But is it art? New York museum goers gawk at hanging horse

Visitors to a New York City museum are struck by the ironic juxtaposition of a horse hanging over their heads. How'd it get way up there? Who put it  there? And why head first?

Well, art is in the eye of the beholder, we are told, but also in the intent of the artist. Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan admits that this installation currently on view in Manhattan is not a real horse, but a taxidermied horse hide (so where do you get one of those? on eBay?) and a fiberglas resin artistic vision of a horse.

Ok, Maurizio, that explains the horse. Now explain the wall.

The "piece" is part of "After Nature,'' the summer group exhibition at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art. According to the press, "the show pits the helplessly human against the forces of the natural world to decidedly uplifting effect". We are told that the dangling horse "forms a powerful allegory of cruelty, madness, failed ambition and redemption".

Of course, I am distracted by the odd angle of the dangling lower legs and see another scenario entirely. That horse didn't collide with the wall at a gallop; if he had, his front legs would be through the wall. Standing still, he for some reason put his head through a hole in the wall, perhaps to get a carrot, and got stuck. Or maybe he's a cribber, and he gnawed his way through the wall. He was standing on mid-winter Vermont snowpack when he got stuck, and it melted underneath him, leaving him dangling. So they moved the entire wall to Manhattan and installed it in the museum.

That's why I write about horses, not art. I don't go looking for cruelty, madness, or failed ambition when I go to a museum. Do you? Redemption, maybe.

Read more about the artist and exhibits at bloomberg.com.

Big Relief: Big Brown Wins Haskell Invitational at Monmouth, Shoes Still Glued

I guess he can hold his head high again. Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner (and Belmont also-ran) Big Brown returned to form this afternoon and won the Haskell Invitational Stakes at New Jersey's Monmouth Park.

That answers one question, but opens a lot of others. Will the van take him back to Aqueduct on Long Island...or will it swerve northward toward Saratoga, where the bigger test and a rematch with his Triple Crown mates might be waiting at the Travers Stakes on August 23?

Hoof repair expert Ian McKinlay checked in today and reported that Big Brown is still wearing the glue-on Yasha shoes with thick black heel cushions.

Remember, Ian will be speaking on hoof repair and glue-on shoes on Tuesday, August 12 at the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga Springs, New York, sponsored by Life Data Labs, and again that evening in downtown Saratoga, as part of the Hoofcare@Saratoga events. Standardbred shoer Conny Svensson from the Meadowlands and racetrack surfaces researcher Dr Mick Peterson will also be speaking on the 12th.

This week, the 5th, is a program from the Grayson Jockey Club Foundation's Shoeing Committee on shoe variation and surface variation with new high-speed videos from Mitch Taylor along with Steve Norman and Bill Casner, with a guest lecture from trainer/surface expert Michael Dickinson of Maryland.

Call the office at 978 281 3222 for more information, or email saratoga@hoofcare.com. I look forward to seeing you there...and thanks! to all the blog readers who came last week.

I think most of us would like to see Big Brown in Saratoga, too.

Thanks to Steve Sherack and IEAH for the nice photo of their horse, Big Brown.

Shoeing for the World: Two Tons of Horseshoes for Hong Kong

Two tons of horseshoes were ordered for the farrier clinic at the Olympic stabling center adjacent to Sha Tin Racecourse in Hong Kong. The shoes were primarily shipped from the warehouses at Mustad and Kerckhaert headquarters on the European continent. 

Head Olympics Farrier Ian Hughes of Wales said that the containers were filled this spring, and that he included "everything I could think of that anyone might need", including plenty of glue-on shoes and adhesive.

South Asia is not a remote outpost for farrier and vet supplies. Martin Draper's Tallahesse company is based in Singapore but has a branch in Hong Kong. He imports most of the farrier supplies used at the racetracks and in horse breeding and showing, including Victory, St. Croix, and Kerckhaert shoes.

Ian and two assistants will serve the horses at Hong Kong, along with the official "team" farriers dedicated to countries like Great Britain, Holland, Germany and the USA. In addition, the Hong Kong Jockey Club said that the 22 farriers at the racetrack are serving in a standby capacity.

The Legacy of A. Smith

Allen Smith, a farrier from Marion, Massachusetts died this afternoon. His friends will want to know, so I am posting the sad news here. He died at his home near Buzzards Bay.

Because he was such a private man, I'll leave it there. Most of us didn't even know he was sick until very recently. Those who know him understand.

But for those who didn't know him: Allen Smith was always a bit amused and intrigued by the ironic fact that his trade matched his name. He was "A Smith". And he was proud of it.

Back in the days when farriers were called horseshoers and drove trucks with smokestacksfor their coal forges sticking up into the air, Allen had the word "horseshoer" written in big letters on the side of the wooden "cap" on his truck.

I remember one night at a Southern New England Farriers Association meeting, someone asked him why he had the word painted so large, instead of his name. Allen didn't hesitate for a second. He answered that you could read it from a mile away and wherever he went, people would walk by his truck and make a comment or tell a story about how their grandfathers had shod horses, or something they remembered from a blacksmith shop in their towns growing up. 

In this way, Allen was a catalyst. He worked that same logic (or was it magic?) in many ways in his many roles in the farrier world, from shoeing my old horse Jasper (with concave, of course, that he imported as bar stock from England) on an island enclave off Cape Cod that he had to sail his boat to, to being the president (more than once) and peacemaker (perpetually) of the American Farrier's Association. He showed up at my house for a meeting one night on his motorcycle...but still wearing his trademark bow tie (from his "part-time" job as a professor of library science) under his leather jacket.

Allen may have wanted to leave this world privately, but it would be important to remember how strongly he believed that the proud traditions of farriery and smithing should be honored as long as any one of us remembers what a real blacksmith shop looked and smelled and sounded like. May our eyes and noses and ears never forget that combination.

Back in 1989, Allen sent me a poem written by the highly-regarded poet Edward Kleinschmidt called "Katzenjammer", in which the poet explained in lovely verbiage that in spite of the word "schmidt" in his last name, he was certainly not a smith, and that all the real smiths were dead anyway.

Allen objected. And wrote this poetic answer to Kleinschmidt: 

Smith y Gwf

And while you write, a smith

Tends fire, takes heat, and turns a shoe

To burn the balanced coffin horn

Among the bones of the limb,

Pacing the day, breaking steel

Across the anvil devil,

In back of behind.

--A. Smith

I believe there always be A. Smith among us, wherever horses are shod.

Racing Commissioners Rules Committee Agrees to Recommend Banning Toe Grabs, Educating Trainers

The Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) met in Saratoga Springs, New York on Friday. On the table: recommendations from the Jockey Club Thoroughbred Safety Committee, which includes urgent action on recommendations for more states, racing meets and individual racetracks to ban toe grabs on front shoes of Thoroughbreds. (See previous posts for recent bans on shoe modifications at certain tracks around the country.)

According to a memo received today from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), the RCI Model Rules Committee met in all day session Friday at the National Museum of Racing and has made the following recommendations to the RCI Board for adoption:

• Impose further restrictions on the use of toe grabs in Thoroughbred racing, limiting their size to 2mm.

• Impose a new requirement on licensed horse trainers to undergo at least four hours of continuing education each year as a condition of maintaining a current trainer’s license. The continuing education program would be required to be approved by the ARCI or the commission in a particular jurisdiction.

Regulatory jurisdictions with representatives present and participating in the Model Rules meeting included: California, New York, Kentucky, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Virginia, Indiana, South Dakota, Ontario, Jamaica, Trinidad/Tobago, Delaware and Minnesota.

It will now be up to the RCI Board to approve or deny the committee's recommendation.

Here is the text of recommendations that were given to the Rules Committee; the toe grab and continuing education for trainers seem to be the only points that received action.

THE JOCKEY CLUB THOROUGHBRED SAFETY COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS
JUNE 9, 2008


Recommendation #1: – Shoes and Hoof Care

Based on published research*, prior considerations and recommendations brought forward from the 2006 Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit Shoeing and Hoof Care Committee and recent discussions with persons with expertise in shoeing matters, The Jockey Club’s Thoroughbred Safety Committee (“Committee”) calls for:

“An immediate ban on toe grabs with a height greater than two millimeters, bends, jar caulks, stickers and any other appliance worn on the front shoes of Thoroughbred horses while racing or training on all racing surfaces.”

Further, the Committee calls for:
1.  All racetracks to immediately implement this ban by “house rule.”
2.  The Association of Racing Commissioners’ International and all North American racing authorities to implement this ban by rule as soon as possible, but no later than December 31, 2008.

In addition, the Committee encourages:
1.  The development of educational guidebooks and DVD’s on proper hoof care and shoeing for trainers and owners.
2.  Racing authorities to establish requirements for continuing education on the proper care and welfare of the Thoroughbred racehorse in order for trainers to renew their license.
3.  Racing authorities establish certification criteria for farriers practicing within the enclosure of licensed race tracks and training facilities.

Finally, the Thoroughbred Safety Committee hereby requests that proposals for research on the effects of toe grabs and other appliances on rear shoes on Thoroughbred racehorses on all racing surfaces during racing and training be developed and submitted immediately (or no later than October 1, 2008) to the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation.

________________________________________________________________________
* Kane AJ, Stover SM, Gardner IA, et. al. Horseshoe characteristics as possible risk factors for
fatal musculoskeletal injury of thoroughbred racehorses. Am J Vet Res 1996; 57:1147-1152.

New Video: High-Speed/Slo-Mo Treadmill Gallop Strides

Motion Imaging Corporation (MIC) is headquartered in Minnesota, and the company must be thrilled that the University of Minnesota has built a state-of-the-art equine sports medicine center right in the neighborhood. This week, MIC gave us a peek at their motion capture analysis system in use at the center. What you see here are a few strides of a horse on a treadmill. MIC also makes a system called Equine Gait Trax that captures motion to aid in the evaluation and assessment of gait in horses. The high speed ratio of the camera allows great detail to be seen when the speed is slowed down. Next month, the University of Minnesota will host the 5th International Symposium on Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy in Veterinary Medicine in Minneapolis. Speakers include Dr. Hilary Clayton.