Life Imitates Art: World Championship Blacksmiths Pitch Their Tent in Massachusetts

Maybe it was my head cold, but it seemed like a tableau off the wall of a British art gallery. I had just finished selecting a series of Murfin paintings for the next issue of Hoofcare and Lameness; they depict the sights and sweats of the Shire Horse Show shoeing competition held in Peterborough, England each March.

On Friday, the paintings seemd to come alive right in front of me when the World Championship Blacksmiths Competition passed through western Massachusetts; they pitched their big yellow tent at our regional all-breed, all-sport horse fair, Equine Affaire. I was able to drop in for a few minute minutes between sniffles and sneezes.

Both the name recognition factor of the competitors and the geography represented were impressive. Also impressive was the lineup of farriers on the spectator side of the "caution" tape line, the announcer (New Mexico farrier and WCB front man Craig Trnka) and the judge, Billy Crothers of Wales.

Probably my favorite part was the blasting music. Who couldn't smile when you walk up to a big yellow tent full of blazing coal forges and hear Johnny Cash singing "Ring of Fire"? Maybe it was my cold medicine, but I swear the hammers were swinging to the beat.

My heart skipped a beat a little as I looked around and saw what was missing. My late great friend, New York farrier (and tireless competitor) Vern Hornquist, would have been front and center in a very big way at this event. Vern, as many of you know, died a few years ago.

Note: World Championship Blacksmiths is a private corporation producing regional forging competitions around the USA. I believe this was their fourth event, leading up to a national championship to be held in Tampa, Florida in February. Anyone wishing to compete may join the organization and admission seemed to be free for spectators.

About the paintings: These Murfin images are posted for viewing on this blog only. You may double click on the image to see a larger version. You can see more from this series in the next issue of Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. No downloading or reproduction of these images without permission of Hoofcare Publishing and the artist. They are protected by both British and American copyright.

Icelandic Hoof Interlude at Cornell: Sigurdsson Tolts On

Rider Sigurdur Oli Kristinsson, farrier Sigurdur Sigurdsson, and Cornell's Michael Wildenstein pose with a furry Icelandic horse (don't call them ponies!) after an in-depth seminar on shoeing and gait adjustment on the Icelandic horse. The farrier speaker brought a top rider with him to illustrate the fine points of gaiting the fast little island-bred horses that have become very popular in the United States. Below are the finished front feet on this horse. The fine art of adjusting a horse's gaits was covered; the Icelandic horse has five natural gaits, including the four-beat "tolt" which can be trotty or pacey. Adjusting shoe weight behind or in front can have a big effect on the horse's tolt, as illustrated by Siggy and Siggy on two horses worked on the indoor matted horse run at Cornell. The farrier's job is to make sure that the tolt is a true four-beat gait. "Siggy Sig" is director of hoofcare studies at Holar University College, Iceland and is very active as a rider in international competition. Many farriers from the Northeast attended to learn about these horses that are showing up in their practices. It was an outstanding presentation; it's a rare treat to see a farrier pleased enough with his work to ride the horse and there were many points that would have been valuable for trainers or farriers. No one in the audience could say "been there, done that". You know it's a good clinic when I'm not the only one taking photos.

UPenn's Rob Sigafoos Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

America's "Mad Scientist" of farriery received the lifetime achievement award at the Fourth International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in West Palm Beach, Florida on Saturday. Sigafoos's career has spanned more than 20 years of innovative thinking that culminated in his important role in the team working on Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro during the colt's long stay at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, where Sigafoos has been staff farrier for more than 20 years.

Among Sigafoos's many contributions to veterinary medicine and farriery have been pioneering the use of PMMA adhesives like "Equilox", glue-on shoes with cloth cuffs, external fixator braces, and many innovative cast and brace designs for orthopedic cases.

If there are giants in the farrier world, Rob is one. He-who-hates-nails changed the way we approach therapeutic options for hoof conditions, and showed us all how to think way outside the box.

Congratulations, Rob!

Million-Dollar Gift from Marianne and John Castle Will Boost Laminitis Research

Several major news stories are in development this morning as I have just returned from the Fourth International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Complete details will follow, but let me be hopefully the first to announce to the world that Mr. and Mrs. John Castle of New York, New York and Palm Beach, Florida stunned the audience at the conference with the announcement that they will donate one million dollars to Dr. James Orsini's new Laminitis Institute at the University of Pennsylvania for the study of the causes and treatment of laminitis in the horse.

A more formal article will follow, but I wanted to share the great news!

Some background information on the laminitis initiatives at UPenn are outlined in this file.

Farrier Profiled in Video: Australia's Melbourne Cup Will be Run in the Shadow of Equine Influenza Crisis a State Away

It's Melbourne Cup week at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, in the Australian state of Victoria, where the equine influenza (EI, or "horse flu") outbreak that has paralyzed New South Wales and Queensland has (so far) not erupted.

Several of Australia's top horses are unable to compete because they cannot be transported out of New South Wales. Runners from Europe and Japan have been affected by quarantines as well, or fear the odds of entering the country. Last year the race was won by a Japanese horse.

But the race, made so famous to foreigner through the legend of the great Australian superhorse Phar Lap, will go on. (You may remember how cruel stewards at Flemington kept piled lead on the gifted horse to "equalize" the rest of the field.) Many top stables and racetracks are located in Victoria and South Australia. Horse that were in Victoria when the crisis began just stayed there.

The Australian Broadcast Corporation has posted a very good video profile of farrier Vaughn Ellis from Victoria and his life as a farrier on and off the racetrack. It's worth a look, and American farriers will chuckle when they see him opening a box from the USA as the narrator describes the hardship of Australian farriers, who depend on foreign manufacturers for almost everything they use.

Vaughn is not being hit too hard by the flu crisis, since it has not hit Victoria, but he does remark that he has fewer horses to shoe because the horses from Sydney are unable to come to Victoria for the spring racing season. (Australia, being in the Southern hemishere, is enjoying spring now.)

Try clicking on this type to go to the video. This is a very nice piece and is blessedly free of the sentimentality and cliches that usually mar profiles of professional farriers.

Legal strings with ABC forbid posting the video on this blog. To watch the video you need to click on the highlighted type to the right of the main text and under the photo of the horse hanging his head over a stall door.

Breakdowns Mar First Weeks of Racing on Santa Anita 's New Artificial Surface

The Daily Racing Form is reporting that 11 horses have been euthanized since September 24 at California's Santa Anita racetrack near Los Angeles. The fall "Oak Tree" meet is the first to be run on Santa Anita's new Cushion Track surface and also the first to be run there there since the state of California passed a rule banning toe grabs on front raceplates.

Five horses have died during training and six horses have died during races. The latest death is a three-year-old maiden filly.

Tendon Rehab Specialist Adopts Gait Analysis to Monitor Healing Parameters

When War of Attrition, the famous 2006 Cheltenham Gold Cup Winner, suffered a serious foreleg tendon problem in March 2007, an all-out effort was made to aid his recovery and bring him back to compete again in the jump racing world.

A new breed of company in the British Isles was tapped to micro-manage the horse's treatment and recovery. "Tendon Works" operates in-patient equine treatment centers--the equivalent of an intensive-care equine clinic crossed with a layup farm. At a center near Canterbury, south of London, England and a new one in Fethard, Ireland, horses undergo ten-week programs of biomechanical and clinical assessment followed by treatment and rehab.

“War of Attrition presented with an obvious and significant tendon injury to the right fore superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT), and early signs of damage to the SDFT on the contra-lateral side,” says Dr David Chapman-Jones of Tendon Works.

“Following as assessment on the treadmill, (in my opinion) it was clear his front limb loading and hindquarter action were also not right," he continued. "Russell Guire of Centaur Biomechanics assessed the horse using Equinalysis video-based screening, and the results surprised us all by showing a problem with the horse’s left fore and also a problem in his pelvis.

“We assessed the horse holistically and decided to change his saddle to one with a carbon-fiber tree and air flocking, which reduced the pressure on his back. We also adjusted his shoeing, which made a difference to the strain on the forelimb flexor tendons, and used specific exercises to ensure he engaged his back end more productively, which reduced the fore limb loading and gave the tendon treatment the best chance to work," he explained. "War of Attrition is now back with trainer Mouse Morris in Ireland, and I estimate that his tendon injury is nine-tenths recovered – he is currently undergoing an appropriate training regime to manage stress to the limb.”

The combination of Equinalysis’ locomotive assessment and Tendon Works’ cell regeneration treatment, which claims to boost the damaged tendon’s electro-chemical signaling process with stem-cell technology, means equine healing and recuperation can be accelerated.

Equinalysis technology records and collates physiological aspects such as a horse’s stride length and joint flexion, providing owners with a baseline of data; the screening is performed by trained clinicians and data is collected using a laptop computer and single or multiple digital cameras. The screening service is available to all horse owners, and is recommended for ‘benchmarking’ a horse to assess its locomotion when sound.

Going forward, Tendon Works will be incorporating Equinalysis screening into their injury prevention evaluations at the new Fethard Equine Hospital in County Kildare, Ireland.

Please visit: www.equinalysis.co.uk for info about the screening technology, or www.tendonworks.com for details of Tendon Works’ treatment regimen and services.

WEG Promo Counts Horseshoes of a Different Sort

Perhaps no one would notice this but me….BUT…a new promotion for the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games (to be held at the Kentucky Horse Park, first time outside Europe) is using horseshoes to mark off the years. The promo launched last month, with one year/horseshoe crossed off, while three years/horseshoes remain.

Their choice of horseshoe style intrigued me. I don’t think that St. Croix/Mustad or Diamond is a sponsor (yet) but there is a lineup of one or the other company’s basic toe-and-heeled shoe.

I had to chuckle because it is not likely that a single horse in the World Equestrian Games would be shod with that shoe. Meanwhile, the hilly country of Kentucky is surely home to a lot of trail/pleasure horses that would be wearing those shoes.

The farrier world missed a great opportunity here. The shoes chosen for the graphic could have been the specialized shoes you’d see on eventing, jumping, endurance and reining horses that will be competing at WEG in 2010. Not to mention driving, dressage, and vaulting shoes (if there is a vaulting shoe!).

Although, by 2010, who knows what types of shoes the sport horses will be wearing—or if they might all be barefoot or booted or laminated or glazed!

Tooth Floating Debate in Texas Draws Attention from Abroad

This week's issue of the prestigious British newsmagazine The Economist looks askance at the controversy in Texas, where veterinarians are supposed to be taking over tooth-floating of horses.

The Brits think this action is downright unAmerican and take a look at the ethics of licensing or changing the playing fields of previously unregulated trades and professions. While Britain is highly regulated, they tend to think of America as the land of free enterprise.

Come to think of it, so do a lot of Americans.

This article is worth reading, no matter where you stand on the various campaigns for veterinarians to take over responsibility for all aspects of animal care, from tooth floating of horses in Texas to clipping of dog claws in California.

Breakdown, Euthanasia at the Breeders Cup: Barbaro’s Classmate Put Down on Monmouth Track

There was always a “PS” to the Barbaro story last year. At the same time that Barbaro was winning the Kentucky Derby, his stablemate from the 2003 crop of foals bred by Roy and Gretchen Jackson’s Lael Stables was excelling in Europe. “George Washington” went on to dominate the three-year-old ranks in England and Ireland. His success must have been some small consolation to Mr. And Mrs. Jackson as they struggled with Barbaro’s surgery, convalescence and eventual tragic death when laminitis overwhelmed his recovery odds.

We never heard much about GW over here, but at the end of the racing year, he was retired to Coolmore to stand at stud. Everything looked rosy until it became obvious that the mares bred to him remained open. GW had a low fertility rate.

This spring, the Jacksons’ Kentucky Derby winner was euthanized, never having sired a foal. And in Ireland, their other star product was a dud as a stud.

Undaunted, the Irish connections sent GW back to the track, where he had a modicum of success in a 2007 comeback career. At least he didn’t embarrass them too badly. His trainer, the ever-successful Aidan O’Brien of Ballydoyle, shipped GW to Monmouth last week to enter the Breeders Cup Classic, a race he had failed to win in 2006.

Just as the horses were preparing to enter the gate, the ESPN commentator gave a quick insight into GW’s connection to the Jacksons and Barbaro. Was it a human interest quip or a curse?

Three minutes later, George Washington was dead, euthanized on the track in front of the grandstand, as burly Curlin charged across the finish line.

The screens went up, the horse ambulance arrived. People ran up the track. Who are those people?

George Washington shattered his cannon bone and then dislocated his fetlock, according to a 20-second interview by ESPN with AAEP On Call veterinarian Larry Bramlage DVM of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. The dislocation destroyed the blood supply in his lower leg and the trainer quickly made the decision to put the horse down then and there.

I realized I had been holding my breath through seven races, breathing a half-sigh of relief when all the horses cantered across the finish line, no matter how far up the track. They all finished, at least in the races I saw. And then, in the last race, the one horse with an eerie connection to the world’s most famous breakdown met his end.

It was not a Hollywood ending; it was more of Greek tragedy. We know how it ends. But we keep watching.