PAG '07: Behind the Scenes with USEF Veterinarian Rick Mitchell

Here's a familiar face to anyone in the sport horse world. Rick Mitchell DVM is one of the founders of Fairfield Equine Associates in Newtown, Connecticut. Fairfield is considered one of the most high-tech practices in the East and certainly has one of the most sophisticated clinics and equipment. The practice is devoted exclusively to lameness diagnostics. Dr Mitchell has been "team" vet for the USA for several international FEI-level events and is the vet for the dressage team this year in Brazil.

Dr. Mitchell at work on US dressage team horse Sagacious HF, an eight-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding who is currently at the top of the leader board at the end of the first day of competition at the 2007 Pan Am Games in Brazil. Holding the horse is Mae Williams, who is Lauren Sammis's groom. She formerly worked for Hyperion Farm, owners of the horse, and was a working student at Knoll Farm on Long Island, home of dressage trainer Anne Gribbons.
Apparently there was some concern about equipment at the new equine hospital at the equestrian center in Brazil, so Team USA did not "travel light" when it came to the list of supplies and vet equipment to pack. Here you see Dr Mitchell and his wife Julie unpacking the "vet box" on arrival. Among the gear is a complete spare set of shoes for each horse. I believe most or all of the horses were shod by Wellington, Florida farrier (and Hoofcare & Lameness Journal subscriber) Don Later while they were in quarantine in Wellington.

Thanks to Lauren Sammis of the USA dressage team for sending home these photos!

Street Sense Sends Roses to Pan Am Dressage Horse

Two dozen yellow roses showed up at Hyperion Farm in Wellington, Florida recently. They were addressed to Sagacious HF, the eight-year old Dutch Warmblood gelding owned by Hyperion Farm's Al and Judy Guden. The horse will compete for the USA tomorrow in the dressage at the Pan Am Games in Brazil.

And they were signed by a horse that knows a whole lot about roses: 2007 Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense.

The roses were a token of good luck from one champ to another but also testimony to an old friendship. The Gudens switched from owning Thoroughbreds in New York to owning dressage sport horses in Florida when the moved south but Judy Guden went to school with Street Sense trainer Carl Nafzger years ago in West Texas...hence the yellow roses!

Al Guden emailed me tonight with this insight into one of America's top sport horse owners and one of America's great Eclipse Award-winning Thorougbred trainers: "Judy and Carl went to school in Olton, Texas from the first grade right through high school. They graduated together in a class of 42!"

He continued, "Carl trained race horses for us for a number of years. We had an Unbridled mare named CEO Sis who had a short and successful career and she produced one horse that we race and won a few more races."

(Note: Carl Nafzger trained Kentucky Derby and Breeders Cup Classic winner Unbridled. You may remember the famous video clip of him at Churchill Downs alternately shouting at and kissing the 90+ year-old owner Mrs Genter. His famous speech was "He's taking the lead. He's gonna win. He's gonna win. He's gonna win. He's a winner! He's a winner! He's a winner, Mrs. Genter! You've won the Kentucky Derby, Mrs. Genter! I love you,"--that was one of the greatest Derby moments ever!)

Carl and his wife Wanda recently visited Hyperion Farm to wish the Gudens well.

Street Sense by the way will be a shut-in (probably literally) this weekend while Churchill Downs hosts a Police concert. Once that is over Street Sense will head to Saratoga; his arch-rival Curlin arrived there yesterday.

There's another connection here; both Judy Guden and Al Nafzger were friends with the late great laminitis specialist farrier Burney Chapman from Lubbock, Texas. Judy says that Carl still stays in touch with Burney's sons, who are all farriers. Carl used to shoe his own runners back in the days when he was training Quarter horses at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico, Judy says. The Gudens and Hoofcare and Lameness Journal became friends when Burney died in the late 1990s.

For all those reasons and more, I'll add my best wishes to those of Street Sense. Let's hope that Sagacious HF and his rider Lauren Sammis shine in the Brazilian sun tomorrow!

The Gudens will be waiting for a call to tell them how their horse does in the big arena tomorrow. Judy opted not to attempt the trip as she is completing another round of treatments for ongoing breast cancer therapy.

Lauren Sammis's saddle cloth (below) says so much about the caring spirit of this rider, the courage of such a young horse to represent his country overseas, and what we all hope will be the joy of a proud owner who loves her horse. That horse has a lot riding on him; win or lose, he's brought the Games into perspective for many of us.

Learn more about Sagacious HF and other Hyperion Farm champions like KWPN young stallion champions (in Europe) Uptown, and Washington (owned in partnership with Kathy Connolly and Toine Hoefs) at http://www.hyperionfarm.com

American Farrier's Association Election Nominees Announced

The following information is second-hand from the American Farrier's Association web site and I am printing it as is, typos and mistakes included, since this is an official document. (But trust me, Bruce Daniels has not moved to New Hampshire.)

Commentary: the two top offices of the AFA are unopposed unless someone decides to mount a write-in campaign. A total of 31 people stepped forward to serve on the AFA's new regional board of directors. I think that there will be three elected from each region. Region 3 (midwest and Ohio) has the most candidates with nine.

Twenty out of 31 (65%) of the Board nominees are certified to the journeyman level in the AFA. Only three hold no certification level at all.

One person, Rick Burten, is a candidate for both Treasurer and The Board.

Six states had two candidates each: Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and California.

Two former AFA presidents are on the list: Bruce Daniels and Walt Taylor.

Biggest surprise: former certification czar Dennis Manning is a candidate for the board.

Of interest (but I don't think this means anything): Toolmaker Roy Bloom, FPD clinician Dave Farley, Mustad consultant Steve Kraus, AFA magazine editor Danvers Child, and GE Tools tech expert Dan Bradley would bridge over to the industry-side of the AFA if elected. In fact, if all five are elected, they would make up one third of the board.

Of great interest: Stan Davis is running against Steve Davis in District 4. That might confuse some people!

Perhaps of no consequence: no one from Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Colorado, Montana or Washington is a candidate for the Board. These states were traditionally strongholds for the AFA. Times do change.

Here are the nominees:

President Elect Nominee: Dick Fanguy, CJF, #2146 (Standing VP)

Vice President Nominee: Eric Nygaard, CJF, #1227

Treasurer Nominees: John Blombach, CJF, #2036 and Rick Burten, CJF, #3414

Region 1 Directors: Pat Gallahan, CJF, #2986, AZ; Jason Harmeson, CJF, #1371, CA; Kenny Lyon, CJF, #6303, CA; Bill Searle, CJF, #819, OR

Region 2 Directors: Michael Chance, CJF, #3092, OK; Dusty Franklin, CJF, #4361,OK; Alan Larson, CJF, #2785, TX; Dennis Manning, CJF, #270, UT; Walt Taylor, CF, #1, NM; William J. (Toby) Tobbler, CF, #2006, MO

Region 3 Directors: Roy Bloom, CJF, #1102, WI; Rick Burten, CJF, #3414, IL; Danvers Child, CJF, #3919, IN; Dave Farley, CF, #1516, OH; Scott Kelber, CJF, #5567, IA; David Kleindendorst, CF, #6719, MN; Dion O’Brien, CJF, #4260, IN; Garnet Oetjens, CJF, #2038, MI; Chris Zizian, #6173, Ontario, Canada

Region 4 Directors: Dan Bradley, #522, MS; Stan Davis, #8001, GA; Steve P. Davis, CF, #3980, TN; Ron Kramedjian, CF, #8231, TN; Jerry Langdon, CJF, #1879, NC; Mike (Dr. Michael ) Miller, CJF, #5206, AL

Region 5 Directors: Deborah Ash, CF, #2403, NH; Bruce Daniels, CJF, #460, NH; Mike Givney, CF, #5420, NY; Steve Kraus, CJF, #360, NY; Sean McClure, #7907, MA; Jack Millman, CJF, #1489, MA.

Two Billion People Like the Sound of 070707 and Live Earth

The numbers all added up today. With concerts in New York, London, Johannesburg, Rio, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney and Hamburg, a new age of global media events was born. Here's the official video, with Madonna's catchy new tune. The pictures flash by really quickly but yes, there's a horse in there. A zebra, too!

Long live this planet.

(Just click on the arrow on the video window to start or go to http://www.liveearth.org)

When Good Things Happen to Good People: Hoofcare's Connection to the PanAm Games

The pink ribbon on the Hyperion Farms saddle cloth signifies Judy Guden's long struggle to beat breast cancer. Judy is from Lubbock, Texas and an old friend of the late farrier Burney Chapman.

Al and Judy Guden are the nicest people I've never met.

About ten years ago, I sent out an email announcement to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal subscribers to tell them about the death of Texas laminitis specialist farrier Burney Chapman.

I was surprised to hear from Al Guden, the owner of a Thoroughbred racing stable on Long Island who asked if he could post my bio of Burney on his web site.

I was even more surprised to see that his web site was the first on the Internet to be dedicated to laminitis. It was filled with links and names and where to go and what to do if you had to deal with the disease.

By email, Judy, Al’s wife, was from Lubbock, Texas and they had brought Burney to Long Island back in the 80s to try the heart bar treatment on their foundered horse.

But the contact didn’t end there; I kept sending people to the Hyperion Farm web site. And Al started offering me some friendly advice on web technology. Before long, he had taken over the Hoofcare and Lameness email list and added all sorts of enhancements. And he wouldn’t accept payment, even after he had to hand-sort out all the America On Line addresses.

Al and Judy retired and moved to Florida. They gave up Thoroughbreds in favor of Dutch Warmbloods. They have the farm in Wellington and all the trimmings, but have remained interested in hooves and horseshoes and laminitis and still offer me help and advice (and boy, do I need it) on technology and horses and the international scene.

In the past few years, they have been on the ownership side of some of the top Dutch Warmbloods (KWPN) in the world, including the young dressage breeding champions Uptown and New Holland and now Washington. In Europe, their horses are ridden by Hans Peter Minderhoud.

Al could write a book about the health problems he has encountered with his horses. More importantly, at the same time that his horses were soaring to the top, Judy Guden was on the sidelines, battling breast cancer, in recent years.

Yesterday, Al and Judy's eight-year-old US-based gelding, Sagacious HF, the mount of New Jersey rider Lauren Sammis, flew to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to represent the USA at the Pan Am Games. Lauren has brought this horse from training level to Prix St Georges.

Lauren qualified for the Pan Am Games with a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness sewn into her saddle cloth in Judy's honor. She’ll now trade it for the USA emblem of the US Equestrian Team.

I’m sure Judy approves of the switch.

If you have a minute to turn your thoughts toward Brazil next week, check the web site http://www.hyperionfarm.com. (The Thoroughbreds may be gone but the farm name remains rooted in the racing lore of the great racing sire Hyperion.) Al will keep us filled in on how the horse is doing.

Sagacious HF is shod by Don Later; his vet is Dr Rick Mitchell of Fairfield Equine Associates in Newtown, Connecticut (and the world).

The bad news: Al and Judy will be at home in Florida while their horse competes in Brazil, since Judy is going through another chemotherapy series of treatments.

Hoofcare and Lameness has survived for 20 years because of people like Al Guden: busy people who somehow were never too busy to stop and look and see that the journal/website/blog/bookstore needed help with our educational mission and they had the expertise to give it. People like Al Guden have had answers for me before I even knew I had questions.

I admit that I had to open the dictionary and look up the exact meaning of Al and Judy’s horse’s name. They’ve had him since he was four months old, so I know they named him. Sagacious means having sound judgment and farsightedness, keen perception.

I can understand why Al Guden would know that word.

By the way, Hyperion was euthanized because of laminitis. He remains one of the most influential sires in Thoroughbred history and is at the head of bloodlines like the Northern Dancer line.

Al Guden with his gelding Sagacious HF. If you double-click on the image and view this photo in an enlarged window, you will see that the horse is hooked up for IV treatment. He is not sick; a few hours before the horse was to leave for the airport, veterinarian Rick Mitchell began to hydrate all the Team USA horses with 10000 mL of saline along with some vitamins, according to Al.

Cobra Venom Raises Its Numbing Head at Racetracks

Big news published by the Daily Racing Form today: A recent raid of the tack room of French trainer Patrick Biancone at Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, Kentucky netted a little vial marked "Toxin". Inside was a small amount of crystallized cobra venom. His veterinarian's truck was also searched.

Cobra venom injections are legendary at US racetracks but there has been little proof until recently that they are anything more than legends.

Think: an injectable temporary chemical neurectomy.

The DRF describes: "Cobra venom is a powerful neurotoxin that blocks the neural pathways that transmit pain to the brain. The substance, which is used by researchers in extremely minute quantities because of its toxicity, is considered a Class 1 drug under the Racing Commissioners International classification system."

Last week, two men pleaded guilty in New York state for the crime of injecting Standardbreds with cobra venom.

Lyndi Gilliam, DVM at Oklahoma State University Center for Veterinary Health Services is working on a test to detect cobra venom in horse urine but apparently there is no current test to detect it.

Another rumored painkiller used in horse's feet is the oceanic cone snail's venom.

Cobras are intensively farmed in Viet Nam; their meat is also eaten. One farm exported 50 tons of cobra meat to China last year. Cobras are almost extinct in the wild because they are so valuable on the Chinese market. In Florida, there are several cobra "farms" as well, primarily producing venom for research use.

Cobra venom is deadly, of course, if a human or horse is attacked by the snake. But did you know that cobras themselves are immune to the venom? Their bloodsteams contain molecules that neutralize the venom. And the molecule is based on a single amino acid. That's the only difference. The amino acid creates a sugar molecule that prevents the neurotoxin from affecting the snake. National Geographic has a great article about cobra venom research and all it may teach us about human medicine.

Tell me this: if cobras are valuable snakes, who has the job of milking them? And how do they do it?