Fran Jurga`s Hoofcare + Lameness

Friday, September 28, 2012

Farrier Video: High-Definition Passion for the Profession in the Words and Work of Bob and Branton Phalen

Before you hit play: Stop and expand this video to full-screen by clicking on the arrows between the letters "HD" and the word "vimeo" on the tool bar. This is a video that deserves to be seen on a bigger screen than your phone's.

The voice. I know that voice. The words of California farrier icon Bob Phalen filled the office. "It's not how much you know, it's how much you learn after you know everything that counts."

How often have I heard farriers say that? And how did Bob Phalen get on my monitor screen in such brilliant high definition?

Sparks flew in slow motion as the shoe hit the anvil. Hot shoes hissed into water buckets with droplets dancing inches into the air. Delicate curls of scale peeled from the ground surface of the shoe as it hunched under the hammer and over the anvil horn. The tap of the driving hammer looked like a powerful punch.

The high-definition vignettes of a horseshoer at work were eye-popping.

The credits hadn't even stopped rolling before I was dialing Bob's phone number.

Bob and Branton hadn't even seen the video yet, and now we're able to post it for all of you here, only 24 hours later.

This video is unscripted and, according to Bob, was created through the editor's ears and eyes, without any input from the Phalens. The film crew simply showed up and spent a day with Bob and Branton, and the editor wove together the vignettes of their comments with the spectacular work shots through editing, since there was no shooting script.

The story just emerged in an organic way.

It's nice that this video is about Bob Phalen, but everyone viewing knows that it's not about him at all. He just is speaking the minds of hundreds--maybe thousands--of farriers across the world who are reaching a certain age and looking back at what they've done with their hands and their minds and their skills over decades of helping horses or "slaying dragons" as the video suggests.

Farriery may be changing forever but for the men and women who have lived the life and done the job because their hearts were in it, there are few regrets. Aches and pains maybe, but few regrets.

If you're concerned that Bob is retiring, I can tell you that I saw him recently and he reassured me again on the phone that he is in good health, although the editing on the video makes it sound like he is hanging up his apron.

That'll be the day.

Cinematographer Bradley Stonesifer

It's appropriate that the film ends with the simple gesture of twirling a shoe around the hammer on the face on the anvil. It sums things up: farriery is part hard work, part skill, and it always helps if you can add in a little bit of magic, right at the end, because that is what they will remember.

I hope the farrier world embraces, shares and promotes this video.

Forget the words that sound like an ending and focus on what Bob says about getting up every day and doing what he wanted to be doing. Perhaps it is romantic and unrealistic to approach a profession as a "passion", to use his words, but it worked for him.

••••••••••••••••

About the making of this film: Farrier was shot to illustrate the capabilities of a high-tech new camera, Vision Research's Phantom Miro M320S. This will be the first in a series of short films about craftspeople reflecting on their careers and how they found their purpose in life through their everyday work.

Thanks to Bradley Stonesifer for allowing the video to be posted for farriers and horsepeople around the world to see.

CREDITS

A Hollywood Special Ops & Island Creek Pictures Production

Bob & Brant Phalen of Phalen Horseshoeing and Supply
Rider: Racheal Johnson
Black Stallion: Constant
Brown Horses: Nikoo & Lilly

Director: Emily Bloom
Producer: Drew Lauer
Field Producer: Jerry McNutt
Cinematographer: Bradley Stonesifer
Camera Operators: Tim Obeck, Jimmy Hammond, Nick Piatnik
Editor: Patrick Chapman
Colorist: Aaron Peak of Hollywood DI
Audio Mixer: Michel Tyabji

Thanks to:
Bell Canyon Equestrian Center

To learn more:

Hollywood Special Ops LLC web site about this film

Phalen Horseshoeing and Supply Inc.

© 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.

How Research Works: Sport Horse Suspensory Ligament Study Involves Real Dressage Horses and Riders

A call for dressage riders offered a free analysis of joint motion, rein tension and rider balance in exchange for riding a horse of a specific age and dressage level on two different arena surfaces. The researchers are gambling that dressage riders will want to be part of equine research that targets the function of the suspensory ligament, one of the most common sites of lameness in dressage horses. (AHT photo)

You read the research. You look at the data. You note the summary.

But did you ever want to know more?

Researchers often list their protocols, including the number of horses or cases evaluated. Some will give some data about the horses--sex, age, use--but that may not tell you much.

If you've ever been to a vet college, you know that they often have a herd of research horses. Some are more athletic looking than others. Some are more sound than others. Some are all one breed, while at others, the herd is made up of mixed breeds. At some schools, the horses in the "research herd" look like they are seen by a farrier about once a year.

When you read about sport-related research, you trust that the research was actually done on sport horses. Most researchers will now give much more background data on the horses used in the trials, because they know this is necessary for the credibility of their findings.

Unfortunately, the numbers of horses in studies is usually small because of the difficulty in obtaining horses to test and the labor-intensive aspect of equine research. Large retrospective studies of cases are possible for injuries, but what about when the subject is gait analysis or sports performance?

And even for studies that are data analysis of cases treated at a university or vet hospital for a certain condition, or treated by a certain procedure, a considerable number of cases are lost to follow up because they were sold, died or the owners didn't answer a researcher's questions.

So an announcement that was circulating on the internet seemed interesting. The Animal Health Trust (AHT) in Newmarket, England has done several studies on injuries to the suspensory ligament. In fact, the letters PSD--for proximal suspensory desmitis--are closely connected with the letters AHT.

The suspensory ligament (sometimes called the interosseous) is show in white; it is a common site of lameness in performance horses. Jumping horses commonly injure the branches of the ligament, shown at right, but the ligament can be injured at any point along its length and in either of its branches. (Illustrations are 3-D animations from Glass Horse: Elements of the Distal Limb)

The Animal Health Trust is known for taking a rider-centric view of equine lameness. The rider may be asked to school the horse as part of the lameness exam. That may not be enough to satisfy clinician Sue Dyson, who has trained horses at the elite level of eventing and ridden Badminton herself. She employs a professional rider to participate in the lameness evaluation so that the rider's balance, ability or mental state can be ruled out as influencing the horse's gait.

The first line of the announcement read:

"Would you like to get a free assessment of your horse’s gait, symmetry and exercise programme with your travel costs covered? And also help prevent suspensory ligament injury in dressage horses for the future?"

If you think like an equestrian, that sounds like a pretty good deal, with a feel-good factor thrown in for good measure.

But from someone who follows sport horse medicine, it could only get better when the study was outlined in this way:

"The Animal Health Trust is looking for horses and riders to be filmed at trot using high speed video on two different (but good quality) arena surfaces as part of an important investigation into suspensory ligament function in horses of different levels and with different types of movement.

"For the project we are looking for combinations which fit into the following groups and would be willing to travel to Keysoe, Bedfordshire (travel costs would be covered) on 8th, 9th, 12th or 13th November and can allow approximately two hours for the testing, from arrival until completion."

Remember the comment about some horses used in studies being sketchily described in the papers?
Consider this precise description of exactly what horses were being sought for this study:

1. Young horses (seven years old and under)
• Very extravagant moving (achieving scores of 7 or 8 and above for paces) or
• Less extravagant moving (achieving scores of 6 or less for paces)

2. Mature horses (10 years and above), training at advanced level (working Intermediate 1 and above)
• Very extravagant moving (achieving scores of 7 or 8 and above for paces)
• Less extravagant moving (achieving scores of 6 or less for paces)

The requirements don't just describe the qualities of the horses needed. It also describes what the rider needs to be prepared to do.

"Horses will need to be ridden by their normal riders in a straight line in collected/working, and medium/extended trot (and piaffe and passage for any horses trained to that level) on two different surfaces."

For their effort, the riders are to be reimbursed for their travel expenses (remember that British gas is at least twice what it costs here in the USA) and this promise of a report:

"Feedback for the rider will include information on the gait (including joint flexion angles) and symmetry of the horse, rein tension, and rider position, plus advice on exercise programmes and performance if the rider would like this information."

I can't think of any dressage riders who wouldn't like that information.

The closing message rolled out the feel-good factor:

"The results of this study would enable us to provide immediate and beneficial advice on training practices to dressage trainers, riders and owners, in order to reduce the risk of suspensory ligament injury.

"Based on the number of horses that suffer from suspensory ligament injuries, and the variable outcome of treatment/management, any work which improves prevention strategies would have a considerable positive effect on dressage horse welfare."

What the text doesn't mention is that the Animal Health Trust is a charitable organization that depends on donations. By inviting and potentially involving citizen dressage riders to participate in the study, the AHT is opening the door for future donations from the riders and also creating a culture of transparency and awareness of the dressage community's problems with suspensory lameness.

When the study is complete and the researchers publish their findings, the British dressage community will have a sense of knowing the horses and riders who participated and of having been part of some important research. Everyone reading the study will know exactly what level and type of horses were in the study.

If you live in England and would like to be part of the study, you can apply by sending an e-mail to vvicki.walker@aht.org.uk; telephone: 01638 751908 or 07825 005125.

Vicki noted that horses from the local area will be accepted first to try and minimise travel expenses.

To learn more:

All about suspensory ligament injuries by Sue Dyson FRCVS
Suspensory Ligament Injuries in Horses, a UC Davis Center for Equine Health special report (free PDF download).

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Chronic Laminitis Research: Comparison of Normal vs Chronic Laminitis Horses Shows Difference in Immune, Digestive and Laminar Proteins

"Laminitis is not limited to the foot and chronic laminitis should be considered a multi-system disease" -- Steelman, Chowdhary, 2012

Chronic laminitis treatment usually focuses directly on the feet. The authors define chronic laminitis as the condition of horses who survive acute laminitis but are left with after-effects like coffin bone rotation. They state that 75% of horses with acute laminitis go on to the chronic stage, which they describe as causing permanent lameness. (file photo, courtesy of Vetmoves)

A new paper from the world of laminitis research finds that the anti-inflammatory protein apolipoprotein A-IV (APOA-IV) is raised in chronic laminitis, which suggests that the chronic form of the disease is linked to a more general inflammation, especially of the digestive system, than was previously documented.

Most research into laminitis is conducted on horses suffering from acute laminitis, usually after the ingestion of a large doses of fructans or black walnut in a controlled setting. Chronic laminitis is usually studied because of links to insulin resistance and/or equine metabolic syndrome and Cushing's disease, with minimal testing of systemic findings in horses with lameness in their feet. The focus of most chronic laminitis research is on how the endocrine system's irregular function affects the laminar tissue of the foot.

According to research published this week in the open-access journal BMC Veterinary Research, Dr Samantha Steelman and Professor Bhanu Chowdhary from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M University, found 16 proteins that have different levels in the blood of horses with chronic laminitis, but which are not reflected in normal horses. They compared nine foundered horses with 30 healthy control horses collected from horses residing at the private Hoof Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Clinic in Bryan, Texas, where horses are in treatment under the direction of David Hood PhD DVM.

Horses in both groups were in good health, apart from the laminitis. Eleven of the 16 proteins measured are involved in response to wounding, coagulation and inflammation. The remaining proteins included fetuin A and B, both of which are involved in acute immune response, immunoglobin, an indicator of increased antibody levels, and most importantly APOA-IV.

Dr Steelman explained, "APOA-IV is produced by the small intestine. One of its functions is to tell the animal when it is full. It also has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which might explain the raised levels of APOA-IV."

At 2011's Sixth International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in West Palm Beach, Florida, Dr. Steelman presented a poster titled, "Characterization of laminar, gastrointestinal, and immune system dysregulation in chronic equine laminitis", which was related to the research detailed in today's paper.

In the abstract accompanying her poster, she wrote that it was her team's goal to study the immune system, the gastrointestinal system, and the integumentary system (laminar tissue) using a combination of proteomics, next-generation DNA sequencing, and real time PCR, rather than to focus solely on the foot.

Steelman and Chowdhary's comparative study found interesting variations in all three systems between the laminitic and normal horses. Ultimately, their results support their hypothesis that localized laminar inflammation may be linked to systemic alterations in immune regulation, particularly in the gastrointestinal system.

Research published in BMC Veterinary Research that laminitis is linked to general inflammation, especially of the digestive system, via elevated levels of an anti-inflammatory protein that was not present in horses that do not have laminitis. Proteomics is the study of protein's presence, type and activity level in a condition. (Image courtesy of BMC Veterinary Research)

In other words: Chronic laminitis may show up most in displacement of the coffin bone, prolonged or intermittent lameness and hoof capsule deformity, but the digestive and immune systems are also affected. Most treatment of chronic laminitis currently focuses on making the feet more comfortable.

"From these data we conclude that the pathology of chronic laminitis is not limited to the foot and that chronic laminitis should be considered as a multi-system disease," was Steelman's interesting conclusion in Palm Beach. She recommended that her data be used in developing a more directed therapeutic approach as an alternative to current treatment strategies.

To learn more: Increased Plasma proteomics shows an elevation of the anti-inflammatory protein APOA-IV in chronic equine laminitis by Samantha M Steelman and Bhanu P Chowdhary. (full paper, free download) in the journal BMC Veterinary Research, an open access, peer-reviewed journal.

Dr. Steelman is curator of the Equine Tissue Sharing Program at Texas A&M.

Dr Chowdhary is an expert on equine genetics and also collaborates on research at the Laminitis Institute at PennVet's New Bolton Center, where he collaborates with Drs. Hannah Galantino-Homer and Chris Pollitt.

Dr. David Hood Launches the Hoof Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Clinic in Texas

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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

Monday, September 24, 2012

AVMA Statement in Support of USDA's Efforts to End Soring

The following text is published as provided by the American Veterinary Medical Association in a press release:

Sole bruising (pink/red discoloration) from possible pressure shoeing. Courtesy of USDA

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. --The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) issued the following statement in support of the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) ongoing efforts to end the inhumane practice of soring.

"The American Veterinary Medical Association appreciates ongoing efforts by the United States Department of Agriculture's Horse Protection Program to keep its stakeholders informed regarding enforcement activities associated with the Horse Protection Act (HPA), including the recent posting of preliminary inspection results for the 2012 Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration.

"Inspection results, when compared over time, can be an important measure of progress in achieving the goal of eliminating the inhumane practices associated with soring of horses. Unfortunately, these statistics from the 2012 Celebration reaffirm that soring remains prevalent in the industry more than 40 years after passage of the HPA. A violation rate of close to 10% is symptomatic of an industry that continues, decade after decade, to fail in its responsibilities to protect the welfare of these horses.

"Representatives of the AVMA attended the 2012 Celebration and observed enforcement activities in the inspection area. They found the USDA veterinary medical officers conducting inspections to be skilled and professional in the conduct of their activities. And, in contrast to allegations of selective enforcement at this year's Celebration that have been levied by some of those in the industry, congruence between violation rates for 2011 (9.5%) and 2012 (9.0%) suggests the USDA's approach to enforcement is consistent. Consistency among results provides further evidence that abuse within the Walking Horse industry is a systemic problem, not an isolated one.

"The AVMA urges the USDA to actively and effectively enforce the HPA while the agency continues to search for improved detection methods. Ultimately, the AVMA believes that elimination of action devices and the so-called performance packages from the show ring would be the most timely and effective way to stop this inhumane practice."

For more information about the AVMA and its programs, please visit www.avma.org.

Soring: Unethical and Illegal (AVMA Fact Sheet) (download)

Click to go to ordering page for full details; 3-D hoof anatomy educational software

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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

University of Tennessee Equine Orthopedic and Rehabilitation Center Rises in Knoxville

News broadcast from WBIR-TV in Knoxville previews the new equine orthopedic and rehabilitation center at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine.

The University of Tennessee's College of Veterinary Medicine is growing. The well-established vet school on the UT campus in Knoxville expects to open an ambitious new 85,000 square foot veterinary medicine center by February 2013.

The equine hospital is the jewel of the campus's new crown, and will be next door to an impressive equine lameness diagnosis and rehabilitation facility, which is about twice its size.

Within the new campus of the Equine and Large Animal Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, an Orthopedic Diagnostic Center is nearing completion, as featured on the video. It is a state-of-the art imaging center with spiral CT scan capabilities for large and small animals, and new space for the vet school's ambulatory field service.

The new veterinary center at the University of Tennessee features the new equine lameness diagnosis and rehabilitation facility, shown in this drawing as the building at far right

New facilities require funds, and the new construction is expected to cost $20.9 million. If you'd like to be part of it, the university is offering naming rights to departments in exchange for donations. If you'd like to be known eternally in Knoxville, the farrier services unit can bear your name for just $150,000. A stall in the equine ICU looks like quite a bargain at just $15,000. Then again, for a $4 million donation, your name will be on the marquee of the Equine Orthopedic Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Center.

UT has always been recognized for its research and treatment of equine lameness, including laminitis, and rehabilitation. This is an older promotion video for the vet school. Notice that they promote their farrier's journeyman status. Dudley Hurst is shown rasping a hoof wall in the video.

You can keep an eye on the construction and watch the progress; the university web site posts a high-definition photo of the construction every hour.

Click for full page information on contents and ordering information.

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Equine Gait Analysis: The Ghost of Muybridge's Racehorse Gallops Again

A vaguely-familiar and yet ghostly horse and rider gallop through the streets of Palo Alto, California in this trailer for next week's Palo Alto International Film Festival. Why this particular horse and rider? Because Stephen Jobs wasn't the first genius to live in Silicon Valley. The first one made his mark with horses' hooves.

Legend has it that it all started on a bet.

The year was 1878. A wealthy industrialist named Leland Stanford believed that there is a point in a horse's gallop when all four hooves leave the ground.

His opponents called him mad. Artists and sculptors argued that time does not stop and even if it did, how could something as heavy as a horse defy gravity?

They believed that one foot had to stay in touch with the planet at all points in the horse's stride. Horses didn't fly.

But how could you prove it? Or disprove it?

A funny thing happened on the way to proving what happens to horses' hooves when they gallop. From the pudding of that proof that resulted, the motion picture industry was born.

Equine gait analysis was born in Palo
Alto, California in 1878.

To prove he was right, Stanford imported English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who had been experimenting with making the mechanism we now know as the camera shutter.

Back at that time, every photo required a long exposure, which is why you often see blurred photos. Cameras had no shutters. The photographer merely removed the lens cap and replaced it when enough light had entered to expose the sensitive plate. If you were posing for a portrait you had better hold your breath.

And galloping horses? Trotting horses? Their legs were just a blur in old photos, and even the word's finest painters had it all wrong when they depicted horse limbs at different gaits.

Muybridge set out to use science to prove that Stanford was correct. He set up twelve cameras connected to trip wires that crossed the horse's trajectory. Muybridge was anything but an overnight success with this method: he and Stanford struggled with experiments for five years until they mastered the method of stopping motion.

But they still had to be able to stop it in just the right phase of the stride in order to prove their point.

On the day of reckoning, horse racing fans and the curious press assembled at Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm in Palo Alto, California to see what Muybridge's results would be.

The series that made history that day was captured of a trotter hitched to a two-wheeled cart; the suspension phase of the trot was clearly illustrated.

All four of the horse’s hooves were off the ground at the same time. Victory was Stanford's.

Watch a horse gallop. Is it any wonder it took thousands of years for someone (and science) to figure it out? This is a still from the video of Occident.

It was a trotter that day but the galloping racehorse is the image most closely identified with Muybridge.

It sounds obvious to us today, but it was not obvious back then. Muybridge's flying hooves were the first recorded movement in visual history.

Studying Muybridge is something that film history students do. Equine gait analysis students do it, too. Animation students still use his frames as blank canvases for their own horses. The galloping horse and its flying hooves have become an icon.

And this week, their ghost gallops through Palo Alto again.

Note: the special trailer for the film festival was made with the assistance of French animators who would like viewers to know that there was no post-production involved.

To learn more:
June 15, 1878: Muybridge Horses Around With Motion Pictures (Wired Magazine)
Muybridge animal locomotion collection at the University of Pennsylvania

Click to go to order page and PayPal link. We'd love to send you this poster.

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Paynter Watch: How Is Post-Colitis Laminitis Different from Common Chronic Laminitis?

TVG interview with champion Thoroughbred Paynter's owner Ahmed Zayat of Zayat Racing, taped the morning of September 19, 2012, explains the timeline of Paynter's illness and suggests the severity of the colt's illness.

All types of laminitis are similar in two ways: First, the epithelial cell system in the foot’s interlaminar zone is damaged.

Second, that damage causes horses great pain. The common analogy of standing and bearing weight on a ripped toenail is an apt one.

But the most common types of laminitis are rooted in the horse’s endocrine (hormone-producing) system.

Hormonal imbalances are aggravated by environment, diet, exercise and seasons. Damage to the laminar junction may be slow but steady, with varying intensity.

With this type, horse owners are stunned when told their horses have laminitis...and that they have had it for months or even years. It just didn’t cause enough pain for the horse to be noticeably lame.

The farrier may have noticed a stretched white line or hoof wall ridges, or that a normally-quiet horse is irritable while being shod. The rider might have thought the horse wasn’t as free-striding as he once was.

A horse that once was hard to catch is suddenly an easy catch. But the owners don't sense that these horses are lame--until they are. Then the subtle signs and the loss of performance start to make sense.

How can this be?

B0005542 Human HeLa cancer cell, apoptosis

The progressive stages of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, in a human cancer cell. (Image courtesy of Wellcome Images library)

Cellular death in endocrine-related laminitis is by the process known as apoptosis. Cells in the lamininar zone are under assault. Some may contract and die. Some may stretch and deform. Some may be unaffected and remain attached. One by one, the cells die.

The horse is more lame one day, less lame the next. The blood supply may be disrupted and the diseased hoof grows abnormally and loses its form. As the seasons change, the horse is better, or worse. Low-grade chronic laminitis can go on and on for months or years.

Another form of cell death is seen in the horse that has received a severe insult to its body’s system from the inflammation, shock and dehydration of colitis. Instead of the drip-by-drip influx of insulting factors into the foot, a flood arrives and the result is the traumatic cell die-off process known as necrosis.

Apoptosis and necrosis are flip sides of the coin of cellular death. Both are associated with the process known as laminitis, but one is a systematic death of cells, while the other is swift and deadly and immediate. One text described apoptosis as cellular suicide, and necrosis as cellular homicide.

The recent case of top three-year-old colt Paynter has been captivating the racing world. Paynter has been in a veterinary hospital in upstate New York near Saratoga since Labor Day weekend. His condition has improved but his owner reports persistent fever and diarrhea bouts, and the colt was diagnosed with laminitis in three of his four feet.

Equine podiatry specialist Dr. Bryan Fraley from Lexington, Kentucky went to New York to work on the horse; his feet are now in casts, which have been reported to be successful. Reports after the first week were that there was no rotation or sinking in the feet. The casts are due to be changed later this week.

Many of us have been there...and done that, when it comes to watching a horse struggle with the severe colitis and resulting dehydration of colitis. Too many of us have lost horses swiftly and tragically in the days following a successful survival--not to colitis, but to the severe laminitis that so often follows.

What is colitis?

Colitis: inflammation of the colon, usually due to infection. Diarrhea, colic pain and rapidly progressing dehydration are usually the result. Treatment focuses on relieving symptoms and preventing dehydration and shock while identifying and treating the underlying cause, if possible. (Definition: American Association of Equine Practitioners)

To understand colitis-related laminitis better, we turned to David Hood DVM, PhD of The Hoof Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Clinic, a laminitis research and treatment center outside College Station, Texas.

Dr David Hood during a panel discussion at the Sixth International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in 2011. (Dick Booth photo)

One of the world's most highly respected laminitis researchers, Dr. Hood’s focus is on understanding the process of laminitis and, in particular, how the foot tissue is damaged by the disease.

Dr. Hood explained that the difference between apoptosis and necrosis is central to understanding why a horse has such a sudden and devastating form of laminitis after colitis--and why the laminitis doesn’t occur until the diarrhea has stopped.

Dr. Hood mentioned that the chief culprit in colitis is that the horse goes into shock. In response to the inflammation in the bowel caused by colitis, the horse’s system demands that a large volume of fluid be pulled out of cells all over the body. It is pumped to the bowel to replace the fluid lost there but, as a result, the circulatory system is left with a deficit of fluid.

When treated by a veterinarian, the sick horse will receive lifesaving intravenous fluids. The circulation is refueled or rehydrated. But that is the cue for laminitis to begin.

plastination of chronic laminitis limb/plastinate.com

This plastination specimen illustrates
chronic laminitis and typical hoof
capsule deformity.

As you can imagine, the dehydrated body system is shocked by the massive and sudden rehydration, which is necessary to counter the loss of body fluid through the diarrhea, but still a shock to the system. The reperfusion of the cells with the fresh fluid is connected to necrosis, or a sudden traumatic death of cells within the laminar interface of the horse’s foot.

It is in the reperfusion stage that necrosis in the foot tissue takes place. This is why the onset of laminitis seems to follow the diarhhea in the medical timeline of the disease.

Not only is laminitis by necrosis sudden and traumatic, the cellular death in the laminar zone causes a collapse of the foot’s ability to support the weakened horse, and severe pain is obvious and extreme.

“By the time you see that it has happened, there’s not much to do except start rehabiliation,” Dr. Hood commented. “It’s like a patient who just had a heart attack: the damage is done, and the patient’s prognosis depends on how much damage was done.”

Dr. Hood noted that post-colitis laminitis is also very different from the third form of laminitis, known as "support-limb" laminitis. “That’s also a slow onset,” he remarked. “And the cellular death is not necessarily necrosis. The foot is almost anesthetized while the horse is standing continually on it. It’s not until the blood flow comes back that the horse begins to show signs of pain.”

Do post-colitis cases tend to demonstrate sinker syndrome rather than the rotation type of coffin bone detachment seen in typical laminitis? “It all depends,” Dr. Hood said, “on the amount of damage and the percent of lamina that have experienced acute necrosis.”

Endotoxin has been implicated as a factor in post-colitis lamintiis but Dr. Hood discounted it. “Research data indicate that while endotoxin can make a horse sick and can cause shock,” he stressed. “it--alone--does not induce laminitis.”

Are there facts that are known about colitis in horses? Dr. Hood agreed that much is known about post-colitis laminitis and fired off a quick list: horses do survive it. It’s a painful condition. It’s hard to control. Horses undergo rapid and radical damage to their feet. There are different varieties. Rehabilitation of damaged hooves after colitis can take months or even years. The more the foot is damaged, the harder it is to fully rehabilitate the foot.

In endocrine-related laminitis, on the other hand, Dr. Hood said the situation is reversed. The feet are relatively easy to treat. It’s the disease condition that is difficult.

Laminitis, in any of its forms, is a medical emergency and a critical juncture in a horse's medical history and athletic potential.

We all hope that Paynter will continue to successfully fight both colitis and laminitis.

Thanks to Dr. Hood for his time and expertise in sharing and preparing information for this article. Plastination specimen courtesy of Christoph von Horst, DVM PhD.

To learn more:

Dr. David Hood Launches the Hoof Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Clinic in Texas
Paynter Watch: Top Thoroughbred Colt Diagnosed with Post-Colitis Laminitis in New York
Paynter Laminitis Watch: Podiatry-Vet Fraley Amazed at Progress Since Hoof Casts Applied

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Jackie McConnell Sentence: Probation and Fine for Tennessee Walking Horse Soring Abuse Captured on Undercover Video

Jackie McConnell was not allowed on the grounds of the 2012 Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration earlier this month. This horse, Walk Time Charlie from North Carolina, was the judge's pick for World Champion. If some lawmakers have their way, he may be the last world champion to be shod this way. (Randall R. Saxton photo)

By now, everyone knows who Jackie McConnell is.

McConnell was videotaped beating a Tennessee Walking horse on an undercover video. The video portrayed McConnell as a vicious horse trainer who demonstrated many of the heinous crimes against horses that had been at the center of rumors about the treatment of Walking horses for decades.

The American public saw it for themselves when the video was shown by ABC News last spring.

A federal court in Tennessee found McConnell guilty of violating the Horse Protection Act and the trainer appeared in court today for sentencing.

While the judge could have sentenced the former trainer to five years in prison, he instead sentenced McConnell to three years' probation and a fine of $75,000. According to the Chattanoogan newspaper, the court gave McConnell nine months to raise the money to pay the fine and his horse trailer, seized during the investigation, will not be returned.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that McConnell cried as he read a statement saying that he takes responsibility for what he did. His two associates--including horseshoer Joe Abernathy--received probation terms of one year each.

Abernathy claimed that he was not involved in soring horses but was transporting horses for McConnell. He told the Chattanoogan, "I do feel remorse and this will make me a better person in the end."

The three pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to violate the Horse Protection Act. According to the Walking Horse Report, McConnell pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the Horse Protection Act. All other charges in the original 52-count indictment were dropped under the plea agreement.

Keith Dane, director of equine protection for The Humane Society of the United States, issued the following statement after the sentencing:

“Like many others in the Tennessee walking horse industry, Jackie McConnell has a long history of abusing horses for the sake of a blue ribbon and the profits that go along with it. He and his associates were caught on tape using painful chemicals on horses’ legs, and whipping, kicking and shocking them in the face—all to force them to perform the unnatural 'Big Lick' gait in competitions.

"The Humane Society of the United States is grateful that the U.S. Attorney took on this important case and sent a message that soring will not be tolerated. It was our hope that McConnell would do prison time for these terrible crimes, but there are gaps in the federal law that need to be strengthened.”

According to HSUS, McConnell and two others are also scheduled to appear in court later this month to face 31 counts of violating Tennessee’s state animal cruelty statute.

Public outrage over the McConnell video has led to renewed activism by lawmakers to strengthen the federal Horse Protection Act; the state of Tennessee has also expanded its animal welfare laws to include soring as a criminal act.

On the federal level, H.R. 6388, the Horse Protection Act Amendments of 2012, co-sponsored by Reps. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Jim Moran, D-Va., has been introduced to Congress with the aim of ending the failed system of industry self-policing, ban the use of certain devices associated with soring, strengthen penalties, and hold accountable all those involved in this cruel practice.

Thanks for great reporting to the Humane Society of the United States, The Walking Horse Report, The Tennessean, The Chattanoogan, and the Chattanooga Times Free Press from Tennessee today.

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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

Monday, September 17, 2012

Hoofcare History: Unravelling the Tangled Past, One Horseshoe at a Time

You'll need a half hour to watch this video. Then you might need the rest of your life to read, research and do your part in documenting the unwritten history of horseshoeing. Thanks to the University of Pennsylvania for videotaping this talk of Pat Reilly, farrier at the University's New Bolton Center.

Horseshoeing history is full of gaps, as Pat Reilly mentions again and again in this talk. It resembles nothing less than a wheel of Swiss cheese. It is full of holes. In fact, it contains more holes than cheese.

Remember that the next time you buy some cheese. Or buy into anyone else's interpretation of the history of horseshoeing.

The Coast Guard employed plenty of
farriers during World War II when US
beaches were patrolled on horseback;
they were looking for German
U-boats. (© US Coast Guard image)

Part of the problem, of course, is that once you start reading it, you realize that it was written by outsiders looking in. Veterinarians who had a theory to prove, or a position to defend. Intellectuals who considered themselves horsemen, and wrote opinionated tomes on hoof theory that, when read today, invariably get lumped together with legitimate volumes of valuable hoof knowledge.

How many people stop to actually read the old books? Most are satisfied with the drawings and plates, and never read the text. Much of the "wisdom" we quote today was not written by farriers at all, but by commercial promoters or agricultural societies bent on improving horse husbandry by advancing farriery...sometimes without ever consulting a farrier.

Pat Reilly lumps together the history of farriers and the history of horseshoeing and while it seems that the two are flip sides of the same coin, they are both huge and separate subjects. The history of farriers is a metaphor for the history of human labor, and can demonstrate all the industrial phases of mechanization of labor, the social and political side of Labor, and the role and status of the specialized laborer within the military of various nations.

Possibly the first non-military
farrier schools in America
were the "Indian
Schools" like this one in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania. These
Sioux boys were shipped east to
learn to be horseshoers.

The history of horseshoeing, on the other hand, is one and the same as the history of horses and their domestication, and the farrier's status in the horse world mirrors the waxing and waning and ultimate re-invention of the horse's role in western life.

People have poked at building a better horseshoe with the same interest as the cliche of building a better mousetrap: if it could just be done, life would be easier, and the animal would benefit from a kinder device.

But here we are, more than 2000 years from those ancient first horseshoes dug up in Europe, and we're still at it, trying to get to the root of hoof problems in horses.

No archeologist has ever jumped for joy at discovering an ancient mousetrap. But the evolution of the horseshoe is a way of documenting progress across centuries.

We can't see where we're going if we can't see where we have been.

I know a lot of people are interested in farrier history, but yet there are not enough of them. Of you. Of me. If you have read this far, you must be interested.

It's not enough to be interested, you have to have a plan.

Old farrier books are great, but you
need to research the credentials of
the authors. Figuring out why a book
was written can be an education
in itself.

I would caution people not to be like me and charge headlong into trying to learn everything about everything. The holes in the cheese will swallow you up. The files and boxes and notes will pile up in your life and mock you when you look across the room. "You'll never get to the bottom of this," is their taunt. "No one ever has."

So you want to learn about farrier history? Have at it. Pick a hole in the past--any hole, on any continent, in any period of history, in any language--and start researching. Stay in that hole until you fill it in, then move on to another one. But when you fill it in, stop and share it with the rest of us.

Why doesn't anyone know
or care who Jack Mac
Allan was? Where did
his shoes go? Michigan
State doesn't even know
it ever had a farrier
school,or that its Scottish-
import farrier was the
first US shoeing champion.

There are plenty of holes to go around.

Farriery has no headquarters. It has no library building with ivy-covered walls. The answers we need are not in books, however. The farrier books are just soldiers at the gate.

The answers are buried in the books of military, social and labor history. They're in the patent office records. They are in the town and state historical museums where old blacksmith shops and horse nail and shoe manufacturers' records are watched over by amateur historians who don't even understand what was manufactured in their own towns.

The answers are buried in footnotes and appendices and boxes of clutter marked "unreferenced manuscripts"--boxes that no one has ever asked to open.

I've always wanted to start a Horseshoeing History Society, but feared it would disband before it even started, out of the sheer weight of the mission, or be dismissed by academic historians who purport that there is no way to validate the lost "history" that farriery lacks, just as we are finding it so difficult to come to grips with the oxymoron of "evidence-based farriery".

Why did the World's Fair in
St. Louis have this building
with a horseshoe theme?

But if each of us identified a specific hole and spent time trying to research it and fill it in, we might move forward. It sounds like Pat Reilly has; the fact that he singlehandedly resurrected the Podological Museum for the University of Pennsylvania is reason to celebrate.

If academic historians knew about the gaping cheese holes, they might send graduate students our way. And perhaps, one day, farriery might be freed from the curse of cyclically repeating--or prolonging--its past.

If you're with me, claim your hole in the cheese wheel and climb in. Surround yourself. Nourish yourself by studying the solid cheese that does exist. Then jump off the cliff. Pick a date on the calendar and pledge to report back on what you find. You might come back defeated, you might come back haunted by ghosts, you might come back cynical and confused.

Then again, it just might change your life.

No one--and no profession--moves forward without coming to grips with the past. Remember this, too: It's entirely possible that farriery needs to turn its back on the past, to hold a funeral and declare itself once and for all defunct, so that the real future can begin. If that is so, the past might tell us where to go from here.

Click to order now for immediate shipping; it will look great on your wall!

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal

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