Jockey Club Calls for Ban of All Traction Devices on Front Shoes of Racehorses

A press release from the Jockey Club yesterday calls for immediate action to change front shoe regulations of racehorses immediately. The edict was a result of research completed in the past few weeks by the newly appointed Thoroughbred Safety Committee.
Recommendations from the Committee will be reviewed by individual state racing commissions, who have the authority to adopt, adapt or reject the recommendations.

Specifically, the committee calls for:

• An immediate ban on toe grabs (other than 2-millimeter wear plates), turn downs, jar calks, stickers and any other traction devices worn on the front shoes of Thoroughbred horses while racing or training on all racing surfaces.
• The Association of Racing Commissioners’ International (RCI) and all North American racing authorities to implement this ban by rule as soon as possible, but no later than December 31, 2008, and for all racetracks to consider immediately implementing this ban by “house rule” in the interim.

Previous recommendations from the Grayson Jockey Club's Welfare and Safety Summit had included a model rule banning toe grabs greater than 4 mm; this recommendation was developed and passed at at the Racing Commissions International (RCI) Convention in April 2007, but is subject to adoption by individual states. Several states, including California, adopted that recommendation.

The new policy advisory is much stronger, since it lowers the toe grab from 4 millimeters to effectively eliminating it except for the wear plate seen in the toes of most flat shoes and outlaws the use of mud calks, jar calks, and stickers.

Turndowns and bends (angling the heels of the shoe toward the ground) are normally seen on the hind feet, as are most toe grabs and traction devices.

The Jockey Club policy advisory only addresses traction on front shoes.

Additional advisories recommend elimination of steroid anabolic medications in the race training and racing of Thoroughbreds no later than December 31, 2008.

The Thoroughbred Safety Committee includes chairman Stuart S. Janney III, and members John Barr, James G. (Jimmy) Bell, Dr. Larry Bramlage, Donald R. Dizney, Dell Hancock and Dr. Hiram C. Polk Jr. Each is a member of The Jockey Club.

The Welfare and Safety Summit includes a Shoeing and Hoof Care Committee, chaired by Bill Casner of WinStar Farms. The committee has been actively working on creating more information about racehorse shoes and their effects on horses and their interaction with different surfaces.

Read Tuesday's complete press release here.

Friends at Work: Father's Day Off

Today is Father's Day in the USA, and perhaps other places in the world. By coincidence, I think, I received an email today from my friend Uwe Lukas in Germany. Uwe is the author of the great new book (in German only, sadly, but the photos are great) Gesunde Hufe, Kein Zufall. Uwe has a long list of impressive credentials in the farrier and sport horse world, but today his top credential is as a proud father. In the photo, you see his six year old daughter Leonie trimming her pony. (Where did she get a farrier's apron to match her hair????)

Uwe writes by email today, "Now i have a little bit for smile. My daugther is 6 years old and she trims her pony self. I give her only supporting how much and where she trims. She knows, she will be a Farrier and a Vet in the future. I think it's changing sometime more."

If the stable in the background looks a little elaborate, the Lukases liven in Warendorf, home of the state stud for the Westphalian breed and the national equestrian federation. A lot of Olympic gold medals have gone home to Warendorf.

Uwe's English is a lot better than my German, but I am sure you can get the idea of what he's saying.

I think I have some matchmaking to do. On this side of the Atlantic, we have Robbie Pethick, the handsome son of New Jersey farrier Bob Pethick, who has taken on trimming a horse, not a mere pony. Robbie will be six in August.

They already have something in common--note that they are both using HoofJack hoof stands!

Both of these youngsters also have a great advantage if they learn from their expert farrier dads, each of whom shoes some of the very top dressage and sport horses in their respective countries.

Father's Day for me was tinged by the memorials on television here in the USA this morning for the superb television journalist/interviewer and one of my professional heroes, NBC's Washington bureau chief Tim Russert. Tim was much more than a reporter and host of the "Meet the Press" tv show, as evidenced by his larger-than-life camera presence and his recent stints on the bestseller list with his book Big Russ and Me, about growing up under his father's influence in the gritty US city of Buffalo, New York. Tim died suddenly this week.

I was hoping to quote from the book here but when I went looking for an excerpt I ended up on the book's web site and I found a letter from Tim on the front page. I'll reproduce a little passage from it here, and hope that if you haven't read this book, you will, no matter who your dad was or is, or what your relationship is like. Tim writes:

In the spring of 2004, I published a book about my father--about the lessons I have learned from him, the way he has influenced me, and my enormous love and respect for this steady, hardworking, and modest man. My publisher sent me on a publicity tour in the hope that people around the country would see the book as an ideal Father's Day gift.

Early in the tour I was in Chicago, where to my great relief, customers were lining up to buy the book and have me autograph it. What happened next really surprised me.

"Make it out to Big Mike" somebody told me, which was followed in rapid succession by, "This is for Big Mario"..."Please inscribe it out to Big Manuel."..."For Big Irv."..."Big Willie"..."Big Stan"

I had expected that my book would appeal to readers in my home town of Buffalo, New York, but I didn't know whether the story of a young man coming of age in a blue-collar Irish-Catholic neighborhood, whose father was a truck driver and a sanitation man, would strike a cord with a wider audience.

I (soon) discovered there were many Big Russes out there--good, industrious, and patriotic men who have a lot in common with my dad, even if they didn't share his religion or his heritage. By writing a book about my father, I was affirming not only his life, but the lives of many other fathers as well.
(end quote)

I am sorry that I never had a chance to ask Tim to inscribe a copy to Big Joe.

If you have a few minutes, click on this link and listen to Tim reading the intro to Big Russ and Me. Link to Tim Russert reading

Another Country Heard From: Meet the Hooves of Japan's Casino Drive

Casino Drive's Feet, originally uploaded by Rock and Racehorses.

Racing is full of "What ifs" and there were probably echoing off Casino Drive's stall walls when Big Brown failed to fire a week ago in the Belmont Stakes.

Casino Drive was visiting from Japan with the sole purpose of stealing the Belmont from Big Brown. He certainly stole the Peter Pan in a very dramatic run for the finish line a few weeks earlier, but a bruised foot caused his connections to be cautious and skip the Belmont instead of poking and prodding and poulticing and patching the colt's foot.

Meanwhile, my friend Sarah Andrew (a.k.a. "Rock and Racehorses") tracked the poor horse down to take photos of his feet for this blog. I wonder what the Japanese team thought of her pointing the camera not at his handsome head but at his feet and knees?

Casino Drive is out of the same mare who foaled the winners of the 2006 and 2007 Belmont Stakes. What if....

(Casino drive and his long feet have gone back to Japan, promising to return for November's Breeders Cup, which will be raced on an artificial track surface for the first time. I hope he can stay sound and healthy and show up with his race face--and feet--on.)

Can someone tell me about this shoe?

My friend Xavier took this photo...it was on a display board and is not an antique shoe out of a museum.

I have a theory, what's yours?

And can someone explain why and when you'd want to double-fuller like that? It would be a good forging test to get the arcs parallel; this farrier did a good job. A smooth arc on a single crease is an art...but parallel ones?

Maybe one of the British farriers can tell us if there is a name for double fullering. However, this is not a British shoe, as far as I know.

Leaving a comment to explain your theory about this shoe is easy: scroll to the bottom of this post and click on the word "Comments". A new window will open. Type your comment in the box on the left. On the right, click on "name/url" and a little box drops down. (Or at least it does on my Mac with a Firefox browser.) Type your name or nickname in the box marked "name".

Then hit either "preview" to look over what you typed in the big box, followed by "publish comment". And you're done!

If that's too much to ask, you can email your comment to me and I will post it for you.

If you have a Google or Gmail account and are signed in, you can ask the blog to automatically email other comments about this shoe to you so you can respond to people who respond to you.

The Hoof Blog has a new policy of moderating comments, by the way, since some people have been getting a little edgy and maybe a little too presumptuous of my laissez-faire attitude, so it may take a little while before your comment shows up on the blog until I approve it.

And if you don't like horseshoes, please don't feel obliged to preach to those who do. Just wait til there is a subject you do like. Let's accentuate the positive, my friends. There's plenty of hoof to go around.

Big Brown's Trainer Called to Testify Before Congressional Investigative Committee

The New York Times is reporting this morning that Rick Dutrow, the trainer of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown, will testify before the United States Congress next Thursday when a special House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection hearing on “Breeding, Drugs, and Breakdowns: The State of Thoroughbred Horseracing and the Welfare of the Thoroughbred Racehorse” will be held.

The Subcommittee is investigating the reasons for the deaths of so many racehorses recently, spurred by the double-breakdown of the filly Eight Belles who finished second in the Kentucky Derby and was euthanized on the track.

Others who will testify, according to the New York Times, are Richard Shapiro, the chairman of the California Horse Racing Board; Arthur Hancock III, the owner of Stone Farm outside Lexington, Ky.; Jess Jackson, the owner of Stonestreet Stables; Randy Moss, the ESPN analyst; Alan Marzelli, president of the Jockey Club; and the trainer Jack Van Berg.

Additional witnesses may include Susan Stover, the director of a veterinary research laboratory at the University of California at Davis; Larry Soma, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center; Dr. Mary Scollay, the Florida state veterinarian who has been hired as the equine medical director of the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority; Dr. Wayne McIlwraith of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State; and Alex Waldrop, the chief executive of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

Dutrow is likely to face questions about the use of steroids in racehorses. He recently admitted that Big Brown, like all his horses, was given monthly injections of a steroid called Winstrol. Dutrow reportedly said he didn’t know what the drug was or what it did. He told the Times that he might take his veterinarian to the hearing with him.

Let’s hope the hearings are on C-Span. Audio web-casting will be available if you have a Windows Media Player installed in your computer.

MSNBC Salutes Molly, the Three-Legged, Dog-Bitten, Katrina-Surviving Wonder Pony!

To launch the video, just click on the "play" icon. It will play right in the blog window.

As marketer of the book MOLLY THE PONY, Hoofcare and Lameness is tuned in to the story of the spunky little New Orleans pony who survived being abandoned in a collapsed barn during Katrina, didn't die after an attack by pitbulls, and finally, made a huge comeback from rare amputation surgery that left her hobbling around the bayou on three legs.

Molly has a safe new home now, and a new job in life as a therapy pony visiting hospitals and schools.

And we have a hit book on our hands!

Enjoy this little video about Molly, and thanks to everyone out there who helps ponies and horses like her! Molly is giving back a lot to the world that saved her life, more than once.

Thanks also to the Soft Ride hoof boot company, for their donation of a support boot for her "good" front leg. So far, Molly has not developed laminitis in the 18 months since her surgery, but we do want to keep it that way. Donations of products and techniques to keep her comfy or offer support are most welcome; Molly now has her own tax-deductible charity, called "Kids and Ponies".

To order a copy of Molly's book, go to Molly's web page on hoofcare.com.