Book Announcement: "Leg and Hoof Care for Horses" Sorts Out Lameness for Horse Owners

Leg and Hoof Care for Horses: A Complete Illustrated Guide
by Micaela Myers with photographs by Kelly Meadows
256 pages, 450 color photos, soft cover, November 2008

Hot off the presses this week is "Leg and Hoof Care for Horses" by Micaela Myers, former editorial staffer at Bowtie Press in California. Micaela has done a great job of compiling information about almost every imaginable disorder of a horse's hoof or leg.

Maybe readers of Hoofare and Lameness Journal and this Hoof Blog don't think they need this book, but most horse owners surely do. The reason? We have lots and lots of books on the foot and on lameness that explain every disorder and treatment but this book takes the novel approach of spreading information and photos about each problem over two pages, showing the problem in nice color photos and adding colorful boxes with notes.

This means that if an owner or junior rider or a parent needs to understand what stem cell therapy for a tendon injury is, or what ringbone is, they can just open up the book and voila! there it is. No looking things up in three different chapters. No footnotes. And there's that aha! moment of "Oh my gosh, that is just what Moose's leg looks like!"

Never underestimate the value of the simple approach. Or big, colorful photos.

As I flipped through this book, I was reminded of a quote I read earlier today, something to the effect of "If you can't explain your subject in a few simple words, then you probably don't really understand it yourself."

Also on the plus side, Micaela Myers dances like a prima ballerina around the subject of whether horses should be shod or not. Like everything else in the book, it gets two pages. She does differentiate between normal and therapeutic shoes, and she does include photos of Natural Balance and AANHCP (Jaime Jackson) trims, and discusses Strasser hoofcare briefly.

On the down side, the book is inconsistent in the quality of photos and their labeling. Many photos are nicely enhanced with arrows and callout text, not always pointing to the right thing. Some photos would only confuse an owner, such as a photo showing the bottom of a foot with a bar shoe and pad to illustrate a keratoma.

The book really shines in the veterinary sections more than the hoof sections. The radiographs are big and sharp. The section on how to sweat a leg with DMSO and plastic wrap could help a lot of people stay out of trouble; seeing the sweat section next to the poultice section helps people understand the difference between these two leg wrapping treatments.

The feet in the photos are pretty average, and the shod ones are not wearing notable, fashionable or even clipped shoes, usually. They appear to be normal horses of the Quarter horse persuasion, which is pretty much what most American horses would look like. There is virtually nothing on racing or even sport- or breed-specific problems.

We live in an age where few people are going to sit down and read a book unless they have to. For a book to earn its place on a shelf, it has to be a tool with a specific job to do. Micaela Myers has given us a book that can point you to a photo and detailed explanation of an annular ligament injury or a capped elbow in five seconds or less.

The other great quality of this book is its price: just $25. It's a great price for such a thick, colorful book. It's a nice bright package, but we all know better than to judge a book by its cover. Use this book as an asset to keep next to your more serious, in-depth library of lameness books. Don't loan out those icons--Denoix, Pollitt, Van Nassau, Clayton, Dyson--but offer Myers instead. Be generous: It's a book anyone can understand, navigate, appreciate...and afford to replace.

Ordering details: $25 plus $6 post in USA, plus $15 air post to other countries. Pay in US dollars. Visa/Mastercard accepted. Allow a few weeks for delivery. Available 18 November 2008. Mail orders to Hoofcare, 19 Harbor Loop, Gloucester MA 01930. Telephone orders to (01) 978 281 3222 (leave details on voice mail); fax orders to (01) 978 283 8775. Click here for fax/mail order form. Email orders to books@hoofcare.com.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

British Government: "Barefoot Trimmer" Doesn't Describe the Job

by Fran Jurga | 18 November 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

The results are in and analyzed from a government-run, nationwide survey of the job practices and educational training of Great Britain's barefoot hoof practitioners. Please note that the results of this survey apply only to hoof trimmers residing in Great Britain.

Among the conclusions drawn by the government agency "Lantra" is that "barefoot trimmer" isn't a good title and is not accurate in describing the services provided.

Lisa Jarvis, Lantra's Industry Parnership Manager for Professions Allied to Veterinary Science (PAVS), said in a press release that the public may be confused about the scope of services provided by a barefoot trimmer, as would a veterinarian seeking to work with a trimmer on the case, according to Jarvis.

Jarvis plans to work with trimmers to come up with a better job title. "Equine podiatrist" was a descriptive term mostoften used by the trimmers to describe themselves.

The statistics gained from the study are fascinating. For instance
· 65% of respondents were female
· Over half were aged 35-44, 21% aged 45-54
· 100% white ethnic background
• 71% were working as trimmers after leaving another career
• More than half had less than three years of experience; only 7% had been working as trimmers for more than six years.
• 89% stated that they believed they held a relevant qualification to do their jobs.

As with all surveys, the results compile responses from those who responded, and little is known about those who did not respond.

Things get interesting when the trimmers were asked what they did on the job. Trimming feet and assessing environment, soundness, gait analysis, structure and function of hooves, hoof health, and diet/nutrition were listed as job activities by 95% of those surveyed.

A similar survey of equine dental technicians found that that field, too, is populated by second-career choosers.

The conclusion of the study is that the government should develop standards for both trimmers and equine dental technicians "to allow clear identification of the practical skills and underpinning knowledge required to undertake these roles professionally...other professional and regulatory bodies for veterinary science and farriery should be consulted and involved with the development process".

Great Britain is home to an estimated 500 people who are believed to be earning a living by trimming horses' hooves.

It's interesting to note that a functional "map" of the farrier profession in Great Britain compiled in 2006 points out the pressures of changing technology in farriery and the need for more training in that area but does not mention the popularity of barefoot trimming and any possible services in that area that farriers might provide, creating an "either/or" situation for horse owners.

Consider this: becoming a farrier in Britain requires a four-year apprenticeship, college study, examinations, a considerable investment in tools and inventory, and ongoing compliance with occupational regulations and government doctrines. Entering barefoot trimming requires no training, college or exams, very low initial investment and overhead, and almost no government oversight unless a welfare violation charge is made. That said, many British barefoot trimmers seem interested in continuing education and advancement, perhaps moreso than average farriers, and trimmers must pay tuition for their education out of their own pockets.

Read more about how and why the survey was conducted in the Hoof Blog's article from January 2008.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. Permissions for use elsewhere are usually easily arranged.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Favorite Photo: The Architecture of an Age, the Culture of a Craft

Posted by Fran Jurga | November 16, 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

Fabulous Flickr image originally uploaded by ALGO and kindly loaned by him

As the sun sets in Buckinghamshire, England, it warms and illuminates centuries of different families of bricks that are working together to hold up a lovely old smithy in the village of Wingrave. How those old timbers are defying gravity is a mystery to me but I am so glad they are resisting what must be a tremendous urge to let down the weight.

Everyone who reads this blog knows that I am a sucker for arch-door smithies of the type that proliferated the Irish and British countrysides around the turn of the century. If you squint at this shop, you can see an arch not for the door, but for the entire structure. The arch, of course, is the strongest form in nature and in engineering, and the strongest men in the village found ways to incorporate it into their simple workshops. The fact that the arch is mirrored in the horseshoe was a bonus that these self-taught architects just could not resist exploiting!

How many people rush by this old building each day without a thought to what its survival means? People will stop and photograph a water wheel or a dovecote or an old weathervane, but old blacksmith shops rarely are worthy of a snap, perhaps because they are so humble and, until you look more closely, non-descript.

My guess is that until the wintery sun hit at just this angle, the photographer hadn't paid much attention, either. The sun showed him a warm patchwork quilt, built out of bricks.

Thanks to Algo (Alex), for the loan of this beautiful photo. Alex is an extraordinary landscape photographer; his Flickr files are worth a long glance, just like this forge.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

AAEP San DieGO Preview: Discover Plastinated Equine Anatomy at the Hoofcare and Lameness Booth

Posted by Fran Jurga | 15 November 2008 | © www.hoofcare.blogspot.com
This post contains an embedded multimedia file and may open slowly. It's worth the wait!

At the 2008 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention in San Diego, attendees will be able to meet German veterinarian and anatomist Christoph von Horst in the Hoofcare and Lameness booth. This will be the first time that equine plastination anatomical models will be shown in North America! The majority of the equine plastination models are of hoof tissue, but you will also see in this slide show a tissue slice from a horse's head.

Plastination is a preservation technique. You may have seen or heard about the blockbuster museum exhibit that has been traveling the world, called Body World. Dr. Von Horst is an anatomy specialist who uses the same procedure not to shock the public or create controversy, but to preserve delicate slices of tissue for intense study of equine anatomy.

Serendipitously, he has created hauntingly beautiful images and models that cross the line into art. His images of the hoof's laminae were selected for display this summer at the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga Springs, New York. Was it art or was it veterinary science? It looked like a spectacular sunrise coming up not over the curvature of the earth but the curve of the coffin bone!

Dr. Von Horst will be bringing some samples of his work in the form of both two- and three-dimensional models for sale. Many of his tissue extractions are cased in lucite for long-term preservation and study. I do not know what he is planning to bring but I know it will be a beautiful display--and turn our booth into a museum! You will be able to purchase examples that are for sale.

Be sure to visit www.plastinate.com to learn more about Dr. Von Horst and his work.

I know that many of Hoofcare and Lameness's subscribers and friends will be joining us in San Diego for the AAEP convention, beginning December 7th. There is a half day of lameness lectures each day, and a full day of farrier lectures on Wednesday, December 10th. Add those educational opportunities to the prospect of browsing through the largest trade show on earth dedicated to horse health products and services (you really can't see the whole show in one day) and you can see why this event is the one we have been waiting for through all of 2008.

Having Dr. von Horst visiting with hoof and anatomy afficianados in our booth each day will be a huge bonus. Over the next three weeks, this blog will be featuring many of the speakers and exhibitors and new products that will be making the trip to San Diego. Just a few of the speakers familiar to Hoofcare and Lameness readers are vet/farrier Dr. Hans Castilijns from Italy, farriers Dave Duckett FWCF and John Suttle, and hoof repair specialist Ian McKinlay. (And that is just the tip of a wonderful iceberg!) We all look forward to seeing you and sharing this great experience with you.

Please download and study the AAEP Convention web site's schedule of the veterinary and farrier programs. Click here to preview the trade show, which will be open all day, Sunday through Wednesday.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. All images in this post loaned by HC Biovision and www.plastinate.com. No use without permission.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Big Brown's Famous Hooves Find a New Kentucky Home

Posted on Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog | 10 November 2008

Guess who?

The most famous feet in the horse world touched down on their new Kentucky home last week, as more than 500 guests were on hand for a "Big Brown Bag Lunch" to welcome Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown to Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Kentucky.

Big Brown will stand at the elegant farm for a fee of $65.000. The farm was the former home of champions like Seattle Slew and is currently home to Point Given, Smarty Jones, Dynaformer, Sky Mesa and other top Thoroughbreds.

A report by Glenye Cain in the Daily Racing Form said that Big Brown's heel bulb injury, which caused his early retirement and withdrawal from the 2008 Breeders Cup, was "filled with soft putty" and that he was wearing a z-bar shoe.

Thanks to Jen Roytz, Marketing and Communications Director at Three Chimneys Farm for the loan of these photos which were taken by Gayle Ewadinger of Three Chimneys.

Big Brown received a Big Welcome on Wednesday when guests celebrated the Derby winner's return to Kentucky. He will stand at stud at Three Chimneys Farm in Midway.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. Permissions for use elsewhere are usually easily arranged.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science may also be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Foot Balance And Lameness Thesis Wins British Award

A study of foot balance and lameness in riding school horses has won the Royal Agricultural Society of England‟s "Eqvalan Duo Equine Thesis of the Year Award‟, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. The award is sponsored by Merial, manufacturers of the Eqvalan equine wormer.

On Friday, before a panel of academic and horse industry authorities, Laura Corbin from Warwickshire College in England reported on her research on riding school horses and described how she developed an objective system to evaluate foot balance. She found that horses with chronic foot conditions often had poor scores for foot balance and proposed that maintaining good foot balance could reduce lameness and provide long term economic benefits.

Laura is currently undertaking a studentship with the Roslin Institute and is at the University of Edinburgh in preparation for her PhD.

Her winning thesis “Foot Balance and Lameness in Riding School Horses”, was selected from research theses submitted by universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Laura competed against four other finalists in a presentation of her study which the judges described as “fascinating and extremely useful information for the industry”.

Second prize winner was Charlotte White of Nottingham Trent University for her dissertation: "An investigation into the occlusal secondary dentine thickness in horses of different ages".

From the abstract for Corbin's thesis is this general summary:

"Inappropriate foot balance has been implicated as a causative factor in many instances of equine lameness. In this study, the static foot balance of 81 horses at two riding schools was evaluated in order to assess foot balance in relation to lameness.

"An objective system was used to assign a foot imbalance score to each horse based on the occurrence of the following foot abnormalities: sheared heels, underrun heels, contracted heels, broken hoof pastern axis, mismatched hoof angles and small feet, as assessed using specific measurements of the foot.

"The mean foot imbalance scores were 2.9 (± 1.0) for horses at Riding School A and 2.9 (± 1.2) for horses at Riding School B. (Minimum score = 0; maximum score = 6).

"Horses with chronic foot conditions were found to have significantly worse foot balance with respect to the foot abnormalities identified in this study (as indicated by a higher foot imbalance score) than those without.

"At one of the riding schools, horses that had been lame within the last year had significantly worse foot balance than other horses in the population.

"The results suggested that poor foot balance in riding school horses may contribute to the occurrence of lameness and the development of chronic foot conditions. Maintaining appropriate foot balance in riding school horses may therefore reduce the incidence of lameness and chronic foot conditions and could provide long-term economic benefits.

"Further investigations incorporating a greater number riding schools are necessary to confirm the results of this study; prospective studies would be of particular value."

Note: the abstract is a little vague about defining what a chronic foot condition is or how severe or longlasting the lameness conditions were. Hopefully the full paper will disclose a lot more about the methods and presumptions of this study. Congratulations to Laura for bringing the preventive value of good hoof balance to the attention of the public. Warwickshire College is home to one of Britain's leading farrier college programs.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. Permissions for use elsewhere are most often easily arranged.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.