USEF Horse Show Hoof Rules Announcement: Roadster Pony Heel Measurement

The United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) has selected the six competitions that will be required to take heel measurements from the first and fourth place ponies in Roadster and Hackney Roadster Pony Championships. The 2009 competitions include:

* River Ridge Charity - Columbus, OH (April 22-25)
* Midwest Charity - Springfield, IL (June 16-20)
* Lexington Junior League - Lexington, KY (July 6-11)
* Kentucky State Fair - Louisville, KY (August 23-29)
* Southeastern Charity – Conyers, GA (September 16-19)
* UPHA/American Royal - Kansas City, MO (November 17-21)

If you exhibit, own, or train (or, obviously, trim and shoe) Roadster or Hackney Roadster ponies, please read and understand USEF rules HK116.3 and RD112.2 which state:

“All Hackney Roadster and Roadster Ponies must be re-measured and issued new measurement cards prior to competing in licensed competitions for the year 2004 and beyond. In all Hackney Roadster or Roadster Pony championship/stake classes (except Junior divisions) at selected USEF competitions which will be notified in writing by USEF, the first place and fourth place ponies must allow a heel measurement to be taken immediately following the class to verify the heel measurement is at or below what is indicated on the current measurement card; a copy of which must be on file in the show office prior to the pony competing.

The heel measurement will be taken by the competition steward at a location determined by the measuring official and competition management. The heel measurement must be taken from the left bulb of the left front heel, from the skin line on the lower side of the coronary band with the ruler perpendicular to the flat surface. It is the trainer's or driver's decision and responsibility to determine if the pony will be hitched or unhitched for this measurement.

If the heel measurement is higher than the measurement on the pony's USEF measurement card, an overall height measurement must be performed by two measuring officials (See GR502.4) no later than one hour following the end of the session at the designated location. Any entry that exceeds the legal height limit will forfeit winnings in that class.

In the event there are fewer than four ponies in a class, the pony occupying the final placing will be measured. In the event of an emergency and the steward is unavailable to take the heel measurement immediately, competition management must appoint a representative to remain with the pony until the heel measurement can occur.”

Competition managers and stewards of the selected shows will be sent informational packets regarding how to conduct these measurements approximately 60 days prior to their show.

Any questions regarding these USEF rules or the 2009 competitions selected should be directed to Carrie Mortensen, USEF’s Director of Breeds and Western, via email at cmortensen@usef.org or by calling (859) 225-6986.

Thanks to USEF for this update.

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

Favorite Video: French Police Horse Tours Paris on the Run

A 15-year-old stallion abandoned his post guarding the French President Mr. Sarkozy at the Élysée Palace in Paris today and ran away with the headlines on the evening news. Garibaldi, the highly trained horse, spooked while on duty and dumped his rider. In a flash, the riderless Garibaldi decided he needed to be home in his nice safe stall at the Garde Republique stables, and he headed there, at a gallop. Someone was following with a video camera and captured this amazing footage, including a gallant effort by a long-armed gendarme who tried to climb halfway out of a speeding police car and grab the reins.

It was like a scene from Hopalong Cassidy Meets The Pink Panther.

Thankfully, the horse wasn't hurt, and Paris managed to stop for a few minute to get him gallop by.

Maybe Garibaldi was watching the Super Bowl a few weeks ago and decided to imitate the ad about the lovestruck Budweiser Clydesdale who helps his girlfriend escape from the circus.

For farrier readers: this is one of the police horses shod by the famous traditional military farriers in Paris who use a crew of four or five men to shoe each horse, using the highly rhythmical two striker system. It is a beautiful tradition, but the proof of their work is that this horse stayed on his feet most of the way, and the shoes didn't seem to fall off.

And leave it to the French: Garibaldi is a fine-looking horse. The French are so romantic, they may have a law that only stallions can serve at the President's palace. My compliments to the uniform designers; did you see the knee rolls on those saddles?

Thanks to the British newspaper, The Telegraph, for making this video possible. Click here to read the full article, with more information.

And to learn more about the Garde Republicaine, here's a little behind the scenes clip and a ceremonial guarding of the Presidential touring car as it whizzes elegantly by:

Do you know how some horses are afraid of marching bands in parades? Notice that with this group, the marching band is mounted on the horses.

Click here to watch a great video about the Garde Republicaine, which includes closeups of the band playing on horseback and the magnificent gray drum horses! A visit to their stables is a must for any trip to Paris!

Click here to learn all about anatomy of the horse's foot and lower limb with our 3-D animated CD!

© 2009 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.

AAEP: New Racehorse Safety and Welfare Veterinary Recommendations

by Fran Jurga | 16 February 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
(received via press release)

The American Association of Equine Practitioners today issued guidelines for protecting the health of the Thoroughbred racehorse. The white paper, Putting the Horse First: Veterinary Recommendations for the Safety and Welfare of the Thoroughbred Racehorse, provides veterinary guidance on many issues challenging the racing industry and the care of the racehorse.

Recommendations within the white paper are focused in four key areas: the racing business model, the veterinarian-owner-trainer relationship, medication, and the public perception of racing. Additionally, changes to the structure of claiming races and medication usage in horses intended for sale at public auction are addressed.

“As an organization with the primary mission of protecting the health and welfare of the horse, the safety of the racehorse is one of our highest priorities,” said AAEP President Dr. Harry Werner. “This is a critical time for the racing industry, and we join the efforts of other groups who are determined to make improvements for the health of our equine athletes.”

Key points in the white paper include:
· Continued identification and implementation of procedures and strategies that will significantly reduce the injury rate of horses.
· Standardization and enhancement of pre-race and post-race veterinary examinations with mandatory cross-jurisdictional sharing of information.
· Universal adoption in all racing jurisdictions of the Association of Racing Commissioners International model medication rules which state that no medication should be administered on race day except for furosemide (Salix®).
· Increased racetrack security to ensure compliance by all racing participants with medication rules.
· Provide complete transparency for the veterinarian-trainer-owner relationship in all aspects of health care decisions.
· Development in all racing jurisdictions of a program for the rehabilitation, retraining and adoption of horses whose racing careers have ended.

The white paper was developed by the AAEP’s Racing Task Force, a group comprised of private racetrack practitioners, regulatory veterinarians and veterinary specialists. Dr. Scott Palmer of Clarksburg, New Jersey, and Dr. Foster Northrop of Louisville, Kentucky, served as chair and vice chair, respectively. This group is now a standing committee of the AAEP.

“Our premise is very simple: What is good for the horse is good for racing,” explained Dr. Palmer. “In a unique climate of widespread industry commitment to fix what is wrong with racing, veterinarians have made every effort to put the horse first in that process. It is fair to say that particular recommendations will resonate with some individuals and alienate others within the industry. Nonetheless, we’d like to think that if our horses could read this document, they would be pleased.”

The AAEP intends its white paper to provide guidance and support to those who are working to bring meaningful change.

The white paper is available at http://www.aaep.org/images/files/Racing%20Industry%20White%20Paper%20Final.pdf. For more information, contact Sally Baker, AAEP director of marketing and public relations, at (859) 233-0147 or sbaker@aaep.org.


© 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.

Funeral for Edward Martin Re-Scheduled for February 23

A young Edward Martin set out from his village one morning in the 1950s to see the annual Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh. He carried with him the forehammer you see here in his hands. It was bought in 1893 in anticipation of his grandfather's first shoeing competition, which he won...and was used by Edward up to the time that illness forced him to stop work.

It took me a lot of work to find the source and acquire the rights to this photo, which I finally did in 2004, and Edward always seemed a little amazed that I could have found a photo he had never seen of himself, on such a special day.

After I sent him the photo, Edward added this note, in addition to the hammer explanation: "I was striking to James Lawson, of Edinburgh....James had lost his father, his normal striker, some time before. He had no one to strike for him. I stepped in to do the job. It was a big occasion for me. It was the great Scottish poet Robert Burns who said, 'Nae man con tether time nor tide' and that is true."

Edward Martin's funeral has been moved to Monday, February 23, 2009 at noon in the Closeburn Church, Closeburn by Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. I hope to have information soon on how (or if) to send flowers or messages. Stay tuned.

Who was the real "Village Blacksmith"? Meet Dexter Pratt, Longfellow's inspiring neighbor

People sometimes ask for names of famous blacksmiths and farriers. There are too many, history is full of them, from the gods of antiquity, Vulcan and Hephaestus, to today's highly skilled farriers using modern materials like engineers of the hoof and artisan maestros of forging like Francis Whitaker and Samuel Yellin.

But Dexter Pratt may be the most famous of them all.

For many people, their earliest images of who a blacksmith or farrier is and what s/he does were formed by the immortal words of the poem, The Village Blacksmith, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The smith in the poem seems like Everyman. Most wouldn't think that there was a real man behind the anvil in that story, but there was.

First, a refresher, in case you don't remember the poem:

Longfellow was America's most famous poet, but he was also a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When he walked to and from the campus, he passed a mighty chestnut tree on Brattle Street, under which stood the modest smithy of his neighbor, Dexter Pratt. Dexter is believed to be the inspiration for the poem, along with the fact that Longfellow's own grandfather, Stephen Longfellow, was a blacksmith in Newbury, Massachusetts.

If there was a seed of inspiration for the poem somewhere in Longfellow's fertile mind, it was reinforced and enhanced every day by his encounter with the smith, who became his friend.

Longfellow's home on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts is open to the public as a National Park site. It is across and down the street from the site of what must have been several blacksmith shops in Harvard Square.

Longfellow probably wrote The Village Blacksmith in 1839; it was published in 1840. Longfellow was paid $15 for the poem by Knickerbocker magazine.

Around the same time, Longfellow met a very interesting man named Elihu Burritt, known as "The Learned Blacksmith". He was living in nearby Worcester, and Longfellow encouraged him to move to Cambridge; the poet even offered to support the blacksmith.

But Burritt turned the famous poet down. He wanted to keep working in the forge while he pursued his studies.

At one time you could buy prints and post cards of Dexter's smithy, long after it and the chestnut tree were gone. Maybe you still can.

Dexter's shop and tree probably could have become one of the greatest tourist attractions in Cambridge, except that urban planning interfered: there was a curve in the street where they stood and the city wanted to straighten it. The authorities didn't see a way around it: the big tree had to go and, with it, Dexter's shop and forge. Not even Longfellow could save it.

The big tree was cut down in the 1870s.

Longfellow's chair, made from the wood of the spreading chestnut tree.

What a day it must have been when they cut it down. Cambridge schoolchildren took up a collection to make a memento. A chair was made from the tree for Longfellow, and you can see it if you visit his house. The poet wrote the children a poem of thanks. It is an ode to the tree; it doesn't mention the blacksmith, though.

"The Village Blacksmith" has outlived Longfellow, Dexter, and the tree. And so, it turns out, have the two houses where the men lived. They're still there.

Dexter Pratt's more modest home on Brattle Street is painted almost the same color as Longfellow's, but it's not so grandiose. (Wikipedia photo)

Dexter's house at 54 Brattle Street is in the National Register of Historic Places and owned by the City of Cambridge. It is now known as "The Blacksmith House". It was built in 1808 for a blacksmith named Torrey Hancock, who sold it to Dexter Pratt. It's interesting that Pratt's daughter sold the house to a runaway slave named Mary Walker, who lived there with her family for many years.

During World War II, a bakery opened in the house, selling baked goods made by women refugees from Europe.

Over the years, The Village Blacksmith inspired a lot of people. In 1922, famed director John Ford brought The Village Blacksmith to the silver screen, in a melodramatic story based loosely on the blacksmith in the poem. The subtitle for the film was "The Blacksmith's Daughter, Falsely Accused".

Almost 100 years after Longfellow wrote the poem, a mysterious silent film pantomime of the poem appeared.  There's no documentation to go with this rough gem, which is copyrighted by the distributor as 1936 but looks to be older.

In the film, you will see first Longfellow's stately, then the more colonial home of Dexter Pratt, though I doubt it was so grand when he lived there. I don't know if the entire film was shot in Cambridge or just those buildings.



You can walk in Longfellow's footsteps down Brattle Street, and visit both houses. If you walk down the street to the Mount Auburn Cemetery, you'll find the graves of both men. A chunk of the chestnut tree is preserved in the Cambridge Public Library on Broadway.



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We've Lost Edward

Edward Martin died early on the morning of February 14th at his home in Closeburn, near Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

The worldly farrier and blacksmith used to have a saying about how much you'd be missed after your death. He'd say, "Swirl you hand around in a bucket of water, and watch the hole it makes in the center, and watch it for a a few minutes. That's how much you'll be missed when you're gone."

That might be the one thing that he was wrong about.

PS I am struggling to write Edward Martin's obituary but it is being written and will be published when details of his funeral are available.