Slide Show: AAEP Convention's Farrier Conference Reception

Please click to launch the automatic slide show.

The Farrier Conference at the American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention in San Diego wrapped up last Wednesday night at a "meet the speakers" reception that included some key figures in the world of hoof research, education, and innovation. All farrier conference attendees were invited to the reception.

Many of the people reading this blog have been the beneficiaries of the hard work and even harder thinking that the men and women in the room that night have brought to the art and science of caring for horses' hooves. It was an honor just to be in the room!

The conference was moderated by Dr. Steve O'Grady, who somehow escaped the camera, as did speakers Jay Merriam and Ian McKinlay.

Thanks to everyone who had anything to do with the conference, especially John Suttle, who encouraged farriers to attend--which they did! The audience was an interesting mix of vets and farriers, young and old, from all over the country--and the world.

More reports from the AAEP Convention will be posted as they are completed.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

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.

New England Horses Test New Shoe Design for Frozen Landscape

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

I hope these shoes fall within the parameters of the model rule for toe grabs and traction devices. Would you classify this as a rim shoe?

All we talk about around here is the weather, it seems; the forecast is for more ice and frozen rain here in New England. There is a storm predicted to hit here every two days for the next ten days.

For those of you unfamiliar with US news, the northeastern corner of the USA, where I live, is a tangled mess of frozen, solid and increasingly immovable debris. The worst ice storm in a century has changed our landscape forever. I wonder if we will ever trail ride again! There will be a lot of work to clear pastures, let alone trails.

Well-known farrier John Blombach told me tonight that the roads are so blocked where he lives that they literally plowed the treetops, branches, telephone poles, and power lines out of the roads. There are no ambulances, no firetrucks, no open stores.

A tree went through the roof of the porch of John's lovely old house, and another through an upstairs window; he was coming and going through the cellar. But he has a generator now, and lights, and he sounded very upbeat.

Southern New England Farriers Association President Garth Bodkin lives on a beautiful lake in central Massachusetts. He said he has trees "all over the place" and no power. It took him three calls to get through but he too was upbeat; as John said, "No matter what happens, it can't get any worse."

Farrier/microbiologist Shirley Fraser of Pepperell, Massachusetts, had been out using her truck for friends who needed to get water to their horses. She may be in great demand: she was hitching up her Percheron to "go move some trees around".

Only one of the farriers I heard from today has had power restored, and that was Allie Hayes of HorseScience, who lives about 25 miles from here. She rehabs wildlife, in addition to makeing leg models, and I wondered how she was coping. The key to her business is a huge freeze drier that she uses to prepare her hoof specimen; it runs on electricity. I was envisioning a big defrost event, but luckily I was wrong.

"The cold weather was my friend and there was no damage to product in the dryers and they survived the outage and are up and running again." she wrote in an email today. "We got power back some time in the wee hours Monday. I was up at 3 a.m. restarting the freeze-dryers."

Over in New York state, things were pretty bad in the Saratoga area, and it sounds like Troy was hit particularly hard.

In many communities, schools are closed until sometime in January. (A good thing, since people are living in the gymnasiums.) Some people may be without power until the end of the year.

This image was entered in the "Photoshopped Horses" contest at Freaking News, and brought to my attention by theequinest.com. I hope to show some of the others in the days to come. This one is by Michael Bendler of Seymour, Connecticut. I hope he won!


© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

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.

Gift Perfect: Silent But Friendly Hoof Boots for Miniature Horses from an Unusual (and Bargain!) Source

By Fran Jurga | 15 December 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

Is there a miniature horse on your Christmas gift list? What do you give the mini who has everything? People who own minis seem to love to dress them up, but the hooves are usually overlooked. Not any more!

Continuing in the Hoof Blog's second annual guide to gifts for the holiday hooves in your life:

I recently came across a great Mustang therapy horse. The multi-talented Nevada Joe is worthy of a blog story in his own right, but of course his "Mini" sidekick, Doc Holliday, stole the show...because of his feet.

Doc Holliday, like my friend the three-legged Molly the Pony, makes bedside calls at hospitals; he's particularly popular at veterans' hospitals. The problem is that his hooves are noisy and they slip on the shiny hospital floors and, let's face it, the hospitals may have a point about his feet not being very sterile.

I found out that Doc Holliday wears tiny hoof boots that silence his clip-clop to a whisper, prevent him from slipping, and satisfy a hospital's sanitary policies. Three problems answered in one hoof boot! And they look like human athletic shoes!

Now, you may wonder, what high-tech design has been put into production to keep Doc Holliday trotting from bed to bed. And how much, exactly, do these therapy pony / sanitation booties cost?

We all know the latest designer hoof boots can cost over $100...each. So I held my breath. And let out a good laugh.

Doc Holliday's booties cost a whopping $8 each and you can stuff some mini's Christmas stocking into a bootie next week, too! The boots are actually made for Teddy bears, and are sold on the Build-a-Bear web site. For some reason, they fit right onto a mini's hooves, and stay on through the session, according to Doc and Nevada Joe's enterprising handler, Diane Purcelli.

They come in pink glitter, too!

Learn lots more about Nevada Joe here, and Doc Holliday here. You just might run into them; they are making the circuit of the Equine Affaire-type expos around the country, sponsored by Wahl clippers. These are two of the most interesting horses I've met in a while. I don't know how many Mustangs are working in therapy programs, but I know that Joe is a pretty good mounted shooting horse, and that the handicapped children in the program now have a balloon-popping game they can play on horseback during their sessions. I hope you will read about this horse and the work he does.

And remember the $8 hoof booties when you're in a bind with a mini or a foal and need a hoof boot. Just don't tell Build-A-Bear why you're ordering them or the price will go up!

Thanks to Diane for her time this week while she is competing at the World Series of Mounted Shooting at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. She stopped everything to talk about Teddy bear boots!


© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

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).

AAEP Convention Report: Hoof Dudes, Unite

There must have been something in the water. Or maybe it was in the tequila. But the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) Convention, held in San Diego, California, last week was an escapist's dream. Five days of lectures, a huge trade show, a beautiful city, great food and drink, but most of all, a collection of interesting people from all stripes and ranks within the horse health and husbandry worlds made last week one of the most memorable conferences I've attended.

They streamed in and out of the Hoofcare and Lameness booth: veterinarians, farriers, vet techs, practice managers, hoof trimmers, educators, researchers, therapists, chiropractors, authors, journalists, photographers, artists, spouses, ex-spouses, significant others, old friends, new acquaintances and even a Dachshund from Arizona. Seldom was heard a discouraging word.

I hadn't expected the convention to be so upbeat. I flew in from the land of gloom and doom, where falling real estate values and collapsing stock prices have convinced everyone that the End is Near. I wasn't expecting people to be generous and supportive and so very friendly. What a wonderful surprise!

I would like to thank everyone who visited the booth, everyone who worked so hard to present their finest information and images from the stage, and especially the AAEP for hosting this event in the right city for this year. Warm and sunny and relaxed was the perfect recipe.

Special thanks go to our friends at Vettec for sponsoring our California-themed "Hoof Dude" unofficial convention guide. It had tips and schedules designed just for people who were interested in hoof-related information.

The AAEP again hosted a sub-conference for farriers. I can't estimate how many farriers were there because, as was the case in San Antonio, a lot of the people in the lecture hall were vets, which is encouraging. I did see a lot of farriers in the trade show, and met some from California that I might otherwise never have known.

Special thanks to everyone who came up and opened a conversation with the kind words, "I read your blog every day!" and especially to the one who said, "I check your blog before I eat breakfast."

I have more friends out there than I could ever know about, since I really have no way of tracking who reads this blog, or how many read it. I can only keep count of the "unique visitors" who actually go to the blog's web site (vs those uncounted legions who read it by RSS, email, and on various feeds like the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance) and I'm thrilled to report that the uniques passed 150,000 (cumulative) while I was in San Diego. I'm stunned. (Thank you to Big Brown, Barbaro, and Molly the Pony--three lame horses who have fascinated the public and brought thousands and thousands of people to this blog to learn more about how and why the three horses had such problems.)

The AAEP convention is the end of the conference year. It is the single biggest and most expensive event on the Hoofcare and Lameness calendar each year, and it is often difficult to pull it off when it is a few days after Thanksgiving, or when the trade show budget is being scraped as clean as a cookie batter bowl.

In December 2009, the AAEP travels to Las Vegas for the first time, where it will share the big bright city with the National Finals Rodeo (NFR). Hoofcare and Lameness already has a booth reserved.

My red-eye flight home landed in Massachusetts just a few hours before the worst ice storm in recent history hit the region. I feel a bit of survivor guilt, since the storm was mostly rain here on the coast, although the power did go out and is still out just a few miles from here. People are in the dark in their cold houses tonight as I write this.

It seems impossible that I could have been standing under a palm tree just a few days ago. I hope I can share with you some of the rays of sunshine that spill from my notebook, even if it is hard to type with gloves on.

Please keep the cold New Englanders in your thoughts, especially those who can't and won't leave their animals to get to a warm, safe place. It's not warm here. There are no palm trees. But it's home.

© 2008 Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

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.

Ice Capades: New Englanders Are Still in the Dark Tonight

APTOPIX Ice Storm "IDYLLIC", originally uploaded by nike6.

Throughout New England, more than 600,000 households are still without power following Friday's horrific ice storm that laminated the landscape, sent trees crashing into homes and barns, closed roads, blocked driveways, damaged vehicles, and sent the normally hardy residents of New England into candlelit darkness in their cold, cold homes.

Sure, lots of resourceful people have generators and the old-fashioned types of wood stoves and fireplaces that still burn real wood. But all those who own horses and livestock are experiencing the double challenges of meeting their own needs as well as those of horses who may not have on their winter shoes with ice calks. Horses that should be turned out, but the paddocks look like a hockey rink. And the fences are electric, anyway. Horses that need water, but the pumps are electric too. Horses that need hay or grain, but the driveway is blocked and the feed store is closed, without a doubt.

For many people, a horse is the only way to get around. Tree branches still lie on top of cars and trucks and block driveways.

December is a busy month for the farriers around here. The show- and sport-horse customers want a final set of shoes before the horses leave for Florida or Aiken or Southern Pines. And the grin-and-bear-it stay-at-homes want to delay putting on expensive winter shoes for as long as possible. They gamble for another week, another month, especially this year with so many people losing jobs or having just taken a heavy hit on the stock and real estate markets. They remember hacking out throughout the winter on bare ground last year, the year it forgot to snow.

So far, I have only been able to speak with one farrier. Phones are out everywhere, and cell phone chargers dangle uselessly from dead outlets. Not so for one farrier: Tom Maker has 50 Morgan horses to take care of at the beautiful old Townshend Farm atop a hill in Bolton, Massachusetts. The town, which is about 30 miles west of Boston, has been shut down since 10:55 p.m. on Thursday night, the exact moment the power died. Law enforcement has all roads closed in the town: no one goes in, no one goes out.

Tom said that, even today, if you stared at a tree line in any direction for a minute or two, you'd see a treetop break off. He said that virtually all the trees had been topped off, as if a helicopter flew over and trimmed them. Falling limbs buried the fence lines...and became fences themselves.

Unfortunately, Tom said, his clever Morgans are learning that the juice to the fences is off. He has one generator to use at two houses, an apartment, and a big barn, in an attempt to keep all the water pipes and drains from freezing.

Another handicap is that we are approaching the shortest day of the year. It gets dark in New England just after 4 p.m. this time of year, and stays dark for about 15 hours.

"Maybe tomorrow," Tom said optimistically tonight from a candlelit farmhouse on an icy hillside.

It's a sentiment echoed from all over Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, although power company officials say it may be another week for some towns.

Thanks to the Associated Press for the beautiful photo. Click on this link to read a story about the widespread darkness that continues tonight here in New England.

You wouldn't believe how bright the stars are.

AAEP Convention Report: Digital Extension Device Details from Hans Castelijns

German veterinarian Eva Krüdewagen learns to use the hoof lifter at a clinic in Germany. Dr. Hans Castelijns kneels at right. Photo by Loic Entwistle.

And now for something completely different: German farrier/veterinarian Hans Castelijns gave several lectures at the 2008 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention in San Diego, California. In a special session on lameness in the foot in Monday, he presented a tool that has, as yet, not hit the radar of American-style lameness diagnosis.

Castelijns is a referral vet/farrier and runs a rehabilitation farm in the Tuscany region of Italy, when he's not harvesting his olive groves or traveling the world as a lecturer and thought-provocateur.

His tool is a multi-level aluminum-encased disk that the horse stands on; the top surface is covered with a non-slip pad. A long lever arm extends from the center of the disk. It cranks the disk up to displace medial or lateral, toe or heel, regions of the foot, to test for discomfort, or perhaps more precisely, to gauge the horse's range of comfort. The horse protests when too much torque is placed on the foot, indicating ligament pain or general intolerance to uneven weightbearing.

Closeup view of the digital extension device: the center plate swivels quite elegantly so the operator can move around the horse while the horse stands still and does not have to have its foot repeatedly placed on and off the device. The opposite leg is still held up by a helper. (Loic Entwistle image)

Swiss farrier Bernard Duvernay demonstrated the device at the wonderful Luwex HufSymposium in Germany in 2006.

The lever arm has an angle gauge and a level at the end, so the operator can say, "Before we trimmed him, he had a medial intolerance at x degrees. With this new trim, he showed no intolerance at all."

The tool is a massive sophistication of the basic lever test for navicular pain; veterinarians formerly stood horses on a board and lifted it, higher and higher to extend the coffin joint and stress the navicular zone, including the deep digital flextor tendon and the navicular ligaments, while an assistant lifted the opposite foot (see photo below). Horses with navicular pain shivered their upper leg muscles, jumped right off the board or buckled backward. The test was often dangerous for all involved; sometimes diagnostic tests would try to lift the foot from the side to elevate the lateral side of the foot, so that pain in the collateral ligaments might be identified.

French veterinarians with a customized board for navicular zone reaction testing; one end has been covered with a non-slip pad, while the operator end has a handle for pulling up. Notice that the board is long enough to keep the diasnostician somewhat clear of the horse in case it rears up or jumps off. (Photo courtesy of Tildren educational series in Hoofcare and Lameness Journal.)

While digital extension tests with a board may not be very accurate in pinpointing the source of pain, they can be helpful, particularly in the field, and they are useful for before and after illustrations of horses reactions pre- and post-shoeing or trimming or surgery. Castilijns has developed a protocol for the use of the more sophisticated tool and also has pinpointed areas that he feels are sensitive to specific elevations.

Castilijns's paper is published in the official Proceedings of the AAEP Convention. An older paper on the device is published in the English language section of his excellent web site. Click here to read the older paper.

The device is sold commercially in Europe.


© 2008 Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.

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.