Palm Beach Footing Post Script

Palm Beach International Equestrian Center's International Arena during a recent night class

After posting on Friday about the footing at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Florida, I have a few more comments to add.

I think this is the year of the surface: whether its show arenas, home schooling rings, or racetracks, everyone is talking about (and obsessing over) footing! No matter whom I'm with, the subject invariably comes around to it. And no, I don't know about much new research!

One vet said that he thought he had seen more bruised feet this season at Wellington but seemed genuinely pleased overall with the footing.

Show circuit farrier Jack Miller, who happened to cross my path at the airport this afternoon, concurred with the veterinarians' comments. We sat down to chat for a few minutes. He said that the new footing was much more consistent and enabled the show to go on, even after a downpour of six inches of rain. "The new footing was great," he said, "but a little sluggish. The horses were maybe jumping an extra two inches, because they were sinking in. It stopped them. And it cupped a lot out of the bottom of the feet. But it was a lot better than it has been, and they didn't have to use as many studs. We didn't see too many 'Spruce Meadows Specials' (supersized studs) this time."

Also at the airport today, I ran into another vet, Dr. Liz Maloney from here in Massachusetts, who has been flying back and forth to Palm Beach all winter to compete her horses in the amateur owner division at the WEF. She said that her horses, who are shod by "banana shoes" expert Danny Dunson from Tennessee, handled life on the showgrounds very well, although she didn't always compete in the newly renovated "Hong Kong footing" arenas. She said it was great to not to have to use studs, since she worries so much about the injuries they can cause. "It feels hard when you land, but it's not, really," she said of her impression from the saddle.

Other comments I heard were about the hunter ponies that compete barefoot and wore booties to get from the stable area to the arena and schooling rings, since the pathways were crushed stone. Show hunters want as little knee action on the flat as possible so no shoe or the very lightest aluminum shoe is usually the answer for them.

Everyone seemed pleased that the winter season in Wellington was unaffected by disease (EHV closed the showgrounds last year in the weeks before the show started) or disaster (hurricanes have been a threat the past few years) and that the upper echelons of the hunter/jumper/dressage showing scenes seem (so far) unaffected by financial woes troubling other sectors of the US economy.

Thanks to the Winter Equestrian Festival and Kenneth Braddick of Horse Sport USA for the excellent photos and reports shared with this blog all season. Now it's time to pack up and move on. See you next year!

Greetings from Florida: Vets See Happy Hoofprints in the Footing at Winter Equestrian Festival

I should be thinking about the bright blue sky overhead, but this post is about the ground beneath our feet, instead.

The fabulous Winter Equestrian Festival has melted into spring and the newly-renovated arenas at the Palm Beach Equestrian Center have endured thousands upon thousands of hoofprints. The WEF's signature green grass of past years is a memory.

And now it's time for two of the circuit's veterinarians to update us on how the footing worked for the horses this winter.

Dr. Timothy Ober, veterinarian for the U.S. Equestrian Team and a member of the U.S. Equestrian Federation Equine Drugs & Medications Committee, said, "We have no statistics as such, but it seems there are fewer injuries. The horses are holding up better."

Dr. Scott Swerdlin, president of the Palm Beach Equine Clinic, the official veterinary service for WEF, said: "There are fewer catastrophic injuries. Aa result, the veterinary community is excited about the new footing which has been spectacular."

The vets gave their opinions as the CN Winter Equestrian Festival presented by Zimmerman Advertising wound up 12 weeks of competition that began on January 16.

Footing created by Bart Poels, the 2008 Olympic equestrian footing expert, and installed by Poels and Brett Raflowitz of Palm City, Florida, was installed in the two jumping Grand Prix arenas at Palm Beach International Equestrian Center.

In the centerpiece International Arena alone, more than 7,100 "trips" (not including jumpoffs) were completed by hunters and jumpers during WEF. A four-day dressage competition required that two dressage arenas be installed in the International Arena.

Thousands more horses competed in the Bertelan DeNemethy Arena in which the "Poels" footing was also installed, as well as several other competition and warm up rings, including the Grand Hunter and Rost arenas and Ring 6.

Equestrian Sport Productions, LLC, the PBIEC management company, announced that the "Poels" footing will be installed in the Mogavero ring over the summer.

Before the start of WEF, ESP placed the highest priority on improvements in the footing throughout PBIEC to enhance the safety and welfare of horses.

Among the events held in the International Arena was the five Selection Trials for the short list for 2008 Olympic jumping team. And the show grounds were inundated by record rain fall during the course of WEF.

Dr. Ober, who attended the U.S. equine athletes at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the 2006 World Equestrian Games, and dozens of the other international competitions, said: "Horses in the trials were in good order. That is an example of how the footing has been beneficial. Compared to past trials, the attrition rate seemed smaller and that primarily is due to the footing.

"There was a little bit of a learning curve with the new footing. The type of footing requires an adjustment because it does not allow the foot to glide.

"The footing has been a real positive, mostly for the good of the horses that always come first. But without it, because of the weather, there might not have been the competitions we were able to have."

Thanks to Kenneth Braddick of the Winter Equestrian Festival for help with this report.

Safety Warning: Work-Related Pregnancy Problems in Female Veterinarians

Female veterinarians have twice the risk of miscarrying as a result of increased exposure to anesthesia gases and pesticides, according to a study released on April 1, 2008 in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine. These results highlight a warning for all young female vets, who must be made more informed of the inherent risks should they want to become pregnant.

This work was done as part of a study known as the Health Risks of Australian Veterinarians Project (HRAV), surveying all graduates from Australian veterinary schools between 1960 and 2000.

In all, 5,700 graduates were contacted, of which 2,800 responded. Of these, 1,200 were women. Within these female respondents there were 1,355 pregnancies reported, 940 of which took place while the woman was working in clinical practice. This group of pregnancies was considered eligible for inclusion in the study.

Women who carried out surgeries and were exposed to unfiltered anesthesia gases for an hour or more a week had 2.5 times the chance of miscarriage. The same was true for vets who used pesticides in their work.

Female veterinarians who performed x-rays more than five times a week had 1.8 times the chance of miscarrying. The trend appears to be consistent over time, as when the analysis was restricted to recent graduates (between 1980 and 2000), the results were similar.

This prompts the authors of the study to sound a warning to female vets who are of childbearing age, that they "should be fully informed of the possible reproductive effects of ionizing radiation, unscavenged anesthetic gases, and exposure to pesticides."

This warning could potentially apply to other staff members in equine veterinary practices as well. Thus, the authors advise that these women should take protective measures when planning to conceive and during gestation.

Article title: Maternal occupational exposures and risk of spontaneous abortion in veterinary practice
Authors: A Shirangi, L Fritschi, CDJ Holman
Journal cited: Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2008

This summary was brought to the HoofBlog's attention through a daily RSS feed from Medical News Today, a news aggregation service for the medical profession. The summary appears with the permission of the editor.

Photo at top by photographer Jan Verbeke, aka JeBeKe, of Belgium.

flip, originally uploaded by Rachel Robot.

Favorite Photo: They Don't Build Them Like This One Anymore...

Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.

Here's the fabulous Gould and Sons Forge in Merrow, England in 1913, just before the outbreak of World War I. I'm not sure what's more impressive, the horseshoe-shaped doorway to the forge or the topiary cottage next door! Does it have an arch as well?


Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.

Fast forward 15 years: Here you see the same forge in 1927. Where did the horses go? The doorway is still there but they've added gas pumps--and look at that car! Note that the cottage seems even more buried under foliage. And the fellows aren't wearing aprons.

Like so many others, I have a "thing" for these old forges with arched "horseshoe" portals and would love to know which ones are still standing. I know the one near Waterford, Ireland (now a tearoom) is still there--are there others? What became of this one in Merrow, England?

Please email fran@hoofcare.com if you have any information about old forges or farrier-related architecture. Thank you!

Great Britain Publishes Proposed Welfare Guidelines for Hoof Trimming; Distinctions Held Between Farrier, Trimmer and Veterinarian Roles

The National Equine Welfare Council of Great Britain has taken a very big bull by the horns with the publication of welfare guidelines in the trimming of horses by persons other than registered farriers and veterinarians. The first-ever guidelines were published this week, and herald the opening of a 30-day period during which time trimmers and others may comment on the proposed regulations.

The two-page document speaks firmly to the need for painfree trimming of barefoot horses, while adding a proviso that newly-barefoot horses may be painful during transition. According to the guidelines, sore barefoot horses need to be aided with oversight "including the use of protective boots and limited workload to ensure there is no pain or suffering."

The provisional text adds that "Care should be taken to ensure that any protective boots are fitted properly to avoid significant injury from straps and fixings."

In what appears to be a victory for those making a living as hoof trimmers, the regulations stop short of specifying any sort of minimum training standards, examinations or registration for trimmers. Farriers, on the other hand, will still be required to complete college training and a four-year formal apprenticeship before being allowed to shoe a horse for pay.

Under British law, only a registered (graduate) farrier may apply a horseshoe. Under the Farriers (Registration) Act of 1975 horse owners have the legal right to trim their own horses' feet, but may not put on shoes or attempt to change the shape of the horse's feet.

The new regulations specify the involvement of a veterinarian in the treatment and management of horses with hoof disease or lameness, but the language is quite vague as to when a horse's hoof problems are considered lameness vs. superficial or mechanical defects or hoof capsule deformation that may cause pain or gait abnormality.

In 2006, two British horse owners were convicted for following what were deemed to be "radical" methods advocated by German veterinarian Dr Hiltrud Strasser; the court held that the practices used lead to the unnecessary suffering of the horses in their care. No veterinary supervision was provided in that case, which involved laminitis. (See Hoof Blog posts for 17 July 2006, 31 August 2006 and 7 September 2006.)

The true acid test of the new guidelines will no doubt be the treatment of laminitis by hoof trimmers without veterinary supervision. Many claim to obtain excellent results on laminitic horses with changes in lifestyle, diet and judicious hoof trimming and dismiss the need for pain medication, radiographs and veterinary supervision. The new guidelines would suggest that trimmers should obtain precise interpretation of the new equine welfare violations if working without veterinary supervision.

"Having a code of practice will allow the (equine welfare) charities to intervene at an earlier point when they see someone is doing work that should be undertaken by a vet or farrier," commented the British Equine Veterinary Association's Chris House, who is chairman of the NEWC's equine hoofcare sub-committee.

Attached to this post are two jpeg files (below), each representing one page of the proposed British guidelines. If I have created these documents correctly, you should be able to click or double click on them (depending on your web browser setup) and they should enlarge to full page size for you to read on the screen or print out on letter-size paper. (Sorry, if it doesn't work on your system. They are large high-resolution files that may take some time to open or download.)

These documents are part of a legal process and should not be altered. Please respect the posting of these documents for your personal information. Remember that these are "in process" documents provided for comment and these regulations only affect hoof trimmers in the United Kingdom.

Blogger's Commentary: It's not likely that any proposed regulations could please all parties. I'd interpret these rules as a victory for hoof trimming as an unregulated profession in a country where almost everything else seems to be regulated. As I read this document, it is also an endorsement of the value of hoof boots when fitted properly and a warning that improper use of hoof boots would be contrary to horse welfare regulations.

Hoof Blog readers from Great Britain may comment to the NEWC using forms available on their website. Deadline for response is midnight, April 30, 2008.

Friends (No Longer) At Work: Florida Farrier Dirk Braak Shoes His Last Horse

Mr. Dirk Braak, an icon of farriers in the state of Florida, announced his retirement and stuck to it. He will no longer be shoeing horses for his long-time customers in the Tampa area.

Dirk's long career and colorful ways were beautifully documented in an article in today's Plant City Courier and Tribune.

Dirk learned his farrier skills at the Eastern School of Farriery (now Danny Ward's Horseshoeing School) in Martinsville, Virginia in 1967. His retirement date, April 8, is timed to the day so that his career will have spanned forty years since he left farrier school.

In the article, Dirk remembers that he slept in the front seat of his pickup truck while at school because he couldn't afford the dormitory fee. But he desperately wanted to learn to be a farrier.

After moving to Florida, Dirk sparked interest in farrier meetings in the Tampa area, which led to the formation of the Florida State Farrier's Association.

I have known Dirk for at least 25 years. He is passionate about his profession and has always been a leader. I can't imagine him doing anything else but I'm sure he will give anything he undertakes his all. I hope he will continue to wear his trademark suspenders!

His customers will have to learn what it's like to find and keep and pay a new farrier. How lucky they have been to have had Dirk on their farms and in their lives.

In addition to the story, the Tampa Bay Tribune has a slide show of Dirk working on their website. (Click or double-click on a photo to enlarge it for viewing.) Please read the article!

Good luck, Dirk, we'll miss you!

Photos of Dirk Braak courtesy of the Tampa Bay Tribune.