Message from Down Under: It's a Smaller World Tonight for Farriers

I didn't understand the message at first, but now I get it.

There was a little blip on the world map of farriery. It shone brightly and then was gone.

Many of you knew Paul Mitchell because of the beautiful loop knives he made at his Pinehurst Forge in Tasmania. Others of you knew him because he travelled the world to fuel his love for farriery. He might have been sitting next to you on an airplane or in a hotel bar at a farriery competition or convention. He probably epitomizd what you always thought an Aussie would be like.

Get out the world atlas and look up Tasmania. Don't stop looking until you find it. It might not be where you think it is. Remember that a farrier came all the way from there...to take the world by storm. Put your finger on that little dot on the map and it might still be warm from the last fire in his forge.

Maybe some more details will find their way here, maybe not. The basic message is: Paul Mitchell died on Tuesday, June 26 in Tasmania, half a world away, or half a world closer, depending on how you look at a map.

Remember him. I will.

Get Well Wishes to Dr Scott Morrison

We might all have to mobilize and head to Lexington, Kentucky to help our friends at the podiatry clinic at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital there. A few weeks ago, founding farrier Manfred Ecker was hospitalized with a heart ailment, and has been recuperating.

Now comes the news that clinic director Scott Morrison DVM required an emergency appendectomy on Tuesday. Maybe they could share a room?

At last count, the clinic employed four vets, five farriers, a legion of technicians, a nice new secretary (Heather), and at least one intern vet. The fleet of farrier trucks outside the clinic looks like a Miracle Mile showroom for Stonewell Truck Bodies.

Scott has built an amazing center for the innovative treatment of horses of all kinds. You might see any sort of disease or disorder and meet most anyone in the hoof world, if you go there.

Let's all wish Scott a speedy recovery, after he's rested for a little while.

The picture was taken at the Luwex Symposium in Germany last October, where Scott was a lecturer/demonstrator. They had him shoeing horses day and night. I remember them leading this horse out onto the stage. Scott looked around, wide-eyed (of course, I was the only English-speaking person within earshot) and said, "Um, did anyone notice that this horse is foundered?" He looked around for a schedule. "Is this horse supposed to be foundered?" he asked again. I remember thinking that was a pretty funny question to ask. He paused for a second, as if someone might answer or give guidance. A hundred or so German farriers in the audience just stared back at him. They didn't blink. Scott chuckled, shrugged and went to work.

Planet of the Lost Hoof Picks: Canadian Organization Expert Tackles One of the Horse World's Most Pressing Issues

I have a dryer that eats my socks and, to prove it, a drawer full of odd socks waiting for their mates. I optimistically believe that the lost ones will show up again some day but in my heart of hearts, I know that the dryer ate them.

It's much the same for hoof picks. No matter how brightly colored or how big and visible, hoof picks disappear around the barn and you can never find one when you really need it.

(The exception is my PowerPick, designed by farrier Doug Ehrman of The Sound Equine. I keep it in my car to use as a weapon in case I am carjacked or need to break the glass to escape if my car falls off a bridge. I'm sure it is great for cleaning hooves but I love it so much, I can't bear to bring it near a horse, which would guarantee its disappearance.)

The disappearing hoof pick problem distresses a professional organizer in Montreal who is also an avid rider whose horse lives in a boarding situation. Jacki Hollywood Brown is determined to put her organizing talents to work in the barn and has written a hilarious post on her "Well Organized" blog.

I think I agree with one of her points: Why do we bother to microchip our horses? They are big enough to find and their stalls are labeled. Let's microchip the hoof picks and track them by satellite: it would fascinating to find out where they go!

I hope you'll take a minute and read Jacki's hoof pick theories and share the post with your boarding-barn clients. I thought it was hilarious...but I think she might be serious!

Horseshoeing Homecoming: Bryan Quinsey Returns to the Farrier World as FPD General Manager

Dan Burke, president of Farrier Product Distribution (FPD) joined me for a conference call this evening. Also on the line: former American Farrier's Association Executive Director Bryan Quinsey and FPD's Linda Hill. The subject? FPD's newsletter announcement stating that Bryan joined the Kentucky distribution firm on June 18th as the company's new general manager of operations.

"Bryan will be working on the home front," Linda confirmed. She said that Bill Kleist remains with the company as sales manager. "It was getting to be too much for me to handle alone, with Dan on the road so much."

"It's nice to be back with old friends," Bryan said warmly, with his characteristic enthusiasm intact. "It's a great homecoming.

"I already know many of FPD's vendors," he continued. "I'll be working on the company's web sites and keeping things moving forward so Dan can be on the road more."

Bryan left the AFA in the spring of 2006 to take the executive position with the Friesian Horse Association of North America at the Kentucky Horse Park. He said that while he was in The Netherlands on Friesian business, he had a chance to visit the Kerckhaert factory, on Dan Burke's recommendation.

Dan remarked that having Bryan in the office at home would allow him to travel even more to promote the company's products. "We needed help to handle our growth and to continue expanding operations," he said.

Bryan, who lives in Lexington, Kentucky, said he would be moving to Shelbyville, a town that is between Lexington and Louisville, where FPD's warehouse and office is located.

FPD is a major importer of Kerckhaert horseshoes and Bellotta rasps. The company is also premiering the new Vector horseshoe nail and supplies many tools used by farriers. FPD is technically a distributor; the Shelbyville, Kentucky warehouse ships out supplies to farrier stores all over the U.S. instead of selling directly to farriers.

In the same phone conversation, I had a chance to visit with Joy Ream of Palm Beach Farrier Supply, who was stopping at FPD while driving back to Florida from a visit to her family in Ohio. Palm Beach Farrier Supply is one of many new advertisers in Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Many old-timers in the farrier world know Joy by her former last name of Luikart. She bought Palm Beach Farrier Supply two years ago.

Dan mentioned that New York track shoer Ray Amato had confirmed that Belmont Stakes winning filly Rags to Riches had been shod with Kerckhaert raceplates on her hind feet.

FPD is a longtime advertiser with Hoofcare and Lamensss Journal. Watch for their Vector nail ad in our next issue.

History Mystery: Laminitis at the Battle of Little Big Horn?

Is there any one among us who does not know the meaning of the three simple words, "Little Big Horn"? Today is the anniversary of the day after the massacre known generally as "Custer's Last Stand". The battle was June 25, and the history books tell us that it was today, June 26, when the annihilated troops of the US 7th Cavalry were found.

Comanche, the lone survivor of the battle of Little Big Horn, with the German immigrant farrier Gustave Korn, who saved his life and helped the horse recover from seven wounds suffered in the battle. Photo courtesy of Newwest.com and the Library of Congress, available from the Denver Public Library's Western Image Collection. Note the swallowtail saddle cloth, now in vogue with dressage riders.

Volumes have been written about the horses that carried the Custer troop but recently an interesting footnote has been unearthed in the book Laminitis and Founder: Prevention and Treatment by Drs Butler and Gravlee. I was very surprised when Custer's name popped up in that book.

The authors put forth an interesting footnote from agricultural (not military) history that has not been widely published before. They quote a report published in the journal Agricultural History in 1944, which states that Custer's horses had been wintered in fields known for heavy growth of highly selenium-rich plants and soil.

In 2000, Cornell equine nutritionist Harold Hintz mentioned the lameness problems of Custer's late-arriving pack train horses; he brought equine selenium toxicity back into the Custer conversation.

Sitting Bull took care to not winter his horses in those types of fields.

But it wasn't until the 1930s--more than 50 years after the massacre--that it was scientifically proven that selenium is toxic to horses in large doses, and that it causes a form of laminitis-like changes of such severity that horses' feet will actually start to slough. In Custer's day, it was known as "alkali disease", and the US Army had kept records of horses sloughing their hooves when grazing in the upper plains states as far back as 1860. (USDA, 1991 report on selenium toxicity)

(To learn more about selenium toxicity, scroll down and read our post from June 11, 2007; horses are still suffering from selenium-based laminitis today, as the University of Missouri vet school shares.)

By the way, the Native American name for the Little Bighorn is "The Greasy Grass" River.

Most peoplewill confidently tell you that no one on the US Cavalry side survived the battle, but that is not so. But only one horse, named Comanche, was found alive on the battlefield. He alone was standing, if barely, out of 225 horses that marched into the valley. 

Comanche was a wild horse from Texas who was rounded up and sold to the US Government. He was ridden by a horse-loving Irish immigrant, Captain Myles Keogh. Writer Deanne Stillman has been hard at work on the definitive biography of Comanche as the icon of the American wild horse. Her new booHorse Latitudes: Last Stand for the Wild Horse in the American West, will be published by Houghton Mifflin in spring 2008.

But in recognition of today's anniversary, a couple of chapters were sneak-previewed on the web today, and you can have a good read, thanks to http://newwest.net/topic/article/comanche_the_horse_that_survived_the_battle_of_the_little_bighorn_part_1/C39/L39/.  (Make sure you read both chapters, and make it all the way to the battle.)

Another interesting book is Custer's Horses by Gary Paul Johnston.

And what became of Gustave Korn, the German farrier who was Comanche's personal groom? Korn cared for Comanche at Fort Riley in Kansas, among other locations. The horse was revered by the US Army.

However, in 1890, Korn was assigned to field duty and was killed at Wounded Knee. According to records, Comanche became depressed without Korn by his side, although another farrier, Samuel Winchester, was assigned to be his personal servant.

On November 7, 1891, Comanche died of colic in Winchester's arms. The horse was 29 years old.

As an interesting aside: Comanche's hide was stuffed and he has been living at the University of Kansas at Lawrence for over 100 years, unless he has been moved recently. It's very interesting to read that his hide was excessively long-haired, even though winter had not begun.

Comanche was never ridden after Little Big Horn, and spent his days roaming freely about the fort, where he bullied people for food and ate out of the trash. He also developed a liking for beer and was known to be intoxicated more than once.

To learn more:
Colorado State University hoof tissue test for selenium toxicity

Hintz HF, Thompson LJ. Custer, selenium and swainsonine. Vet Hum Toxicol. 2000 Aug;42(4):242-3.

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Farrier/Vet Running for President...of the United States

First we had a U.S. Senator (Lincoln Chafee/R-Rhode Island, now in the private sector) who had a horseshoeing career before politics.

Now we have a candidate for President of the United States who knows his way around an anvil.

One of the first academic achievements listed on Donald K. Allen's resume is that he is a graduate of Midwest Horseshoeing School in Macomb, Illinois. Allen, who now lives in Youngstown, Ohio, shod horses for nine years, and proudly says that he was licensed, presumably in Illinois. He graduated from the vet school at the University of Illinois in 1980, after having shod horses at the vet clinic while a student there.

He admits that he has been married three times, has been charged with failing to pay child support, and he once lied about his age.

It's interesting that he is also a veterinarian, but it's his experience as a hard-working farrier that he touts as his magic link to understanding the American work ethic.

Dr. Allen has big plans for the USA if he is elected. He is running as an Independent and says he will eliminate the income tax and institute a federal sales tax. He wants to finish the fence along the Mexican border and believes that English should be the national language. He's dead set against puppy mills (finally, an issue I can get behind) but thinks that being gay is ok.

He's an interesting man who is asking his supporters to each send him $1 to support his campaign. He admits he's not a millionaire and that his opponents will outspend him.

But should mega-millionaire NYC Mayor Bloomberg decide to run for the same office as an Independent (as the pundits are predicting he will, since he just quit the Republican party to become an Independent), Dr. Allen will surely gain more publicity. Given that Bloomberg's daughter Georgina is currently representing the US in show jumping in Europe, the two Indies can at least talk horses.

Note: Hoofcare and Lameness subscriber and farrier Jim House was elected to the Arkansas state legislature last year; Jackie Cillie, wife of Horseshoes Plus supplier owner Bruce Cilley serves in the New Hampshire State Senate.

Photo from Dr. Allen's web site; presumably he's doing a reverse shoe (aka "open-toed egg bar") for laminitis?