"We Lost Kevin": North Carolina farrier Kevin Fahey has died

Kevin Fahey was excited when Chris Pollitt's book came out in 1995. He grabbed the first copy from me and turned right to the heart bar shoe section. He probably never read anything else in the book. He was focused.

"We lost Kevin". That's what Danny Ward's message on my voice mail said. How could you lose Kevin Fahey, I wondered? You always knew when Kevin was around. Did he hike up a mountain? Did he get caught in a spiraling tangle of interstate interchanges somewhere or...did we "lose" him, in the most dreaded sort of a way?

It turns out the last one is what happened. Kevin Fahey, a.k.a. "Kev the Farrier", has died.

You probably don't think you know Kevin Fahey, and you'd be just like the rest of us, because he was a hard person to get to know. In a nutshell, he was a Boston-born Irishman with a distinguished background as a United States Marine. He tended to lock into ideas and people with an intensity that scared some people away. He left Boston one day to attend horseshoeing school at Donald Jones's North Carolina School of Horseshoeing...and he stayed in North Carolina for decades. But he never lost his Boston accent. That was how he talked and he was always going to talk that way.

Kevin showed up 31 years ago to help Danny Ward host his first big farrier event at his school in Martinsville, Virginia, and he came back 31 more times, making him the only person besides Danny to attend every event...and helping Danny grow the event into what people call "Woodstock for Farriers". It's the most fun time you can have, and Kevin helped make it that way.

When Kevin met laminitis expert farrier Burney Chapman in the 1980s, he locked into the heartbar shoe theory and the fact that, using it, he could help a lot of horses with laminitis. So that became his specialty. He only wanted to work on foundered horses. If you had a sound horse, you didn't need Kev. He also locked into a long, loyal friendship with Burney, and helped him when he was dying of brain cancer.

At some point, Kevin learned to make jewelry and he must have made hundreds and hundreds of horseshoe belt buckles in his spare time. He told me once that he would start out making other shoes, but somehow most of them turned into heart bars.

Kevin was a longtime veteran of Dr Ric Redden's Bluegrass Laminitis Symposiums, where he would sell his heart bar jewelry in the trade show and intensely study the disease that fascinated him so much.

Kevin had beaten cancer a few years ago, or so we all thought. But when it came back, and he was told that he only had a few months to live, Kevin did a very "Kevin" thing. And it would be the last Kevin thing he would do: He got behind the wheel of a camper, sick as he was, and he drove across the United States from his home in Colorado. He made a beeline for Martinsville, Virginia, the place he had gone back to time and time again in his life: to Danny Ward's horseshoeing school. My guess is that he didn't stop much along the way and he didn't look left or right. And Kevin Fahey didn't need a GPS.

Kevin made it to Danny's, but without much time to spare.

If you walk around a horse show or a racetrack or a farrier event and you see someone with a shiny horseshoe belt buckle, chances are you're looking right at Kevin. Especially if it's a heart bar.

Whenever you see him, say hello for me.

Do you have a favorite memory of Kevin? Are you wearing one of his belt buckles right now? Hit the comments button and leave a note to him and to his friends, or email it to fran@hoofcare.com and I'll make sure it is posted here.

Who's in Port Tonight?

Here's the web cam from our building, looking out over the docks. It updates every few minutes, so you can see what's going on here. The harbor has been very quiet this summer, as many of the pleasure boaters stay dockside rather than make too many trips to the gas dock. But you will see the working boats on the water. And if you visit the blog at night...you'll see a dark square.

There's a condensation spot between the layers of glass in the window, so it looks like there's a smudge on the image. (Sorry!)

Hoofcare Publishing's office is on a tumbledown old dock in the tumbledown old fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, about 28 miles northeast of Boston. We like being tumbledown, for the most part, around here. If this place ever gets fixed up, we'd have to find a new office.

Visitors are always welcome, and we have quite a few each summer. Please call ahead if you are planning to be in the area (or already are), and bring your own lifejacket! Hope you like fish...

If you ever come to visit by sea, this is the Hoofcare neighborhoof; the office is in the reddish building on the left.

Dutch Study Uses Special Shoes to Analyze Gait in Water-Based Treadmill Therapy

Via press release from the Society for Experimental Biology. This research was presented today at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting at Marseille, France.


A team of scientists from Wageningen University, led by Professor Johan van Leeuwen, has carried out studies both into the benefits of a method of equine rehabilitation. By using computer modeling and specialist horseshoes to measure acceleration, these investigations suggest that aqua-training rehabilitation is beneficial to horses due to lower impact accelerations.

Rehabilitation after equine joint and muscle injuries, including those of the back, shoulders and legs, now often involves 'aquatraining', whereby horses move in water-filled treadmills. Depending on the condition of the horse, different workloads can be obtained by regulating water level and walking velocity. Due to buoyancy, this treatment is currently thought to reduce weight-bearing forces, which can otherwise have detrimental effects on joints, but to date there has been a virtual absence of studies into the magnitude of these benefits.

Professor van Leeuwen's team has used special horseshoes to measure accelerations of horses undergoing aquatraining, as well as walking normally, which provide a good indication of the impact forces involved. "Our results, based on data from seven horses, show the accelerations are significantly lower during 'aquatic walking'," he asserts. "We will be carrying out further experiments to confirm these results, but at this stage, it appears that aquatraining may indeed be beneficial for rehabilitation after joint injury."

This work involved collaboration with the Department of Equine Sciences at Utrecht University, the Mary Anne McPhail Equine Performance Center at Michigan State University and the Dutch Equestrian Centre.

(end press release)

Here's a short video clip of a horse on an aqua treadmill. There are several units such as this one on the market, showing this video is not meant as an endorsement, nor do I know what manufacturer's treadmill was used in the Dutch study.

Irish Farrier Claims World Championship at Calgary Stampede

We were all betting on a kilt. Did the winner wear one? It's sort of hard to tell!

Paul Robinson from Northern Ireland is standing in front of about 20,000 cheering people right now in the rodeo arena at the Calgary Stampede, where he earned the title of 2008 World Champion after five days of fierce competition.

It's a little confusing, from this distance, because I know that Paul Robinson was on the Irish team at Stoneleigh last year, but Calgary has his residence listed as AYR, for Ayrshire, which is, of course, in Scotland. David Varini of Scotland was in second place, and hooray! for oldtimers, Grant Moon, representing Wales, was third!

Perhaps the biggest news is that five out of the top ten finishers were from the United States: (5) Jim Quick; (7) Bill Poor; (8) Chris Madrid; (9) Jake Engler; and (10) Troy Price.

If Paul Robinson really has switched over to the Scots, then Grant Moon was the only farrier in the Top Ten not from Scotland or the USA. You have to go all the way to 15th place, where you'll find Ireland's Paul Duddy, to find someone not from Scotland or the USA besides Grant.

Click here to see a photo of Paul with his $10,000 check for winning.

Click here to go through a gallery of many pages of photos from the competition. Just click on any thumbnail image to see a bigger view, but these are low-resolution proofs and not as sharp as you might like to see.

Congratulations to Paul! I bet the Guinness or perhaps the single-malt, depending on which country Paul Robinson is from this week, is flowing in Calgary tonight!

Calgary Stampede: Where the Competition is Hot This Weekend for Farriers from Around the World

Former World Champion David Wilson of Balmullo, Scotland has been the judge of the 2008 World Championship Blacksmiths Competition at the Calgary Stampede this week.

David, who is 71, was invited to judge for the fourth time in his career; no other farrier has judged the prestigious Calgary event so many times. He was the World Champion in 1985; I remember him on the stage in front of the entire rodeo audience receiving his award...dressed in a beautiful kilt.

The bronze sitting on David's anvil in the photo is the coveted trophy he won as World Champion at the Calgary Stampede.

According to an article in a Scottish newspaper last week, David has won 13 gold medals for draft horse shoemaking at the Royal Highland Show and has been show champion eight times, also receiving a special honor in 2005 to mark his 50th Highland Show. He also won the North American Challenge Cup Futurity in 1988. In 1983 Queen Elizabeth presented David with the British Empire Medal for services to farriery.

Word is that entries from Scotland were especially high this year, so there may be an entire flock of kilts on the stage tonight when the awards are presented.

Click here to read more about David Wilson, who will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his marriage to Mari this summer.

One person that David was judging in Calgary is Ben Yeager, who lives near Victoria, British Columbia. Ben is the current Canadian champion and was scheduled to compete in Calgary along with three teammates from the Vancouver area. They will also compete in the international team competition in England later in the summer.

Here's a little video clip from last year's Calgary Stampede shoeing events, courtesy of the Stampede:



I don't know for certain who the winner was tonight. I do know that former World Champion Grant Moon did come out of retirement and competed at Calgary this week.

Favorite Video: Elephant on a Trampoline

It's Sunday, it's hot, but for a few minutes, all my cares melted away while I watched this tiny bit of film. One of my all-time favorite videos, "7Tonnes2", is posted here for you, courtesy of the magic of YouTube.

Just click on the "play" icon (horizontal triangle) and you'll be as hypnotized as I was!

Kudos to creator/animator Nicolas Deveaux and Cube, the special effects studio in Paris who created this.

Feel free to believe that this is real. I do!

This Could be Really Good News Or....

Here I am, originally uploaded by Cpt<HUN>.

Oh, baby! Have we got plans for you! Dressage shows with "breed" or "in-hand" classes are finding new popularity in the young horse divisions, thanks to some national year-end awards, and classes for foals means that babies' feet and legs and gaits will be under scrutiny this summer.

And just last week, Dressage at Devon, the penultimate competition for warmblood and dressage-aspiring breeds and individual competitors, announced the addition of an in-hand (obviously) championship for foals.

The division championship, sponsored by Hassler Dressage, will be a part of the event’s extensive breed division, which takes place September 23-25 in Devon, Pennsylvania.

Dressage at Devon markets itself as "the highest rated international dressage competition and most complete breed show outside of Europe". Olympic medalist Robert Dover calls Dressage at Devon “the standard by which all American horse shows should be judged.” There is no question that a ribbon won at the show is a gold star on a horse's resume, to say nothing of potentially adding to a price tag.

Weanlings have been shown previously at the event, but there was no specific championship for foals. In 2007, the prize list had 20 fillies and 35 colts listed as entries; there are classes for yearlings too, of course. There was a winning colt and a winning filly, but the champion young horse award meant that the babies had to compete against older horses.

The organizers and sponsor say they want to be more like the Germans.

Showing a foal in Germany is serious business, all part of the overall marketing emphasis of the breeding industry there. The foals are prepped to showcase their gaits, and promote the stallions who fathered them.

We will just have to wait and see if there is a big demand for Equinalysis or OnTrack gait analysis of foals, and if trainers become obsessive about trimming tiny feet. Yes, show-quality foals have trainers, or at least professional handlers on show day, as a rule.

Dressage at Devon will attract the very best dressage-bred foals in the United States. The question is: Will this top show's increased spotlight on foals feed a surge of interest around the country in micromanaging the feet and legs of warmblood foals, and analyzing their gaits, so they look good in the ring as weanlings...or so they move better and stay sounder as adults? Are the two mutually exclusive?

Time for a commercial! Speaking of foals: Hoofcare and Lameness's special "Baby Boom" back issue is one of the very best collections of articles ever published on foal conformation and foot/limb disorders in foals. We can dig one out of the vault and send it to you; cost is $15 each plus $5 post for 1-3 copies to USA addresses; rest of the world, add $10 additional postage. Email books@hoofcare.com with your name, address, phone, email and Visa or Mastercard information or fax to 01 978 283 8775.

Track Vets Irritated by Congressional Hearing Charges; Protest Lack of Reprsentation on Panel

Veterinarian Phil Tripp, left, with assistant Alfonso Quintero, work at the Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo by Bill Luster, The Courier-Journal; story link below.

"Ouch!" "Zing!" "Wham-o!"

Racetrack veterinarians were under the gun last week at the Congressional sub-committeee hearing on racetrack drug abuse and breakdowns. Reading the transcript makes it clear that owners and trainers were seeking to place some of the blame for the problems in horse racing on the shoulders of racetrack vets.

To paraphrase one recent comment by a racetrack old-timer: "Years ago we had twice the horses and half the vets. Now we have half the horses and twice the vets."

Racetrack veterinarians have always had a separate reality. Unlike most veterinarians, they are bound by laws and rules and have to be pharmacologists to know how long a medication will remain in a horse's system, what the allowed levels are, and what the implications may be of a horse shipping to a different state where laws may not be the same. Ever wonder how it's possible to stable fillies and colts next to each other on the shedrow? Ask the vet.

There are two types of veterinarians at the track: practicing vets and regulatory vets, who are employed by the racing jurisdiction, usually the state. In addition to tasks related to testing horses for illegal or excessive medication, veterinarians inspect horses before races, interact with stewards, and work double-duty when an outbreak of herpes virus or strangles shuts down a track.

Consider this quote from the Washington hearing: owner Jess Jackson told the subcommittee that in Seabiscuit's day there were three veterinarians at Santa Anita and all drove Chevrolets, compared with perhaps 26 today who "all drive BMWs and Cadillacs now". (I didn't realize Mr. Jackson was old enough to remember Seabiscuit.)

Veterinarians at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky found a willing ear in reporter Jenny Rees of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Her compilation of their comments and more hits against track vets formed a feature story in today's paper. Read it here.

It seems like blame for everything in the horse world is like a big game of Tag. This month, track vets are It. Tomorrow it could be you, or me. Big Blame keeps getting passed around and around; where it stops, nobody knows.

Favorite Photos: Which Way'd He Go?

horse hoofs, originally uploaded by Miss-D80.

(I don't know that the horse had five legs; the one of the left is probably from a teammate. And a family member, by the looks of it.)

Which side of the right front shoe do you think he wears down most? I bet most Hoofcare and Lameness readers could draw a picture of what the bottom of this horse's right front looks like.

Draft horses are amazing. I think this is a draft horse, or possibly a Friesian. They often endure bad shoeing, no shoeing, lousy confirmation, cracked feet, ringbone, sidebone...and just keep going.

Thanks to Miss D80 for the loan of her photo!

Favorite Photo: The Magnificent Shire of Shoes

Now here's something I haven't seen before. This Shire is crafted from hundreds of horseshoes by retired Yorkshire, England businessman Donald Punton. Click here to learn more about him and the horses he builds. I think the blaze and feathers paint is really clever, although I am not sure if the body and legs are painted or just rusted!