcare + Lameness Facebook Page
 

 

Tweet

 

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.

From Post Parade to Rose Parade: Ada Gates is Underfoot as Pasadena's Official Horseshoe Safety Inspector

 From ABC News in Los Angeles: Would your horse's hooves pass the Ada Gates inspection?

It's not unusual to find Ada Gates behind the scenes at a parade but it would most likely be the post parade at California's Santa Anita racetrack. She's at a different parade today.

The first woman licensed to shoe racehorses in America picked up the feet of 236 horses--including Budweiser Clydesdales, silver-draped Andalusians and military mules--this morning as she made sure their hooves were in compliance with the rules of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. The parade has specific rules for hoofcare that must be followed, as they hope to both prevent slipping on the pavement and lameness problems along the parade route. I did notice the horse trailers in the parade, ready to pick up any horses in distress or in need of relief.

NBC also has a video featuring Ada Gates and several of the equestrian units in today's parade, filmed at the parade's stabling at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center at Griffith Park in Burbank, but it did not have an embedding code so it can't be seen here on the blog. If a code becomes available, you'll see that video here, as well.

The Hoof Blog had a report from Ada after the 2008 Rose Parade with her observations about the hooves she sees at the parade: Traction Counts at the Rose Parade (Just Ask Ada).

© 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.
 

Follow the Hoof Blog on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

Be friends on the Hoofcare + Lameness Facebook Page

Tweet

EBay Fundraiser: How Much Is a Horseshoe Off the Injured Inaugural Parade Horse Worth?

What will people pay for a dirty horseshoe? We'll find out soon. (Amy Manning photo)

Last week was a tough one for horses and horseshoes. When an Appaloosa named Mouse held up the Inaugural Parade for an hour while he was being extricated from a bumper-mounted winch that he somehow stuck his leg into, people were calling for horses to be banned from future parades. (The incident happened even before the parade began.)

The next thing that I heard was that the incident happened because he was shod with steel shoes. Had he been barefoot, I was told, he would not have slipped and fallen.

Photos showed the horse down on the ground with his hind legs up in the air, but these pictures were taken only after he was sedated, so that the SUV's bumper could be dismantled.

In earlier photos, the horse is standing stock still, with his hind leg caught between the winch and the bumper. This smart Appaloosa did not struggle or panic.

Brooke Vrany of Days End Farm Horse Rescue was on hand with the farm's ambulance and the horse was vanned off with a police and veterinary escort.

I thought this story was over, but it's not.

Enter the horse's owner, who was not, in this case, the rider. Amy Manning gave lots of background about her horse and the incident; her story matches Brooke's: Mouse backed up, encountered the winch on the bumper of the SUV and kicked back at it. When his leg was trapped, he waited for the vets, in this case, two US Army Veterinary Corps practitioners.

It turns out Mouse is a veteran of many parades and had stayed calm during a helicopter landing earlier in the day.

One reason Mouse stayed on his feet may have been that his shoes were liberally sprinkled with Borium. Without it, they would have been slippery on the pavement, it's true.

And tonight, Mouse's shoes have been pulled by his regular farrier, John Haven of Henderson, Maryland, and they are not hanging on a fence. Not laying on a tack trunk. Not bouncing around in the back of John's truck.

They're on eBay.

Amy Manning is very grateful to Brooke Vrany and Days End Farm Horse Rescue for the expertise that Brooke brought to the scene, and for their professionalism in spiriting the horse off through a crowd estimated at two million.

Days End Farm's ambulance and crew were at the parade site as volunteers, and received no compensation for their time or services, as is often the case when they attend to horses at the bottom of a ditch or crashed through the ice into a pond.

So the shoes that helped keep Mouse on his feet while he kept the new President of the United States waiting can be yours, and the money will go to Days End Farm Horse Rescue.

The shoes, by the way, are St Croix Xtras, and both the owner and the farrier reported that all the horsemen in the parade were given a manual for preparation, which included the requirement that every horse must be shod on all four feet with steel shoes and Borium or a similar hard-facing for traction. As you can see in the photo, Mouse's shoe has puddles on the toe and big nuggets on his heels.

Amy added another point of order from the rule book: she had to sign a release saying that she gave permission for her horse to be euthanized without warning in the event of a mishap during the parade.

One of the shoes has already had 12 bids and the auction only began today. A third shoe will be added tonight, and Amy will keep the fourth for her own memento.

I think one of them would look great hanging in the White House. Or your house!

Click here to view the first shoe and its eBay auction.

Click here to view the second shoe and its eBay auction.

Click here to view a news video showing Mouse recovering at the Days End Farm Equine Rescue Center in Maryland.

Click here to view the Days End Farm account of the mishap and learn more about their rescue operations. Days End works only with law enforcement cases and takes in only horses taken from owners, not those voluntarily surrendered. Its equine ambulance and emergency rescue service is active in teaching equine rescue and handling, as well as being out there on the front lines.

If you are not the eBay type and would like to send a donation, mail your check to Days End Farm Horse Rescue, Attn: Inaugural Parade Thank You, P.O. Box 309, Lisbon, Maryland 21765 USA.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. 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.

What a Day for the USA...and a Rough Day for One Appaloosa

Thanks to Florida artist Debbie Sampson for the loan of this patriotic image. Debbie has a clever twist to her paintings: that's a real horseshoe attached to the (painted) hoof. Please note that they do sell stars-and-stripes leg wraps for horses; this painting does not represent real flags wrapped around horses legs!

This image seems sadly appropriate: As you may have heard, a horse in the inaugural parade somehow managed to get his leg stuck in or under a parked truck. The Appaloosa was extriciated and ambulanced through the masses in downtown Washington. You can read the Humane Society of the United States's story about it at this link. It was a joint effort between the HSUS and other animal welfare agencies.

I know: my first thought was to question whether the horse was properly shod for the parade. I tried to find out in advance what advice had gone out to horsemen for preparing their horses' hooves for safety on the street. No one had any answers for me.

I know that ambulances and evacuation trailers were on hand, supplied by the HEART ambulance seen at so many east coast horse shows and three-day events, and the Days End Farm Equine Rescue Farm in Maryland. I am not sure who transported the horse, but I am so glad they were there.

A note to all the farriers and farrier organizations out there who read this blog: your skills with handling horses could be put to great use in the field of equine rescue and disaster relief. The HSUS and other agencies offer rescue training courses, and there are more formal programs and even certifications available, if you would like to be on call for stand-by at events or for disaster situations.

Helping staff and outfit a horse ambulance in your area is a great fundraiser goal for horse groups of all types, as well.

But if my horse was trapped upside down in a trailer or stranded on a hummock in the middle of a flood, I know that I would relax a tiny bit if I knew the person trying to help was a farrier who would have some sense of the horse's reflexes, and be able to assess a situation.

Many vets are already lined up in some sort of a network to help. I don't know who the state police calls when there's a wreck, or a horse falls down a hole, but the vets are already there. And could use a hand.

Another area where farriers can help is teaching local fire departments how to bandle horses in barn fire situations. And reminding owners to set up their barns so horses can be evacuated by firemen who don't know where halters and leadlines are kept (they should be hanging by each stall). Do you think the firemen in your town can put halters on horses in the dark?

President Obama called us all to action yesterday, and to serve. Perhaps with budget cuts to state and national programs, animal rescue training and fundraising is something we could all do to help.

That Appaloosa in Washington is certainly glad those trained personnel were on hand.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. 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.

Traction Counts at the Rose Parade (Just Ask Ada)

In 1932, movie star Mary Pickford rode in the parade.

It wouldn’t be New Year’s Day without Pasadena, California's Rose Parade, America’s most extravagant (and fragrant) parade. It’s mostly about flowers—every float in the parade is made out of flowers, but it's about horses, too. Hundreds of them!

Draft horses pull floats. Four matched chestnut Quarter horses pull a Wells Fargo stagecoach. Mounted posses. Painted Indian ponies. And, this year, even some of the US Equestrian Team riders hopped on borrowed horses and joined in the parade.

What do all those horses have in common? At sometime during the night last night, each and every horse was visited by a woman with a flashlight and a clipboard.

For the seventh year in a row, Pasadena resident (and farrier) Ada Gates Patton was up way before dawn and marched through a half-mile long string of vans and horse trailers and picked up the left front foot of each and every horse. (Ada is an icon of American farriery and was the first woman licensed to shoe horses on a racetrack in America.)

This morning, Ada was looking to see what was on the bottom of the horses’ feet. The parade route is five miles (not counting the staging area) and a horse slipping on the pavement or worse yet, falling, is not something that would enhance the image of the parade.

So, Ada checks that each horse is either a) barefoot or b) shod with either Borium or Drilltek hardfacing or c) nailed with Duratrack “hard head” nails. Plastic shoes are also an option. I asked her if hoof boots were allowed; she said they are not on her list.

Here’s Ada’s report:

1. No increase in barefoot horses this year. As usual, the minis, the Peruvian Pasos, and the Bashkir Curlies were barefoot.
2. The Marines used Borium on the shoes of the Palominos in their color guard that led the parade.
3. No Drilltek was seen by Ada who then quipped, “Well, it was pitch dark out there and it’s hard to tell in the dark if it’s Borium or Drilltek.”
4. Draft horses tended to wear rubber shoes, like you’d see on city carriage horses.

“The biggest increase is the move toward Duratrack nails,” Ada said. “I’ve been pushing them in that direction. I was surprised to see that some used as many as six Duratracks in one shoe. It's a no-brainer. The Duratracks (nail heads) are good for about five miles on pavement, which is the length of the parade.”

Ada said that no horses slipped and there were no mishaps, as far as she knew, and there haven't been any since she has been inspecting the horses for the Parade committee.

Ada said that she had full compliance today from the horsemen. No one needed to have their horses re-shod. She mentioned that one group of silver-saddled Palominos from Long Beach brings two farriers "just in case" but there was no official farrier on hand. There were, however, three veterinarians and a humane society horse ambulance standing by.

Return to hoofcare.com.

Go to most recent story on the Hoof Blog and view all news.