AAEP Convention: Late Announcements

Thanks to Dr. Steve O'Grady for checking in on Friday and providing some new information for farriers and veterinarians (and anyone else) attending the American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention in San Antonio December 3-6.

Here are some updates from Dr. O'Grady and from Hoofcare & Lameness Journal:

1. On-site registration will offer a one-day registration fee for $175 to anyone who wants to attend, for instance, Monday or Tuesday, and not the entire convention. This fee includes lunch and the trade show as well as all lectures and table topics.

1a. This just in from AAEP trade show manager Debbie Miles: "If someone wants to attend just the trade show, it is $25.00 a day. This will not allow them to work (in a) booth or attend any scientific sessions, just allows them to visit the trade show."

2. Farriers who register should identify themselves as farriers so a tally can be kept. Farriers are welcome (and encouraged) to attend any and all lectures offered at the convention in addition to the farrier-specific program on Tuesday morning.

3. Hoofcare & Lameness is publishing a "Survival Guide" to the convention specifically for those interested in the hoof programs. It will list all events, lectures, table topics, etc. with relevance to working with hooves. (Did you know there is a special program on endocrine problems, i.e. Cushings syndrome and the relation to obesity?) With a little luck, this will be posted on hoofcare.com for you to download by Thursday of this week.

4. Dr. Tracy Turner has replaced Dr. Andy Parks at one of the table topics discussions, according to Dr. O'Grady.

5. Hotel rooms are still available; the online rates for Homewood Suites and the Omni are both around $130 and both are near the convention center. All the "official" hotels (Marriott, Menger, etc.) are sold out as is the new LaQuinta. There are some very inexpensive hotels on the outskirts of San Antonio if you have a car.

6. Hoofcare & Lameness will have hourly special guests at our booth (#354), including Dr. Chris Pollitt, California farrier John Suttle, Bob Pethick, Michael Wildenstein, etc. We will provide bar stools and a table to lean on, plus maybe some napkins to draw on so you will feel right at home. We will also have free copies of the Animal Health Foundation's DVD, featuring Chris Pollitt and Katy Watts. We will also have a museum display (sorry, not for sale) of plastination anatomy models (a la the "Body Worlds" museum exhibit) from Dr Christophe Von Horst of Germany.

7. Southwest still has some cheap flights to San Antonio!

8. The trade show is huge (over 300 companies) and includes many companies (Delta, Mustad, HoofJack, HorseScience, Vettec, etc.) that you would normally see at a farrier convention. And some that you wouldn't see there, but whose products or services are interesting. The American Farrier's Association will have a booth, with president Dave Ferguson in charge, according to Mike Nolan, AFA executive director, and Jack Millman, the AFA's new marketing committee chairman.

Please contact Hoofcare & Lameness if we can help you make plans!

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