Is the Biggest Horse Around Here the Biggest in the World?

Shoeless or shod, New Hampshire's "Tex" is pretty big. But is he big enough? (Concord Monitor photo)

To make it into the Guinness Book of World Records, a Belgian pulling horse named Tex had to have his shoes pulled. Farrier Rick Sharp pulled the shoes for an official measuring ceremony recently. Guinness requires that the horse be measured both with and without shoes.

According to the Concord Monitor newspaper, the six-year-old Belgian stands about 7 feet, 6 inches from hoof to head and weighs 2,450 pounds. This hoof is ten inches across, according to the article.

Tex is trying to tower over Radar, a Belgian in Texas who currently holds the Guinness honors, according to the newspaper. It's not clear whether Guinness goes by the overall height of the horse or the actual hands at the withers. His owners are hoping he makes 20 hands.

Shire horses in Australia and England are also trying to claim the title.

You can see why Guinness requires the shoes to be pulled before a horse is measured. This is not Tex, but another very large Belgian pulling horse that I saw worked on at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky a few years ago. Tex is probably shod in a similar way for the competition season. This horse had laminitis, but farrier Aaron Gygax managed to get him sound enough to keep pulling. This horse was shod in a very low-tech way for a high-tech place like Rood and Riddle: Aaron made the horse's new shoes. In this photo, you see his old shoes. I think he could climb telephone poles, too.

Invitation: Join Hoofcare@Saratoga at Professionals' Preview Evening for the New RIDE ON Exhibit at the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga, NY

"Ride on! Rough-shod if need be; Smooth-shod if that will do,

but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race! "--Charles Dickens

You are invited to a special preview night for professionals to RIDE ON!

Hoofcare@Saratoga, Hoofcare and Lameness Journal

and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame
invite you to attend a special evening

--Tuesday, July 29, 2008--

at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame
109 Union Avenue in Saratoga Springs, New York
(directly opposite the main entrance to the racetrack)

6:30 - 8:30 p.m. in the Hall of Fame Theater

Program highlights beginning at 6:30 p.m.:

Equine Laminitis Update
Research Update and Field Practice Notes by Donald Walsh DVM of the Animal Health Foundation. Dr Walsh will survey current research accomplishments and treatment innovations from research funded by AHF at the Australian Equine Laminitis Research Unit and other research centers. Dr. Walsh's work on behalf of laminitis research is featured in the RideOn! exhibit.

Followed by
Thoroughbred Hooves: The Inside Story
Professional anatomical specimen creator Allie Hayes of HorseScience and Horsescience.com will compare and contrast Thoroughbred feet with other breeds and share a haunting collection of the preserved feet and limbs of Thoroughbreds, including breakdown victims and laminitis sufferers. Allie's educational anatomical specimen are featured in the RideOn! exhibit.

Remarks and short presentations by Thoroughbred trainer and footing expert Michael Dickinson and Cornell vet school farrier professor Michael Wildenstein FWCF (Hons).

7:30 p.m.
Exhibit Viewing
Doors open for a private viewing of RIDE ON! The Museum's new exhibit on advancements in the health and soundness of racehorses. Enjoy the exhibit and share your observations and experiences with our special guest, curator of collections Beth Sheffer of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

About the New Exhibit:
The new exhibit focuses on colic, leg fractures, breakdowns, hoof and limb anatomy and laminitis. Artifacts in the exhibit include shoes, braces, and hoof-related equipment handcrafted and provided or loaned by contributors and editors of Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. The main part of the Museum will be closed on Tuesday night but will be open on Tuesday afternoon and on Wednesday. Tuesday night attendees will be able to see the Hall of Fame and the Ride On! exhibit.

About Hoofcare@Saratoga's Plans for August:

Hoofcare and Lameness Journal will host four Tuesday events in Saratoga Springs during the 2008 summer race meet, beginning on Tuesday, July 29 at the Museum. Confirmed speakers for August 5, 12, and 19 include (in alphabetical order) Bill Casner, Michael Dickinson, Ian McKinlay, Steve Norman, Mick Peterson, Conny Svensson, Mitch Taylor, Michael Wildenstein and others to be announced.

The series is made possible by generous support from LIFE DATA LABS, makers of Farriers Formula, as well as the National Museum of Racing, the Grayson Jockey Club Foundation, the Animal Health Foundation and the Van Lennep Equestrian Center at Skidmore College.

The series is presented with the help of CCE Equine and Equilite, maker of Sore No More liniment products.

Hoofcare@Saratoga would not happen without two special friends of the hoof in Saratoga, Frieda Garrison and Jim Santore, and our friends at the wonderful Parting Irish Pub. Join us for one program, or come for them all. Events are free, thanks to our generous sponsors.

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS: For the July 29 event only, hotel rooms are available at the spectacular new Hampton Inn on Lake Avenue in downtown Saratoga (directly opposite the Parting Glass Pub) for $159 per night. Call for reservations: 518 584 2100. A special rate of $159 per night is available for the entire Hoofcare@Saratoga series at the Comfort Inn, conveniently located at Exit 15 on the edge of town. Call 518 587 6244. You must request the "Hoofcare" rate. $159 is a very reasonable price during the race meet.

Saratoga Springs is a few hours due north of New York City, and 30 or so minutes north of Albany, where the closest major airport is located. Home of the longest-running Thoroughbred racing season in America, the town is also alive with major Standardbred racing, polo, and all sorts of pleasure and sport horse activities.

For more information, please email saratoga@hoofcare.com

Reservations are not necessary but an RSVP would be appreciated for planning purposes at the Museum. Please email saratoga@hoofcare.com. Do NOT call the Museum or the Parting Glass.

Watch this blog for more announcements of Hoofcare@Saratoga events or call the Hoofcare and Lameness office: 978 281 3222. The office will be closed Monday through Wednesday during the Saratoga event series.

"We Lost Kevin": North Carolina farrier Kevin Fahey has died

Kevin Fahey was excited when Chris Pollitt's book came out in 1995. He grabbed the first copy from me and turned right to the heart bar shoe section. He probably never read anything else in the book. He was focused.

"We lost Kevin". That's what Danny Ward's message on my voice mail said. How could you lose Kevin Fahey, I wondered? You always knew when Kevin was around. Did he hike up a mountain? Did he get caught in a spiraling tangle of interstate interchanges somewhere or...did we "lose" him, in the most dreaded sort of a way?

It turns out the last one is what happened. Kevin Fahey, a.k.a. "Kev the Farrier", has died.

You probably don't think you know Kevin Fahey, and you'd be just like the rest of us, because he was a hard person to get to know. In a nutshell, he was a Boston-born Irishman with a distinguished background as a United States Marine. He tended to lock into ideas and people with an intensity that scared some people away. He left Boston one day to attend horseshoeing school at Donald Jones's North Carolina School of Horseshoeing...and he stayed in North Carolina for decades. But he never lost his Boston accent. That was how he talked and he was always going to talk that way.

Kevin showed up 31 years ago to help Danny Ward host his first big farrier event at his school in Martinsville, Virginia, and he came back 31 more times, making him the only person besides Danny to attend every event...and helping Danny grow the event into what people call "Woodstock for Farriers". It's the most fun time you can have, and Kevin helped make it that way.

When Kevin met laminitis expert farrier Burney Chapman in the 1980s, he locked into the heartbar shoe theory and the fact that, using it, he could help a lot of horses with laminitis. So that became his specialty. He only wanted to work on foundered horses. If you had a sound horse, you didn't need Kev. He also locked into a long, loyal friendship with Burney, and helped him when he was dying of brain cancer.

At some point, Kevin learned to make jewelry and he must have made hundreds and hundreds of horseshoe belt buckles in his spare time. He told me once that he would start out making other shoes, but somehow most of them turned into heart bars.

Kevin was a longtime veteran of Dr Ric Redden's Bluegrass Laminitis Symposiums, where he would sell his heart bar jewelry in the trade show and intensely study the disease that fascinated him so much.

Kevin had beaten cancer a few years ago, or so we all thought. But when it came back, and he was told that he only had a few months to live, Kevin did a very "Kevin" thing. And it would be the last Kevin thing he would do: He got behind the wheel of a camper, sick as he was, and he drove across the United States from his home in Colorado. He made a beeline for Martinsville, Virginia, the place he had gone back to time and time again in his life: to Danny Ward's horseshoeing school. My guess is that he didn't stop much along the way and he didn't look left or right. And Kevin Fahey didn't need a GPS.

Kevin made it to Danny's, but without much time to spare.

If you walk around a horse show or a racetrack or a farrier event and you see someone with a shiny horseshoe belt buckle, chances are you're looking right at Kevin. Especially if it's a heart bar.

Whenever you see him, say hello for me.

Do you have a favorite memory of Kevin? Are you wearing one of his belt buckles right now? Hit the comments button and leave a note to him and to his friends, or email it to fran@hoofcare.com and I'll make sure it is posted here.

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!