Western Pleasure Gait Analysis: Is this what the rule book ordered?

Traditional definitions of the number of beats in a given gait are being challenged by the unique movement of horses shown in the western pleasure classes at US horse shows.

A new study published in the journal Equine and Comparative Exercise Physiology sheds some light on perhaps why I get so confused when I watch the western pleasure classes at the Quarter Horse Congress.

Our friend Molly Nicodemus PhD, formerly of the McPhail Center at Michigan State College of Veterinary Medicine and now at Mississippi State, and J.E. Booker of Auburn University analyzed a group of western pleasure horses at the jog and lope.

While the paper contains a lot of information, it requires a bit of reading between the lines. It tells you what a western pleasure horse (if the horses tested are typical) does but without comparing it to what other "normal" horses do.

For instance, the study determined that both the jog and lope are four-beat stepping gaits. (A stepping gait is one in which the horse has at least one foot on the ground at all times--think: walk, rack, running walk, fox trot, tolt, paso largo, etc.). The opposite of a stepping gait is a leaping gait, which contains an "aerial" phase when no limb is in contact with the ground--think: trot. piaffe, gallop.)

Gait analysis has shown pretty reliably that the trot is a two-beat leaping gait and the canter is a three-beat leaping gait.

In her book The Dynamic Horse, Dr. Hilary Clayton describes the western pleasure jog as a symmetrical two-beat stepping with a high degree of collection (what trainers call "being in the frame" and what makes it look, to the uneducated spectator, like the horses are trotting in place and will never get all the way around the arena.)

Does the new research mean that the jog and lope are variations of the walk?

The American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA), which also defines the jog as a "smooth, ground-covering two-beat diagonal gait", recently changed the judging standards for western pleasure classes: "The horse (in the jog) works from one pair of diagonals to the other pair. The jog should be square, balanced and with straight, forward movement of the feet. Horses walking with their back feet and trotting in the front are not considered performing the required gait."

Also from the AQHA: "The lope is an easy, rhythmical three-beat gait....Horses traveling at a four-beat gait are not considered to be performing at a proper lope."

The AQHA obviously believes that corrrectly-performing Western Pleasure horses are exhibiting aerial gaits; Molly Nicodemus' paper documents that the horses she tested are not in compliance with AQHA standards.

Here's a confusing sentence from the AQHA rulebook: "Lope with forward motion will become the only gait recognized as a lope." Can a horse lope without making forward motion? That's one for a gait analysis project...

Not too many years ago, Hilary Clayton's gait analysis showed that medal-winning FEI dressage horses were not performing movements as prescribed in the stone tablets of dressage judging standards. The canter pirouette, in particular, and the piaffe were found to be quite different than believed.

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Hilary Clayton Footing Lecture This Friday in Orlando, Florida

Dr. Hilary Clayton will lecture on the nature of footing, in all its depths and shapes and surfaces, at the United States Dressage Federation Convention this week in Orlando, Florida at the Disney Coronado Resort. Hilary will speak on Friday, November 30, both in the morning and again in the afternoon. The title of the lecture is "Impact of Arena Footing on Soundness". The USDF convention has an extensive program on horse health, and lameness in particular, this year.

Next week, Dr. Clayton will lecture on her latest research on the temporomandibular joint, reporting on how horses chew hay and pellets. That lecture will be on Wednesday, December 5 at 11:05 a.m. as part of a seminar on dentistry at the American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention, also in Orlando, but at the Orange County Convention Center.

Watch for a new book and dvd set coming soon from Dr. Clayton, who is the Mary Anne McPhail Dressage Chair in Equine Sports Medicine at Michigan State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and a key contributing editor to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal.

If you are attending either the USDF or AAEP conventions (or both), say hello to your faithful blogger!

In the photo: Palamino warmblood stallion Treliver Decanter from Treliver Stud in Buckinghamshire, England makes good use of his arena's footing.

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Speedy Recovery Wishes to Farrier Allen Smith

Some horses in Massachusetts have had to allow a stranger to pick up their hooves lately. Forgive them if they're restless; some of these horses have never even known another farrier. That will be the case today when a Dutch Warmblood named Iabony lifts his big feet for Tom Maker, who'll be helping out a friend.

Allen Smith normally shoes for a very select client list; his list hasn't changed much over the years. But right now, Allen is recovering from cataract surgery and a detached retina, so Tom and some other farriers are lending their able hands for an old friend.

Allen is known, of course, as the former president of the American Farrier's Association and its de facto ombudsman. But he really does shoe horses when he's not quoting Roberts Rules of Order.

The AFA has always depended on Allen to see things clearly and he hopefully will be doing that again very soon.

(I've known Allen so long that the photos of him in his file with the magazine are black and white!)

"Farriery: The Whole Horse Approach" Nudges Farriers to Take A Look Above the Hairline

Author David Gill contends that the normal supporting limb (during the progression of the stride) is positioned at an angle of around 84 to 86 degrees, rather than directly perpendicular to the ground as often portrayed in diagrams. Therefore, he writes, lateral heel landing should be considered normal.

Hoofcare and Lameness Journal is the exclusive US source for the new book Farriery: The Whole Horse Approach by British farrier David Gill. The first copies have arrived and already found their way into the hands of eager readers. And the discussions are beginning!

This is the first book to truly focus on grazing stance, shoulder angle, chest width, back pain, “handedness”, crookedness, etc. and their effect on horses with mismatched feet and/or limb deformities and gait asymmetries. It redefines evaluating the foot as an indication of the horse’s development and athleticism, both normal and abnormal. And it suggests that "normal" may not look like what we have been studying in textbooks all these years.

This is the most in-depth treatise on imbalance in the modern horse that has been written. The author perceives the hoof as the dynamic structure that is the great equalizer (or victim, in some cases) of asymmetric weightbearing, gait and conformational challenges from above, and suggests how to recognize problems that can be corrected and compensate for those that cannot.

Chapters: Anatomy (40 pages), Hoof Balance Revealed, Anterioposterior Balance, "Odd But Normal" Hooves, Mediolateral Hoof Balance, The Crooked Horse, Farriery in Practice.

From a subscriber who bought one of the first copies: "The book I bought from you at the meeting (Farriery: The Whole Horse Concept by Gill) is a very good book and I'm reading it cover-to-cover. It is very succinct and the illustrations are excellent. References cited in the book are current and reflect the author's obvious study of leading edge research."

The illustrations are excellent. Whether you agree with the author or not, you will admit that this book diagrams functional hoof anatomy at a level not available to us before. As with our other new book, Hoof Problems by Rob Van Nassau, I wish the illustrations were available in a cd-rom archive for educators (and journal editors).

Introductory Price: $80 (subject to change) plus post
Postage: USA $6, Overseas $15; actual cost will vary by country and may not be insurable.
Specs: 7.5 x 10" with 146 pages, laminated hard cover
Illustrations: over 200 (estimated) color photographs and drawings
Availability: Now in Stock
Click here for a faxable/mailable order form.
Click here to visit our web page on this book.
You may order by phone (01 978 281 3222), by fax (01 978 283 8775); by email (books@hoofcare.com) or by mail (Hoofcare & Lameness Journal, 19 Harbor Loop, Gloucester MA 01930 USA). Visa and MasterCard accepted.
The author is meticulous about the fresh specimen prepared for his photos. He used mostly white feet. All the photos of cadaver limbs are identified as such, and all photos of limbs have been vignetted so there is no distracting background except when living horses are shown. This photo of the laminae making their hairpin turn at the heel is coupled with a photo of a corn seen from the solar surface.


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New "Duplo" German Horseshoes: The Concept is Change

The foot surface of the German Duplo shoe.

Something else to be thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend: clever people keep trying to build a better horseshoe so I always have fodder for articles.

I think mousetraps are over-rated. The horseshoe is certainly the world's great design-improvement challenge. The latest new shoe concept to catch my eye is the "Duplo" shoe, a fine example of German engineering, and the latest entry in the 3-D horseshoe design challenge.

Before I even looked at this shoe, I was sidetracked by the sizing system. They make two models: round and oval, which roughly translate to front and hind. And each shape comes in 13 different sizes...and the company apologizes for not having shoes big enough for some warmbloods and draft horses.

I know the Germans like to be precise; the diameter increases by 4 millimeters from one size to the next. (For the metrically challenged, that's about 3/16" increments.)

The choices don't stop there: the 26 sizes are available in three hardnesses. (I can see some of the farrier suppliers starting to twitch now.) So now we are up to 78 possible configurations of this shoe. There are also winter models and closed therapeutic models, so I think that must take them well over 100 models and sizes.

Another interesting thing is that this is a plastic shoe with a metal insert for stability. The horseshoe is made of soft plastic, which is cast around a plate of laser-cut sheet-metal. This metal insert provides purchase for the nail heads.

This view shows the height of the teeth that grip the wall. This is the foot surface of the shoe.

But the piece de resistance of out-of-the-box thinking is that there are no clips. Instead, the profile is textured or "studded" on the foot surface to prevent slippage. Any "studs" (more like teeth) close to the sole can be ground down. The thicker the hoof wall, the more rows of studs (teeth) you'd leave in the shoe.

And the manufacturer says that the nail holes are "punched" perpendicular to the white line. I've read the literature about the shoe but I'm still foggy on this one. (Do the nails come back out?) There's also an inverse inner plastic rim.

Hubert Frank, the shoe's designer, is a farrier in Germany and he has managed to engineer a shoe that goes where none has gone before. His intriguing horseshoe concept is not a prototype; it is for sale in Germany. I wish him and all the other innovators out there the best of luck. Keep the ideas coming!

Note: Hubert's website is: http://www.duplo-frank.de/en/Duplo-Plastic-Horseshoes is in German, French and English.

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Thankful Thoughts: Veteran Farrier Joe Kriz Sr. Loses Lower Leg But Keeps on Going

Thanksgiving makes you stop and think. You look around the table and see the ghosts of those who aren’t in their seats. Or maybe there is no table this year at all. It’s a good idea to stop and give thanks for those are there, those who make your world what it is, and those who have inspired you to keep going, whether they are at the table or not.

For me, a lot of thanks go to the older citizens of the horse world and especially the older farriers who have inspired me so much by sharing stories and encouragement and being my friends.

The two gentlemen in this photo are great examples. On the left you see Bob Skradzio from Pennsylvania. No one works harder than Bob, and no one has more energy left at the end of the day to share with younger people. I had the honor of hosting a clinic for farriers this summer with Bob in Saratoga Springs, New York. Bob seemed to know instinctively how to approach the farriers and push their buttons in a kindly way. His stories are legendary but his kindness and generosity to farriers is so inspiring.

One horseshoer said he wondered why I was walking the backside at the track with a grumpy old man at my side. The next day, he was shaking my hand and saying “Thank you so much for introducing me to Bob Skradzio.”

I’m thankful that I know Bob.

And then there’s Joe Kriz about whom it can be said: it’s hard to keep a good man down. The most-photographed Connecticut farrier and poster boy for Capewell Horse Nails is now 91 years old and recently had to take a break from his lively life as America’s Senior Farrier. Joe told me the other day that he has had an operation to amputate the lower part of one of his legs.

Translation: Joe Kriz has been forced into retirement. He has stopped shoeing horses, at the age of 91. Was he the oldest working farrier? His son, Joe Kriz Jr. says that his dad has been fitted with a prosthesis and has already gotten a scooter and is down at the barn and zooming to the mailbox each day.

Some advice: hide the keys to the shoeing truck.

Joe, along with his late brother Johnny, probably trained more farriers than anyone in the USA in the second half of the 20th century. Among his former assistants: Michael Wildenstein, farrier instructor at Cornell, and Siggi Siggurdsen from Iceland, who gave such a great presentation at Cornell last weekend. And a long, long list of others.

Join me in wishing Joe the best; send a card or message to Joe Kriz Sr., 7 Bear Hill Road, Bethany CT 06525.

Who’s on your thankful list?

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