The Empty Sky: Hoofcare's Loss

My heart is heavier than an anvil tonight.

John Lancaster, a.k.a. Ransom Sloan, has been a key behind-the-scenes person here at Hoofcare & Lameness for the past five years or so. No, you don't know him, you've never met him. And you never will. But if you read our journal, you've seen his photos, appreciated his Photoshop artistry, and been the beneficiary of his generosity, as have I.

John was killed, we think, in a helicopter crash this morning south of Vermilion, Louisiana. He was a helicopter pilot and instructor (when he wasn't helping out Hoofcare & Lameness) and had a gig this winter servicing oil rigs in the Gulf out of Lake Charles, LA. Apparently they were trying to land on the rig when the chopper exploded.

I have known John since I was fresh out of college. We both lived in the Woodstock, Vermont area and were in the horse scene. John was the product of a unique alternative school project started by his family and his mother was the president of the horse show facility where I worked.

John came back into my life about ten years ago when I found out he was a ski instructor in Vail, Colorado and that he had married another Woodstock-area horsewoman, Lisa Simons, who went on to become a farrier and then a veterinarian and hoof researcher. Lisa Lancaster is, of course, a key person here and our star author, as well as a close friend. Her upcoming article in the new issue on the histology of the white line at the crena will dazzle you with its insights and its imagery...many of which are the handiwork of John Lancaster.

John was also instrumental in handling the editing and assembly of the material for the book The Sound Hoof, written by Lisa, and he created her info-packed web site, http://www.lancasterequine.com.

The last time I saw John was when he hosted a graduation party for Lisa in May at Michigan State. He was so proud of Lisa's survival of vet school, and I think so happy that they could move back to Colorado and see what next would happen in their lives. With two people that talented, the future looked very bright that day in May.

The Coast Guard is still looking for our friend John out there in the Gulf tonight. Pray for a miracle before you turn off your lights. Maybe leave one on for our friend John.

Balled-Up Feet Cause Concern, Racing Cancelled on Polytrack in Kentucky

The Daily Racing Form reported on Friday that Turfway Park in Kentucky had cancelled racing on Thursday after horses were found to be finishing races with balls of the artificial racing surface stuck to their feet.

In the article, one jockey complained that it felt like his horse was walking on stilts. Trainers were spraying "Pam" cooking oil or WD-40 on the soles of their horses' feet to try to prevent sticking.

Turfway is in the second year of racing on the much-lauded Polytrack surface, recently installed at Keeneland in Lexington and several California tracks.

Turfway augmented the surface for last week's freezing winter racing conditions with a special blend of Polytrack topping surface. Polytrack is marketed as a racing surface that is not affected by weather conditions and that it is safe for horses. However, the weather has been unseasonably cold in Kentucky for the past week or so.

It sounds like they need some bubble rim pads, but I doubt the ones used on pleasure horses would work with race plates. However, if they can bond plastic rim pads to shoes, couldn't they bond a bubble rim?

This looks like an opportunity for glue shoe expertise to shine. If anyone hears of a solution, or has a suggestion, let me know!

The story is posted on the Daily Racing Form web site, but you must register to view it. Presumably, Polytrack will have an additive to counter the sticky stuff...or it will warm up soon. Think spring!

Date Announced for 2007 Cornell Farrier Conference

The 24th Farriers Conference at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine will be held at the Ithaca, New York campus on November 10-11, 2007, according to resident farrier Michael Wildenstein. The university had considered moving the event to be part of a large horse show in Syracuse, but the decision was made to stay on campus this year.

This blog will announce speakers as soon as the information is available.

Cornell's conference is one of the longest running farrier eduction events in the world and certainly one of the leading venues for serious farrier continuing education.

Hotel rooms in Ithaca can be difficult to find if you want too long, especially if there is a football in town that weekend; book now!

By the way, Cornell's farrier education program offers specialized week-long residencies for farriers and veterinarians wishing to have in-depth training with Michael Wildenstein on specific skills or foot problems, or to work on skills needed to pass American Farrier's Association tests. At $250 for an entire week, this has to be the greatest bargain in equine professional education. Learn more at http://www.vet.cornell.edu/education/farrier/courses.htm

Farrier and Wife Killed in Florida Tornado

Danny Ward called to tell me that longtime Standardbred farrier Mike Sluss and his wife were among the victims of last week's horrible tornado in Central Florida. Mike was a Hoofcare & Lameness subscriber and was a graduate of Bruce Daniels' South Jersey Horseshoeing School, which operated in the 1970s and 1980s. The Standardbred Canada web site added these details: (begin quote from site)
(Trainer James) Dean was at the (O'Brien) awards in Mississauga, Ont., on Saturday night...but his heart was in Florida, where his long-time friend and blacksmith Mike Sluss and his wife Melinda were killed by a tornado. The couple's only child, 15-year-old Aaron, survived the storm.

"I flew out [of Florida] on Friday morning, and that's when the storms hit at about 4 a.m.," Dean told Trot Insider. "I wasn't even sure if I was going to get out of Orlando. It was weird, because the storm stayed in the same area; it went west to east and never really moved further south.

"My friend Raphael called and said there were some places that got hit bad but he had no idea about Mike and I didn't either. James MacDonald [brother of horsemen Mark and Anthony] picked me up at the airport and when we got to the house I flipped CNN on to see the damage.

"I was watching the CNN broadcast and when I was sitting there I said 'damn that looks like Mike's shoeing truck'. It's a red truck and had a big white box on the back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it said Lady Lake and he doesn't even live there so I thought it couldn't be. Two minutes later Raphael called and said 'Mike's dead'."

Dean stayed for the awards but went back to Florida the next day, and has since been trying to help out and clean up.

"There is absolutely nothing left," he said. "There was no warning at all. You can't recognize anything. About 100 yards behind Mike's place it's almost like a forest and all those trees are fine. It looks like the damn thing came over and dropped right on his property," Dean said of the tornado. "All the trees on his property are just stripped right clean, the ones that are still standing."

Dean said that Mike and Melinda's son appears to have escaped serious injuries.

"They had to do reconstructive surgery on his arm. He's lucky. I don't know anyone could have survived that because there is nothing left," he said.

Dean had been a good friend of Mike's for many years, having worked with him at Ben White Raceway as far back as the 1980s. "He used to do all Stew's [trainer Stew Firlotte] horses and Raphael and Mike worked together for eight years. Just last year Mike phased out standardbreds because he's getting older and the young ones can be a handful to shoe; there are a lot of show horses around here so he got doing that," said Dean. "Mike was just here two weeks ago. He stopped in while I was doing feeds and that. Raphael and I just bought shoes from him last week. He used to make all his own shoes and everything. He was just a good guy, too. He didn't have a mean bone in his body."

Dean said a funeral will take place this Friday (Feb. 9) and that a trust fund will be set up for the couple's son.

A story published in Monday's Orlando Sentinel tells the cryptic story of how a woman who lived 30 miles away from the Sluss home found one of Mike's cancelled cheques in her yard after the storm, and of the lives of two people who will be mourned by their community and many in the harness racing world.

(end quote from Standardbred Canada)

Click here to read the Orlando Sentinel story, which has more details but is very disturbing.

Advice to Horse Owners: Be Objective about Obese Horses

(report provided by ILPH)

At the recent Scottish Equine Welfare Seminar of the International League for the Protection of Horses (ILPH) at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh, Robert Eustace FRCVS of The Laminitis Trust rattled the cage of equine obesity in the show ring and in the home paddock.

"Obesity – a major cause of welfare problems" was the title of his presentation.

Robert was able to graphically show the difference in what horse owners nowadays think is acceptable weight compared to forty years ago and even twenty years ago, by using winner photos from old and recent horse shows. The attendees were captivated by this visual proof of the changing form of horses shown in-hand (what we call "halter" horses in the USA).

Robert expanded on the damage that is occurring to these obese animals and their progeny, if indeed they were able to reproduce.

He concluded with some very basic sound advice to all horse owners: Every time your horse is shod, use your weight tape and mark on the stable wall the weight it shows. This will prove that the horse owner is keeping an accurate record of the weight at a regular interval so any weight gain or loss is easily detected.

Farrier Elmer Campbell Has Died

Elmer Campbell, one of the first farriers elected to the Kentucky Derby Museum's "Hall of Fame" for farriers, has died in Florida.

Elmer is shown in the middle in this photo with his twin sons Charley on the left (I think) and Joe on the right. This photo was taken at the 1985 Breeders Cup at Aqueduct. Both sons were shoers with their father at the New York tracks; Joe is still there and works as paddock farrier at Saratoga in August. Charlie died in 2005 after a long battle with cancer.

I will post more information shortly to add to this story.

New "TracMe" Therapeutic Horseshoe Hits Its Stride at Hoof Conference

The new "TracMe" aluminum wedge/roller horseshoe was unveiled today at the International Hoof Care Summit meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The new shoes are sized like raceplates and look like therapeutic shoes. The larger sizes have wider (some would say onion-esque) heels and optional clips.

Trac Me is the project of metals manufacturing pro Mary Lovejoy of Versailles, Kentucky. A few years ago, her mare Zena developed laminitis and was a patient at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital’s podiatry unit, under the care of Dr. Scott Morrison and farrier Manfred Ecker.

Mary became intrigued with the clinic's display of aluminum shoes made by Manfred, or offered by different manufacturers. And she thought she could do better. When Zena recovered, she became determined to bring her metal trades background to the farrier world, and TracMe shoes became a full-fledged business plan.

The preliminary shoes were designed by Manfred Ecker and tested by top farriers like Dr. Scott Morrison, Mike Wildenstein (Cornell University), Jay Thomlinson (Virginia) and James Gilchrist (Palm Beach Equine Clinic).

Aluminum milling has been a state of the art process for making shoes for almost ten years now. The demand for aluminum egg-bar shoes sent GE Forge and Tool’s KB shoe line to the top of the class when GE’s Bob Garner went high-tech and mastered the aluminum extrusion and computerized milling process. The result was a streamlined horseshoe that didn’t break because (in a nutshell) the aluminum “flowed” around the form of the shoe instead of across the form. Major improvement!

TracMe shoes retail for $36 a pair and up.

Learn more at http://www.tracmeshoes.com or call Mary Lovejoy at
847-247-1121 or 859-873-6402.

© Hoofcare Publishing 2007

To learn more about new research, products, and treatments for the horse's hooves and legs as reported to veterinarians and farriers in the award-winning "Hoofcare & Lameness Journal", go to http://www.hoofcare.com

Direct “subscribe now” link to Hoofcare & Lameness Journal: http://www.hoofcare.com/subscribe.html

Contact Hoofcare Publishing anytime: tel 978 281 3222 fax 978 283 8775 email bloginquiry@hoofcare.com

Magnetic Toe Clip Device Helps Farriers Position Shoe for Nailing

Our trusty reporters on the trade show floor at the farrier meeting in Cincinnati report that one of the most unique items they have seen is the "Shoe-Tru" device. It is an oversized toe clip with a magnet that adheres to the shoe.

Assuming that the toe of the shoe is "out there" with the toe of the foot, not set-back, the clip holds the shoe in placing for safer, more steady nailing. Once the nails are in, the farrier just slips the clip off the shoe.

Many farriers lament the unpopularity of toe clips on USA horse shoes; most people use side clips. Users of both types of clips site the ease of nailing on a clipped shoe. The magnetic clip may help with nailing, but not have the burn-in requirements of a "real" clip.

There are some ingenious people out there!

All HoofBlog text and images © Hoofcare Publishing 2007 unless otherwise noted.

To learn more about new research, products, and treatments for the horse's hooves and legs as reported to veterinarians and farriers in the award-winning "Hoofcare & Lameness Journal",
go to http://www.hoofcare.com

Direct “subscribe now” link to Hoofcare & Lameness Journal: http://www.hoofcare.com/subscribe.html

Contact Hoofcare Publishing anytime:
tel 978 281 3222 fax 978 283 8775 email bloginquiry@hoofcare.com

Barbaro's Final Update

At around 10:30 this morning, after spending a restless night on his feet in his stall at New Bolton Center, 2006 Kentucky Derby Barbaro was euthanized by his surgeon Dr. Dean Richardson.

I was able to participate in a press briefing from Dr. Richardson this afternoon and can share this information:

1. The decision to euthanize Barbaro was not related to a re-fracture of his leg. To take weight off his foundered left hind, Barbaro bore increased weight on the right hind and severely bruised the lateral heel, which lead to an abscess in that heel area.

2. Barbaro did develop laminitis in both front feet.

3. On Sunday night, Barbaro did not lie down. Richardson said the horse is usually quiet at night and lies down to sleep. He did not do that last night and Richardson said it was the first night the horse had been in distress. The horse's distress was in spite of pain medication and the use of the sling. "We couldn't control his pain," Richardson said.

4. On Monday morning, Barbaro was relatively comfortable in his sling and alert. He ate his grass brought to him by his owners. He was given a heavy dose of tranquilizer and then an overdose of anesthesia through a catheter that was already in his neck.

5. "It could not have been more peaceful," Richardson stressed.

In retrospect, Richardson commented, "There were some Eureka! moments. But this is how science works, it's more like a gradual accumulation of expertise. I am sure I made mistakes, or, I should say, I am sure there were things I could have done better. You have to believe that you will get better at your job, otherwise why would you go to work in the morning?"

Referring to the cascade of events leading to the decision to euthanize the horse, Richardson said, "It's like a deck of cards. If one thing starts to go, others follow."

"My only gratification," he said near the end of the conference, "Is that he had eight or nine months of being a happy horse a majority of the time."

The press conference ended about 4:30 this afternoon.

Barbaro's Last Update: Rest in Peace

Word just in that 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized this morning at New Bolton Center. More information to follow.