Patrick Reilly will be New Bolton Center's New Farrier

Patrick Reilly of Chester, New Hampshire will be changing his address on Monday, when he begins work as the new farrier at New Bolton Center, the site of the large animal clinics of the University of Pennsylvania's College of Veterinary Medicine.

To quote a memo from the administration: "(we) announce the appointment of Mr. Patrick (Pat) Reilly as Interim Director of the Farrier Service at New Bolton Center....thanks to Rob Sigafoos for helping to recruit Pat to New Bolton Center as we know Pat's work will compliment the excellence in the Farrier Program that has been established by Rob."

Rob's role at New Bolton is a little gray at the moment, since he is suffering from back problems but as far as I know, Rob has neither retired nor resigned, but is taking some time to recover.

Both Rob and Patrick will serve on the faculty of the 4th International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in Palm Beach (aka "Palm Beach Laminitis") in November 2007.

Patrick has worked as consulting farrier at the New England Diagnostic Imaging Center (Myhre Equine Clinic) in Rochester, New Hampshire and also as a contract farrier for the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Massachusetts. Until the hospital closed, he was consulting farrier at the Rochester Equine Clinic in New Hampshire.

Patrick is known for his expertise (and preference) for adhesive shoeing. I heard him say once at a conference that he had applied more than 300 pairs of glue-on shoes,primarily of the Sigafoos design, that year. He is also an early-adapter of technology, and was the farrier who taught me about Metron software. He has loaned me his laptop when mine was smoking from system overload. Patrick also has a fascination with biomechanics research; he actually reads all those charts and graphs, and has experimented with the interesting Tekscan pressure measuring system.

No word yet on whether Patrick will be working on New Bolton's most famous patient, Barbaro.

Please scroll down to posts from earlier in November or click here to read our "hail and farewell and hello again" to departing resident farrier at New Bolton, Laura Florence.

Good luck to Patrick! Get well to Rob!

Photo: Patrick Reilly (left) chats with Rob Sigafoos (right) at a recent conference. Fran Jurga photo, © Hoofcare & Lameness Journal.

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Pony Found with Meter-Long Hooves in Wales

The BBC has posted an RSPCA story from the UK which stimulated some discussion today. A pony stallion was found in Wales with neglected hooves, one of which was over a meter long. I wondered simultaneously at the cruelty of the owner to ignore the poor horse, but also wondered if there is a Guiness Book of World Records for the longest pony hooves? Amazingly, it doesn't sound as if the horse had laminitis. He grew quite a mane too, but doesn't look hungry.

If you take a good look at the photo, it is obviously the right front that grew to the great length that it did a spiral; the left front is growing in with much wider radius...and straight up in the air. After listening to or reading Meike Van Heel's research on asymmetric stance and foal development, this difference jumps right out at you.

Read all about this pony's rescue by the RSPCA (but not much about the hooves) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_west/6177606.stm

Conformation Conundrum at the Brookfield Zoo: But Can She Trot?

What do you get if you cross a giraffe and a zebra? And what if you throw in a little moose and, um, maybe some Oldenburg warmblood genes? Chances are, it would look a lot like Sauda, the new Okapi calf born this fall at the Brookfield Zoo in Wisconsin.

A shy native of the dark forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the okapi makes you want to sit back for a minute this Thanksgiving day, and thank Nature for not providing too-easy answers to all the questions we have about life on earth.

Read all about Sauda and see more photos at http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/0.asp?shttplink=../pgpages/pagegen.295.aspx&nsection=2

Three-Dimensional Race Plates for Glueing

Several people have asked if a particular type of shoe was used on the horses at the Breeders Cup. (see story further down on this blog) The answer is that there were as many shoes as there were horses..or as many different farriers working on them.

From what we hear, Round Pond (winner of the Breeders Cup Distaff, trained by Michael Matz) was wearing race plates with Sigafoos cuffs.

Thoro’Bred Racing Plate Company has a new “Sticky Shoe” that has generated a lot of interest, though I do not know if any horses were wearing it on that particular day. I heard about them from Fred Cleveland, a longtime farrier from Marshall, Virginia. (Fred, by the way, has subscribed to Hoofcare & Lameness since 1986!)

Most farriers start with a standard raceplate and add sometimes tabs over the bars, a la “onions”. Another technique is to add wings, or large clips of perforated aluminum, to increase the glue’s surface area. The Sigafoos cuff is another option.

In this photo, you see a large aluminum clip or “wing” welded to a raceplate. This photo was supplied by Raul Bras DVM of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky.

Luwex 2006: The World’s Most Intense Farrier Event?

I used to think that farrier competitions were tense, but then I went to Germany and experienced the Luwex Hufsymposium. No competitions at this event (except for a shoeing rig contest that was terrific) but the pressure was on.

Lectures start at 7 a.m. and the last one begins at 10 p.m. I left Mike Savoldi from California still lecturing, however informally, to a dedicated group at midnight in one of the lecture halls.

The marathon shoeing sessions are the focus of the day, as the speakers are put to the test in front of more than 500 farriers from 21 nations. As the cases roll in (and keep rolling in) the speakers evaluate the hooves, shoe them in front of an audience with a camera crew with microphones dangling in their faces, and eager veterinarian translators hanging on their every word. Oh, and an American editor popping off a flash every few seconds. Three shoeing stations are going constantly, with a trade show in the same arena…and a pub, too.

The visiting speakers shoe the horses often without their own tools, in the case of the Americans, and with the use of borrowed, albeit high tech farrier rigs crafted from Mercedes vans. If James Bond needed a farrier rig, he'd probably model his fter Rob Renirie's or Bernard Duvernay's or maybe the super-tall Mercedes of Dieter Krohnert. It would be criminal to leave a scratch, or to have a horse rap one of these rigs with an impatient hoof.

The newly-shod horse is trotted out for all to see…and he’d better be more sound than he was a few hours before. That’s sometimes a tall order for a horse that has been sedated or even just standing around for the hours it can take to get through a demonstration.

Sigi, the Icelandic farrier who did a great demo, took "clinician macho" to a new level when he hopped on his demo horse and headed for the tolting track on the grounds to demonstrate (at high speed) what the horse could do now that his feet were straightened out.

In this photo you see Switzerland’s Bernard Duvernay (red vest, center) anxiously watching his demo horse trot after shoeing. Look at the faces of the farriers in the crowd. If you make a mistake, these guys will remember it. Bernie did just fine.

Bernard divides his time between running a high-tech multi-farrier practice in posh Geneva (where he cruises the lake on a beautifully restored 1920s tug boat) and serving as a farrier education consultant in Third World countries. He might pop up almost anywhere there are horses, but is most often in India. In Germany, he had a young Iranian apprentice visiting him, Ahmad Abad, who turned out to be half-American and a frequent guest here, so you may meet him at an event.

To learn more about Bernie’s important work around the world, visit http://www.farrier.ch

To learn more about the Luwex Symposium, visit
http://www.luwex.de

Hoof Lifting Device Tests Foot Ligaments, Navicular Pain

One of the most interesting products demonstrated at the Luwex Hufsympsium in Germany in October was what I called the “hoof lifter”, developed by Italian vet/farrier Hans Castilijns DVM, made in Italy, and demo’d by Swiss farrier Bernard Duvernay.

The horse stands on the device, which is covered with a rubber mat. It looks like that puck-like thing that curlers push around on the ice, with a three-foot handle and a protractor on the end. The operator stands one foot on the device and then stands back and slow raises the angle so that the horse is putting more and more pressure on the back of the foot as the coffin joint flexes.

After observing the horse, the operator than simply swivels the handle, without having to move the horse, and then can raise the lateral side of the device, tipping the foot to the medial side.

Accordingly, without moving the foot, the operator moves to the other side of the horse to test the lateral side.

The Europeans have always been keen on the hoof-lifting coffin-joint flexion tests for navicular pain, and this device gives expanded pain-response capabilities. It is well made and simple to use, but seems to keep the handler safe, too.