St Nicholas Abbey Update: Healing Leg Fracture and the Origin of His Name

Champion racehorse St Nicholas Abbey in his stall at the Fethard Equine Hospital in Ireland, where he is recovering from a fractured pastern suffered while training at the nearby Ballydoyle training center of Coolmore's racing division head trainer Aidan O'Brien.

Today Coolmore Stud released an update on injured racehorse St Nicholas Abbey:

"While still having a guarded prognosis St Nicholas Abbey has had his best week since his initial surgery!

On the Case: Combined Contracture and Laxity Complicate Limb Deformity in an Irish Thoroughbred Foal

Kevin Corley, BVM&S, PhD. DACVIM, DACVECC, DECEIM, MRCVS of the Anglesey Lodge Equine Hospital in County Kildare, Ireland shared photos of a recent case. A 12-hour-old Thoroughbred foal intended for future racing needed a treatment or management plan for an unusual hind limb deformity.

The foal’s foot was flat on the ground, but the pastern was vertical and the fetlock knuckled forward.

The Nobel Prize for Farrier Poetry: Looking Through Seamus Heaney's "Door into the Dark"

One of the world's greatest poets died on Friday. Ireland's Seamus Heaney was one of those people who bridged the past and the present with verse so deft you were never sure where time fit into the story or if time matters anymore. He grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1940s and went out into the world through his words, winning the Nobel Prize for poetry as he wandered.

Case Follow-up: How's the Swiss Cheese Hoof Wall?

Do you recognize this foot? Califronia farrier R. T. Goodrich has an update on "the swiss cheese hoof wall" case. The mare continues to improve and the shoeing treatment has been simplified.

On June 7, 2013, California farrier R.T. Goodrich innocently posted a photograph of a hoof on his farrier service's Facebook page. It wasn't a horse that belonged to any of his clients. He shod it for free, just to help the otherwise-helpless owner out. Her horse had received an unorthodox hoof wall dimpling treatment for laminitis.

Lost Shoes Solution: Shoe Secure Keeps Your Horse's Shoes On, World Champion Style

Whether it’s linked to conformation or a gait abnormality or a swampy pasture, the shoe loss problem may have met its match in an odd-looking product from Scotland called ShoeSecure. Designed by an equestrian entrepreneur with the help of a world champion farrier, and used by a world champion reiner, the new product launched in the USA this summer with a star-studded resume.

                                 SHOESECURE SPONSORED THIS ARTICLE.                               

What do you get when you put together the mind of a determined equestrian entrepreneur with the technical skills and imagination of this year’s world champion farrier?

St Nicholas Abbey Fracture Fixation Pin Breaks

The horizontal steel pin (top of radiograph, red arrow) was designed to help the injured Thoroughbred bear weight in spite of the fracture in his pastern. This pin, as you can see, is broken and had to be removed. (photo provided by Coolmore Stud)

An important announcement from Coolmore Stud was released today. Coolmore has been judiciously reporting both the good and bad news throughout the ordeal of a fractured pastern suffered while galloping to multiple Group I winner and stud prospect St Nicholas Abbey.

Research Report: Dr James Belknap Summarizes Developments in Understanding Laminitis Funded by the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation

The following report by Dr Belknap summarizes the sequence of his latest research on laminitis through funding supplied by the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation and is reprinted with the Foundation's permission.

Dr. James Belknap of The
Ohio State University

The funding by the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation (GJCRF) and the NTRA (Barbaro Fund) of our last two projects on the efficacy of cryotherapy in laminitis has allowed us to bring to fruition a great deal of effort by many investigators over several decades. This has furthered our understanding of laminitis and to truly bring to the forefront the first laminitis therapy which has passed thorough scientific rigor as an effective therapy for laminitis.

Laminitis is a disease in which the hoof wall separates from the soft tissue attached to the distal phalanx (coffin bone), resulting in the distal phalanx undergoing a crippling displacement towards the ground surface of the hoof.

Vet Video: Fractured Pastern Surgically Repaired on Champion St Nicholas Abbey; Details on Work by Irish-American Surgical/Medical Team

A report on the injury, surgery, illness and recovery of Breeders Cup winner St Nicholas Abbey has been provided by Coolmore Stud, ten days after the initial injury, which happened at the training center in Ireland.

Equine Lameness: British Cavalry Horses Suffer Common Minor Hoof and Leg Problems Similar to Recreational Horses

British cavalry horses are large Irish-crossbred types and generally are selected because they have big enough feet, acceptable conformation and good bone. Their lameness problems tend to be less dramatic than you might think, and more in line with recreational horses than sport horses.

Federal Court Rules Against Lawsuit: USDA's Tennessee Walking Horse Anti-Soring Regulations Are Not Unlawful

A U.S. District Court in Texas upheld federal regulations to prevent the practice of “soring,” in which trainers abuse horses to force them to perform an unnatural high-stepping gait for competitions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, which were adopted following a 2010 legal petition filed by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), require that USDA-certified horse industry organizations impose uniform mandatory minimum penalties for violations of the Horse Protection Act.

Hallmarq Standing MRI Presents: Navicular Disease Diagnosis, Then and Now

We have never really understood navicular disease, but maybe we're getting closer. Two horses would have identical lameness symptoms but the radiographs were clean on one, and clearly showed a bone lesion in the other. Some horses stayed lame for years and were never ridden again. Others took a year or so off and, to everyone’s surprise, returned to training.

British Laminitis Research: Tracking Normal Horses Who Later Develop Pasture Laminitis Vs Those Who Don't

Typical feet of a pony with pasture laminitis. Could laminitis be prevented by identifying likely-to-founder ponies early in their lives? A British research project aims to track normal ponies who, later in life, do and don't develop pasture-associated laminitis. (Nicola Menzies-Gow photo)

Dr Nicola Menzies-Gow of the Royal Veterinary College has been awarded a grant of £42,000 (approximately $65,000US) by Great Britain's Animal Welfare Foundation to work on a study: "Markers of equine laminitis predisposition: Searching for potential future diagnostic test". The award was announced this week by the college.

The Helpful Farrier: Dimpled Laminitis Treatment Stirs Facebook Furor and Charitable Shoeing

This foot was probably the most viewed, shared and commented on hoof in the world in June 2013.  The only problem was that the people doing all the viewing, sharing and commenting didn't bother to read the details of the case posted by farrier RT Goodrich in California, who found the horse with this unusual hoof wall treatment. (RT Goodrich photo)

It appeared on Facebook on June 7 and it went viral: 422 people left comments and 233 shared it all over Facebook. Then others shared it. It took on a life of its own. Who didn't see it?

“It” was a photo posted by California farrier RT Goodrich. "It" was a hoof that had been dimpled all over with holes. It looked for all the world like a hoof made of Swiss cheese.

Scotland's David Varini is World Champion Blacksmith (Farrier) at the Calgary Stampede

The Mustad family carried on the tradition of sponsoring the World Championship for farrier/blacksmiths at the Calgary Stampede in Canada with Hans Mustad, left, representing his family and his company. Petter Binde, Mustad Sales & Marketing CEO, is at right. The showgrounds had been flooded two weeks before the event but Plan B worked to run an event that attracted a stellar trible of the world's premier highly-skilled shoemaking experts. David Varini of Scotland, center, won the championship for the first time. Photo by Luca Bertolino. 

More than one Scotsman rocked the world yesterday. While everyone in Great Britain was out celebrating Scotland's Andy Murray for his first win by a British citizen in 77 years at Wimbledon Centre Court, another Scotsman was standing in front of many thousands of people at the rodeo of the Calgary Stampede.

Aachen's Walk of Fame: What Does the Plaza Paved with Horseshoes Tell Us About Famous International Sport Horses?

CHIO Aachen Show Director Frank Kemperman stood in the show's new starwalk in 2011. It has continued to grow, with three new shoes added recently.

In 2011, The Hoof Blog was delighted to introduce a terrific new "Walk of Fame" at the showgrounds of CHIO Aachen in Germany. The horse show that stands tall above all others wanted to honor some of the famous horses who have competed there. Their way of remembering was to ask for a shoe from each to sink into the pavement, surrounded by a star.

What Do Laminitis and Wimbledon Have in Common?

Lush grass at Wimbledon is being blamed for the literal downfall of several players this year. This much higher casualty rate is blamed on the late spring, which is keeping the grass so lush at the end of June. According to a British newspaper article, Wimbledon's high-sugar grasses are also more slippery than non-lush grass.

British Farrier Training: College-Based Training Replaces Agency-Run Apprentice System

For as long as there have been farriers, there have surely been apprentices, because that is how the skills and knowledge were passed down through the ages. There was secrecy, and some would say there was magic. While in the United States, apprenticeships are free-form and unsupervised, in Great Britain they are part of a government program that charged an alphabet soup of agencies, colleges and organizations with running a modern training system based on an ancient tradition. 

They stock the truck. They sweep the floor. They're something left over from a Charles Dickens novel, and yet they are the future of the profession. Everyone was one, once.

They are apprentices. And their role in British farriery is about to change.

Call for Abstracts: 7th International Colloquium on Working Equids

World Horse Welfare is now calling for abstracts from the world’s academic, research and scientific community as well as from working equid welfare practitioners for presentation at the 7th International Colloquium on Working Equids to be held at the Royal Holloway, University of London from July 1-3 2014.

Future Faces Video: Sarah Coltrin, Farrier-Eventer, Shoes to Ride as She Joins the New Cadre of Equestrian Smiths

What do you say to someone who is new in the profession? Sometimes it's best to be quiet and hear what they have to say.

You might learn something.

Lost Hoof History: How a Blacksmith's Apron Became the Persian Flag

It's Flag Day in the USA. That seems like a cue to tell my favorite story about a flag from far away and long ago.

Close your eyes and pretend this is a fairy tale, because it certainly sounds like one. I have patched this story together from history books, flag books and online references that are translations of translations.

Leeches for Laminitis: Can an Old Idea Work on Today’s Horses?

A leech positioned at the coronet for treatment of laminitis in the German research of Dr. Konstanze Rasch.

In Part 1 of this article, we introduced the idea of the suitability of medicinal leech therapy for equine lameness, and especially distal limb injuries. Please read that article, which contains a great deal of background information and a video, before you read this one.

Blood suckers? Yes, that’s what they are. But, as we saw in part one of this article, leeches do much more than suck blood. As they attach to the skin and dig in, their saliva (for want of a better name) transmits a potent chemical cocktail into the bloodstream of the host--or victim, or injury site, if you prefer to think of it in a more benign way.

Announcing the HoofMakeover Video Series: Farrier Hans Wiza's Case Studies on Restoring Hoof Health

"HoofMakeover" is a series of downloadable case studies of three trims and/or shoeings that each detail the rehabilitation of a hoof over a period of 100 days. Developed by Ontario, Canada farrier Hans Wiza, the videos attempt to simplify hoof re-balancing and de-fuse the challenges of working on horses with weak hooves and conformational challenges by using time, observation and horsemanship to keep the hoofwork in perspective with the whole horse, how he stands, and how he moves.

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Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital to Acquire Saratoga Equine Veterinary Service

via press release

The shareholders of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky and Dr. Bill and Diana Barnes of Saratoga Springs New York are pleased to announce that Rood and Riddle will purchase Saratoga Equine Veterinary Service in Saratoga Springs, New York.

British Farrier Apprentice System Suspended as Training Suffers Negative Government Evaluation

Apprentices are traditionally part of the landscape of farriery in Great Britain. These apprentices to Jim and/or Allan Ferrie competed at the Clydesdale shoeing event at the Royal Highland Show in Scotland. (David McCrone photo, used with permission)

A crisis has emerged in Great Britain, where the future of farrier education has been endangered by a withdrawal of government funding for the program following an unfavorable inspection report to Parliament by a national agency.

The situation described in this article has been going on for a few weeks now, and it seems like there is hope now for a solution, so here’s a report on the situation as it stands today.

Video: Oklahoma Tornado Tragedy's Legacy is Both Tragedy and Inspiration for Veterinarians and Horsemen

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You know things are bad when CNN dedicates a segment to injured horses in a natural disaster, but that's what happened on Friday when the global news network aired a story by newsman Gary Tuckman, who was on hand with Oklahoma's Joe Boecker, DVM to show in graphic detail what a tornado can do to a horse.

Hoof Blog readers around the world who think that the Oklahoma victims are strangers in a far-off place should know that someone very familiar to this blog was deeply impacted by the storm. An earlier tornado hit Shawnee, Oklahoma, including property of Michael Steward, DVM.

Lameness Evaluation: American Sensor System Tests Successfully in British Research

Flexion testing, using the sensor-based system, at the University of Glasgow's School of Veterinary Medicine

For many years, opinions on the value of flexion tests in assessing equine lameness have been divided. Now, however, new research looks set to turn what has always been regarded as a subjective process into a wholly objective one. 

A comprehensive study, published in a November 2012 supplement to the Equine Veterinary Journal (EVJ) in partnership with the American Association of Equine Practitioners, showed that a wireless, inertial sensor-based system can effectively measure the horse’s response to a flexion test.

Raceplates and Horseshoers in Preakness Stakes History

In this ad from the Daily Racing Form in 1931, Victory proclaims that racehorse Mate ran in the Preakness wearing the new-fangled aluminum raceplates--and won! It took a lot of years to convince trainers and horseshoers to switch from steel to aluminum. In 2011, Shackleford won in Polyflex glue shoes. 

It's Preakness Stakes day, 2013-style, in the USA! Whether you think Kentucky Derby winner Orb is a shoe-in to win in his Jim Bayes Jr. crafted raceplates or if you like California's Goldencents, shod by Jim Jimenez, today's the day they line up at the Baltimore, Maryland track affectionately known as "Old Hilltop" for the second leg of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred racing.

What is it about Maryland? Why are there so many connections to the Triple Crown that pass through this state?