Who's in Port Tonight?

Here's the web cam from our building, looking out over the docks. It updates every few minutes, so you can see what's going on here. The harbor has been very quiet this summer, as many of the pleasure boaters stay dockside rather than make too many trips to the gas dock. But you will see the working boats on the water. And if you visit the blog at night...you'll see a dark square.

There's a condensation spot between the layers of glass in the window, so it looks like there's a smudge on the image. (Sorry!)

Hoofcare Publishing's office is on a tumbledown old dock in the tumbledown old fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, about 28 miles northeast of Boston. We like being tumbledown, for the most part, around here. If this place ever gets fixed up, we'd have to find a new office.

Visitors are always welcome, and we have quite a few each summer. Please call ahead if you are planning to be in the area (or already are), and bring your own lifejacket! Hope you like fish...

If you ever come to visit by sea, this is the Hoofcare neighborhoof; the office is in the reddish building on the left.

Dutch Study Uses Special Shoes to Analyze Gait in Water-Based Treadmill Therapy

Via press release from the Society for Experimental Biology. This research was presented today at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting at Marseille, France.


A team of scientists from Wageningen University, led by Professor Johan van Leeuwen, has carried out studies both into the benefits of a method of equine rehabilitation. By using computer modeling and specialist horseshoes to measure acceleration, these investigations suggest that aqua-training rehabilitation is beneficial to horses due to lower impact accelerations.

Rehabilitation after equine joint and muscle injuries, including those of the back, shoulders and legs, now often involves 'aquatraining', whereby horses move in water-filled treadmills. Depending on the condition of the horse, different workloads can be obtained by regulating water level and walking velocity. Due to buoyancy, this treatment is currently thought to reduce weight-bearing forces, which can otherwise have detrimental effects on joints, but to date there has been a virtual absence of studies into the magnitude of these benefits.

Professor van Leeuwen's team has used special horseshoes to measure accelerations of horses undergoing aquatraining, as well as walking normally, which provide a good indication of the impact forces involved. "Our results, based on data from seven horses, show the accelerations are significantly lower during 'aquatic walking'," he asserts. "We will be carrying out further experiments to confirm these results, but at this stage, it appears that aquatraining may indeed be beneficial for rehabilitation after joint injury."

This work involved collaboration with the Department of Equine Sciences at Utrecht University, the Mary Anne McPhail Equine Performance Center at Michigan State University and the Dutch Equestrian Centre.

(end press release)

Here's a short video clip of a horse on an aqua treadmill. There are several units such as this one on the market, showing this video is not meant as an endorsement, nor do I know what manufacturer's treadmill was used in the Dutch study.

Irish Farrier Claims World Championship at Calgary Stampede

We were all betting on a kilt. Did the winner wear one? It's sort of hard to tell!

Paul Robinson from Northern Ireland is standing in front of about 20,000 cheering people right now in the rodeo arena at the Calgary Stampede, where he earned the title of 2008 World Champion after five days of fierce competition.

It's a little confusing, from this distance, because I know that Paul Robinson was on the Irish team at Stoneleigh last year, but Calgary has his residence listed as AYR, for Ayrshire, which is, of course, in Scotland. David Varini of Scotland was in second place, and hooray! for oldtimers, Grant Moon, representing Wales, was third!

Perhaps the biggest news is that five out of the top ten finishers were from the United States: (5) Jim Quick; (7) Bill Poor; (8) Chris Madrid; (9) Jake Engler; and (10) Troy Price.

If Paul Robinson really has switched over to the Scots, then Grant Moon was the only farrier in the Top Ten not from Scotland or the USA. You have to go all the way to 15th place, where you'll find Ireland's Paul Duddy, to find someone not from Scotland or the USA besides Grant.

Click here to see a photo of Paul with his $10,000 check for winning.

Click here to go through a gallery of many pages of photos from the competition. Just click on any thumbnail image to see a bigger view, but these are low-resolution proofs and not as sharp as you might like to see.

Congratulations to Paul! I bet the Guinness or perhaps the single-malt, depending on which country Paul Robinson is from this week, is flowing in Calgary tonight!

Calgary Stampede: Where the Competition is Hot This Weekend for Farriers from Around the World

Former World Champion David Wilson of Balmullo, Scotland has been the judge of the 2008 World Championship Blacksmiths Competition at the Calgary Stampede this week.

David, who is 71, was invited to judge for the fourth time in his career; no other farrier has judged the prestigious Calgary event so many times. He was the World Champion in 1985; I remember him on the stage in front of the entire rodeo audience receiving his award...dressed in a beautiful kilt.

The bronze sitting on David's anvil in the photo is the coveted trophy he won as World Champion at the Calgary Stampede.

According to an article in a Scottish newspaper last week, David has won 13 gold medals for draft horse shoemaking at the Royal Highland Show and has been show champion eight times, also receiving a special honor in 2005 to mark his 50th Highland Show. He also won the North American Challenge Cup Futurity in 1988. In 1983 Queen Elizabeth presented David with the British Empire Medal for services to farriery.

Word is that entries from Scotland were especially high this year, so there may be an entire flock of kilts on the stage tonight when the awards are presented.

Click here to read more about David Wilson, who will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his marriage to Mari this summer.

One person that David was judging in Calgary is Ben Yeager, who lives near Victoria, British Columbia. Ben is the current Canadian champion and was scheduled to compete in Calgary along with three teammates from the Vancouver area. They will also compete in the international team competition in England later in the summer.

Here's a little video clip from last year's Calgary Stampede shoeing events, courtesy of the Stampede:



I don't know for certain who the winner was tonight. I do know that former World Champion Grant Moon did come out of retirement and competed at Calgary this week.

Favorite Video: Elephant on a Trampoline

It's Sunday, it's hot, but for a few minutes, all my cares melted away while I watched this tiny bit of film. One of my all-time favorite videos, "7Tonnes2", is posted here for you, courtesy of the magic of YouTube.

Just click on the "play" icon (horizontal triangle) and you'll be as hypnotized as I was!

Kudos to creator/animator Nicolas Deveaux and Cube, the special effects studio in Paris who created this.

Feel free to believe that this is real. I do!

This Could be Really Good News Or....

Here I am, originally uploaded by Cpt<HUN>.

Oh, baby! Have we got plans for you! Dressage shows with "breed" or "in-hand" classes are finding new popularity in the young horse divisions, thanks to some national year-end awards, and classes for foals means that babies' feet and legs and gaits will be under scrutiny this summer.

And just last week, Dressage at Devon, the penultimate competition for warmblood and dressage-aspiring breeds and individual competitors, announced the addition of an in-hand (obviously) championship for foals.

The division championship, sponsored by Hassler Dressage, will be a part of the event’s extensive breed division, which takes place September 23-25 in Devon, Pennsylvania.

Dressage at Devon markets itself as "the highest rated international dressage competition and most complete breed show outside of Europe". Olympic medalist Robert Dover calls Dressage at Devon “the standard by which all American horse shows should be judged.” There is no question that a ribbon won at the show is a gold star on a horse's resume, to say nothing of potentially adding to a price tag.

Weanlings have been shown previously at the event, but there was no specific championship for foals. In 2007, the prize list had 20 fillies and 35 colts listed as entries; there are classes for yearlings too, of course. There was a winning colt and a winning filly, but the champion young horse award meant that the babies had to compete against older horses.

The organizers and sponsor say they want to be more like the Germans.

Showing a foal in Germany is serious business, all part of the overall marketing emphasis of the breeding industry there. The foals are prepped to showcase their gaits, and promote the stallions who fathered them.

We will just have to wait and see if there is a big demand for Equinalysis or OnTrack gait analysis of foals, and if trainers become obsessive about trimming tiny feet. Yes, show-quality foals have trainers, or at least professional handlers on show day, as a rule.

Dressage at Devon will attract the very best dressage-bred foals in the United States. The question is: Will this top show's increased spotlight on foals feed a surge of interest around the country in micromanaging the feet and legs of warmblood foals, and analyzing their gaits, so they look good in the ring as weanlings...or so they move better and stay sounder as adults? Are the two mutually exclusive?

Time for a commercial! Speaking of foals: Hoofcare and Lameness's special "Baby Boom" back issue is one of the very best collections of articles ever published on foal conformation and foot/limb disorders in foals. We can dig one out of the vault and send it to you; cost is $15 each plus $5 post for 1-3 copies to USA addresses; rest of the world, add $10 additional postage. Email books@hoofcare.com with your name, address, phone, email and Visa or Mastercard information or fax to 01 978 283 8775.