Eddie Watson has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer and is undergoing treatment. The Virginia Horsehoers Association (VHA) will hold a unique "Appreciation Clinic" for him on September 22, 2007 at Hockaday Hill Farm in Spotsylvania, VA.
The VHA is honored to recognize Eddie for his unwavering dedication to the farrier industry and anticipates this clinic will allow many of his friends, family and peers to come out and spend the day with him. Shayne Carter, CJF, Roy Bloom, CJF, Dave Farley, CF and Dan Burke, CF ( Farrier Product Distribution, Inc.), will be the clinicians for this event with others possible.
Please contact Butch or Connie Hockaday at 540-582-5486 or email bulldogtools@wildblue.net if you plan to attend.
A formal event flyer/announcement is being prepared.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
Australian Horse Shoe Nails Now Owned by Mustad
FOREST LAKE, Minn. – June 15, 2007 – The Australian Horseshoe Nail Company, from Australia, has joined the Mustad Group, Switzerland, in a deal that closed June 15, 2007.Beginning July 1, 2007, Australian Horseshoe Nails will be distributed by Mustad’s Australian company, O’Dwyer Horseshoe Sales Australia Pty. Ltd. The Australian Horseshoe Nail will be available to all existing Australian distributors of the Australian Horse Shoe Nail Company.
The Australian Nail product line will be manufactured in one of the Mustad horseshoe nails factories.
(received via press release this morning)
Happy Birthday to the Man Who Loves to Shoe Horses
With a big grin, I send the very happiest birthday wish in the world to beloved farrier Bill Miller of Rochester, Washington.
Bill turns 80 today.
He has been helping me with articles, historical references and friendship since I first entered the hoof publishing world back in 1981.
Congratulations, Bill!
And thanks to Dave Duckett for letting me know that today is Bill's big day!
Laminitis Research Moves to the Manure Pile
Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) laminitis researcher Nicola Menzies-Gow at the Royal Veterinary College is looking for manure from horses being treated with the Australian laminitis-preventative called Founderguard.
The product, which is not approved by the FDA for use in horses in the USA, has been shown to be effective in the prevention of pasture-associated laminitis — but can be difficult to obtain, even in the UK where it is available.
Our friends at the British horse magazine Horse and Hound have published an appeal for horse owners using the product to submit manure samples. H&H writes:
Menzies-Gow is looking into the consequences of long-term use of Founderguard, which contains the antibiotic drug virginiamycin. She is investigating whether the drug causes increased antibiotic resistance in equine gut bacteria.
Nicola said: "If we can demonstrate that any resistance that does occur is only temporary and not transferred to other bacteria, this will provide evidence that the product should be used for the prevention of laminitis, and possibly increase its availability."
If your horse is being treated with Founderguard and you would like to help with the research, email Nicola at nmenziesgow@rvc.ac.uk
The original research testing the efficacy of the medication was done at the Australian Equine Laminitis Research Unit, under the direction of Hoofcare and Lameness consulting editor Chris Pollitt.
Critics of the drug in the US pointed to the possibility, which may or may not be proved by Menzies-Gow, that the drug lowers a horse's response to bacterial invasion.
The product, which is not approved by the FDA for use in horses in the USA, has been shown to be effective in the prevention of pasture-associated laminitis — but can be difficult to obtain, even in the UK where it is available.
Our friends at the British horse magazine Horse and Hound have published an appeal for horse owners using the product to submit manure samples. H&H writes:
Menzies-Gow is looking into the consequences of long-term use of Founderguard, which contains the antibiotic drug virginiamycin. She is investigating whether the drug causes increased antibiotic resistance in equine gut bacteria.
Nicola said: "If we can demonstrate that any resistance that does occur is only temporary and not transferred to other bacteria, this will provide evidence that the product should be used for the prevention of laminitis, and possibly increase its availability."
If your horse is being treated with Founderguard and you would like to help with the research, email Nicola at nmenziesgow@rvc.ac.uk
The original research testing the efficacy of the medication was done at the Australian Equine Laminitis Research Unit, under the direction of Hoofcare and Lameness consulting editor Chris Pollitt.
Critics of the drug in the US pointed to the possibility, which may or may not be proved by Menzies-Gow, that the drug lowers a horse's response to bacterial invasion.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Facts and the Fiction of Ruffian's Brace
Ok, so the comments so far are running about 50-50 on the Ruffian movie. It seems everyone (me included) wanted more Sam Shepherd, who played trainer Frank Whitely Jr., and less of the Bill Nack character, no offense to the real Bill Nack.
What threw me for a loop was when they showed the surgeon struggling to get what was obviously an actual farrier-made brace onto Ruffian's leg after the surgery.
I didn't remember any mention of a brace in Jane Schwartz's superb biography "Ruffian: Burning from the Start" so I pulled the book off the shelf and re-read the final chapter. What a surprise.
I learned that one of the people who showed up at Ruffian's stall after the race was Dr Edward B.C. Keefer, a human orthopedist who, in his retirement, switched his research to horses and pioneered an amputation technique that saved the stallion Spanish Riddle, stablemate to Secretariat. Keefer ran a nonprofit organization on Long Island called the Equine Preservation Society and used a technique he developed to make artificial blood vessels from Dacron.
According to Jane Schwartz, Keefer was standing by in case Ruffian's leg needed to be amputated. She writes that during the surgery, Keefer drove home to get one of his braces that he had built for a horse that wore the same size shoe as Ruffian.
Jane writes that Keefer went and woke up one of the shoers and together they labored for over an hour to try to get the brace onto Ruffian's leg. During that time, she had to stay under anesthesia, possibly increasing the chances of complications. Keefer and the farrier finally got the brace on and Keefer --not the veterinarians--cast the leg over the brace. When they were done, they had a package that weighed 40 or 50 pounds on the end of her leg. The year before the filly had refused to wear even a light cast on her leg for a minor hairline fracture.
You know what happened next.
But wait, what about the brace in the movie? It really was a brace. The producers called Dick Fanguy, longtime farrier at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and now vice president of the American Farrier's Association, when they were filming in Shreveport because they heard about the braces he made for the vet school. They actually rented a sample brace and invited Dick to the movie set. "The director said it was beautiful," Dick said.
What's interesting is that the brace was actually made for a hind leg. An Arabian mare "got hung up in a hog fence" according to Dick and severed all her tendons and cracked her cannon bone. The vets wanted to cast the leg but they needed to still be able to medicate the wounds.
"I took a sliding plate and welded a piece of angle iron back in the heels, and then welded another piece of angle iron to it," Dick told me tonight. "Then I built the cage coming up, with rings on the side. It was all padded. I nailed the shoe on and bolted the brace onto the shoe. The lady who owned the mare could lace through the rings with a length of inner tube."
"It was an Arab, so it survived," he quipped.
Dick said he spent a lot of time explaining about braces to the producer and crew, even though the brace is only shown on camera for less than 10 seconds. "These people were really trying to get things as accurate as they could," Dick said.
What threw me for a loop was when they showed the surgeon struggling to get what was obviously an actual farrier-made brace onto Ruffian's leg after the surgery.
I didn't remember any mention of a brace in Jane Schwartz's superb biography "Ruffian: Burning from the Start" so I pulled the book off the shelf and re-read the final chapter. What a surprise.
I learned that one of the people who showed up at Ruffian's stall after the race was Dr Edward B.C. Keefer, a human orthopedist who, in his retirement, switched his research to horses and pioneered an amputation technique that saved the stallion Spanish Riddle, stablemate to Secretariat. Keefer ran a nonprofit organization on Long Island called the Equine Preservation Society and used a technique he developed to make artificial blood vessels from Dacron.
According to Jane Schwartz, Keefer was standing by in case Ruffian's leg needed to be amputated. She writes that during the surgery, Keefer drove home to get one of his braces that he had built for a horse that wore the same size shoe as Ruffian.
Jane writes that Keefer went and woke up one of the shoers and together they labored for over an hour to try to get the brace onto Ruffian's leg. During that time, she had to stay under anesthesia, possibly increasing the chances of complications. Keefer and the farrier finally got the brace on and Keefer --not the veterinarians--cast the leg over the brace. When they were done, they had a package that weighed 40 or 50 pounds on the end of her leg. The year before the filly had refused to wear even a light cast on her leg for a minor hairline fracture.
You know what happened next.
But wait, what about the brace in the movie? It really was a brace. The producers called Dick Fanguy, longtime farrier at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and now vice president of the American Farrier's Association, when they were filming in Shreveport because they heard about the braces he made for the vet school. They actually rented a sample brace and invited Dick to the movie set. "The director said it was beautiful," Dick said.
What's interesting is that the brace was actually made for a hind leg. An Arabian mare "got hung up in a hog fence" according to Dick and severed all her tendons and cracked her cannon bone. The vets wanted to cast the leg but they needed to still be able to medicate the wounds.
"I took a sliding plate and welded a piece of angle iron back in the heels, and then welded another piece of angle iron to it," Dick told me tonight. "Then I built the cage coming up, with rings on the side. It was all padded. I nailed the shoe on and bolted the brace onto the shoe. The lady who owned the mare could lace through the rings with a length of inner tube."
"It was an Arab, so it survived," he quipped.
Dick said he spent a lot of time explaining about braces to the producer and crew, even though the brace is only shown on camera for less than 10 seconds. "These people were really trying to get things as accurate as they could," Dick said.
One More Thing to Worry About: Scrambled Signals on Electronic Doorlocks
Did you know that your cell phone has the power to scramble the electronic programming on your truck's door lock conrol fob? US Rider is warning people to keep cell phones at least an inch away from remote controls on key chains...or you may find yourself out in the cold. or the hot. or the rain. or the whatever. Be careful where you toss those keys! Don't toss your keys and your cell phone in a backpack or even your jacket pocket.
I wonder if US Rider has heard one of my favorite jokes, the one about the farrier who locked his keys in his truck? It took him an hour to get his apprentice out.
USRider offers nationwide roadside assistance designed especially for equestrians. The plan includes standard features such as flat-tire repair, battery assistance and lockout services, plus towing up to 100 miles and roadside repairs for tow vehicles and trailers with horses, emergency stabling, veterinary and farrier referrals, and more. (I didn't know that, either.)
I wonder if US Rider has heard one of my favorite jokes, the one about the farrier who locked his keys in his truck? It took him an hour to get his apprentice out.
USRider offers nationwide roadside assistance designed especially for equestrians. The plan includes standard features such as flat-tire repair, battery assistance and lockout services, plus towing up to 100 miles and roadside repairs for tow vehicles and trailers with horses, emergency stabling, veterinary and farrier referrals, and more. (I didn't know that, either.)
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