Quarter Crack! Quality Road Meets Ian McKinlay for Hoof Repair Session 25 Days Before Kentucky Derby

by Fran Jurga | 6 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

This is an example of a quarter crack lacing technique, using stainless steel sutures laced through tiny and shallow guide holes drilled with a very fine drill bit. The idea is not to shut the crack but to hold it open and stabilize it so that any infection or "heat" can dissipate before a patch is applied. Quarter cracks have varying degrees of infection and may or may not be associated with an abscess somewhere else under the hoof wall. The new complete hoof wall grows down from the hairline, much as you grow a new fingernail from the cuticle. (Ian McKinlay photo)

One week you're a hero: On March 28, a New York-based colt named Quality Road wowed the racing world with a powerhouse victory over Todd Pletcher's highly-regarded contender Dunkirk in the 2009 Florida Derby at Gulfstream. 

Kentucky Derby, here they come! 

Ten days later, you're looking for a hero. And Quality Road has found one: Ian McKinlay's black Suburban has been parked in front of the big colt's stall at New York's Belmont Park for all to see. The noted hoof repair specialist--neither veterinarian nor farrier but a critical consultant to top racehorse trainers--got the call from trainer Jimmy Jerkens to work on a crack in the inside quarter of the colt's right hind hoof. 

McKinlay said this afternoon that the crack popped during the Florida Derby and was patched before the horse shipped back to New York, but that inflammation under the Florida patch had Jerkens looking for some help. McKinlay said he pulled off the old patch, cleaned up the crack, laced it with stainless steel sutures and applied a drying agent. He left the crack "wide open" so it would dry and said that the horse galloped today and was sound, but they were waiting for it to dry up. 

"We should be able to patch it, possibly by the end of the week. The whole thing should be over by this weekend and he'll be on his way...or else my reputation will be shot!" McKinlay said, half joking.

Jerkens is a popular New York trainer who would carry a lot of sentimental support with him when and if his horse makes the scheduled April 28th departure date for Kentucky. McKinlay said that the cracked hoof had been shod with a bar shoe to stabilize it but that Quality Road will be back in a regular shoe once the patch is applied later this week. He repeated several times that he did not think that this crack would affect the horse's trip to Kentucky or his chances in the Derby, barring unforeseen complications. 

"This is no Big Brown type of situation," he said more than once. 

Last year's Triple Crown news was headlined by McKinlay's work to help Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown through wall separations on both front feet and then a pre-Belmont quarter crack that may or may not have been too much for the champion. Something was, as he failed to run his race in the Belmont Stakes and did not win the Triple Crown in spite of patches on patches and designer glue-on Yasha shoes that have been successful for other horses and had helped him win the first two legs of the Triple Crown. 

Quality Road is a very big colt; he is a Virginia-bred son of Elusive Quality and is owned by Edward P. Evans. He set a new 1 1/8-mile course record in 1:47.72 at Gulfstream with his Florida Derby win. 

Pletcher complained after the race that the track was too fast and that he wouldn't have run his horse if he had known how lightning fast the track would be. 

Quality Road may have paid the price for an exciting race and a new track record. 

Let's hope Ian McKinlay is right and this is a minor setback for a horse that--if he's sound--can help make this year's Triple Crown series exciting. 

Click here for stories and video of Ian McKinlay's technique for quarter crack repair. 

Click here for an overview of quarter crack repair. 

Click here for an article about Big Brown's pre-Belmont 2008 quarter crack. 

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© 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). 

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

Pedal Osteitis Sent Grand National Champion Red Rum to the Beach, with Pop Marshall's Blessing

by Fran Jurga | 5 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

Riders on the beach at Ainsdale, between Liverpool and Southport, England. This image was originally uploaded by ~ paddypix ~.

Yesterday was a special day in the racing world. You may have heard that a 100-1 longshot won the 162nd Grand National steeplechase at Aintree racecourse near Liverpool in England. This year's winner, Mon Mome, was noteworthy because he was a Frenchbred and because he's trained by a woman. Add the fact that he won by ten lengths and that it was his jockey's first time to ride the famous race and you can see that it was quite a day for that team.

The Grand National always makes me thinks of the great champion Red Rum, who won the race over and over. I think he won it three times and was second twice. By the time he won it the third time, he was 12 years old...and had started in over 100 races.

Red Rum was trained by a hard luck fellow named Ginger McCain who drove taxis at night and kept the horse out behind a used-car lot. McCain bought the horse at a sale for one of his owners, only to find out that the horse was lame. So he took him to the beach, and noticed afterwards he wasn't quite so lame. And Ginger McCain wondered if he might be onto something.

Veterinarians diagnosed pedal osteitis as the horse's problem. Technically, that is an inflammation of the pedal bone, or coffin bone, or P3--whatever you call it, wherever you are from. It was the 1970s, though, and just to take a radiograph of a horse's foot was a big deal in those days. There was certainly no nuclear scintigraphy like we would have today to diagnose pedal osteitis.

Veterinarians examine radiographs of horses that show foot pain, particularly ouchiness or tenderness on landing. Instead of lateral radiographs, they might look at the bottom of the coffin bone, to see if there are irregular edges on the bone. Horses with tender feet often do have irregular bone edges, but the problem is that many sound horses do, as well.

Pedal osteitis is a controversial diagnosis today, but was a much more common diagnosis 20 or 30 years ago, particularly in racehorses who are trimmed short and run on hard ground. Dr. Bill Moyer of Texas A&M University has written some thoughtful papers on the subject of the murkiness of the diagnosis of pedal osteitis.

McCain was a genius in the way he trained Red Rum. He was the first trainer to harrow the beach, marking the gallop--this came after another horse of his cut its tendon on a broken bottle that had washed ashore, but it also softened the hardpacked sand. Other trainers had given up galloping on the beach because they felt it made horses more lame, but the harrowing really seemed to work for Red Rum.

If you've ever taken a horse to the beach, you know that it can be an interesting ride the first few times. After a while, horses usually love it, but the waves, open space and the shifting sand take some getting used to. But not for Red Rum: the first time McCain took him to the beach, the gelding walked right into the ocean up to his chest.

McCain supplemented the gallops on the flat sand with lots of time standing or walking in the water; surely the cold Irish Sea was good for any inflammation in the horse's feet. He also trained him up and down the forgiving sand dunes, which were great for the horse's muscles without putting a lot of stress on his feet.

I can see a lot of readers nodding their heads on that one; the sand would spread the load over the surface of the foot, rather than pinpointing it on the wall or shoe, if he was shod. On the other hand, wild horses that live on the beaches and dunes tend to get quite splay-footed, which might be fine as long as you're on the sand, or if the turf of the racecourse is soft.

Finally, McCain had a very good farrier working at his side to keep Red Rum's feet as balanced as possible. The late Bob "Pops" Marshall Sr., father of World Champion farrier Bob Marshall of Canada, lived right down the road and was Red Rum's personal farrier.

This video shows Red Rum winning the grueling and dangerous (and, many say, cruel) Grand National for the third time. He was also second twice, all in five years. Not bad for a horse they said would never race again.

If you ever have a chance, find a copy of the book Red Rum by Ivor Herbert. It might be a challenge to find it in the USA, but it's worth it. Or, let me know and I'll find you a used copy.

To learn more about pedal osteitis, dig out issue #64 of Hoofcare and Lameness and read "Treating Septic Osteitis of the Distal Phalanx (P-3)" by Andy Bathe MRCVS, or find Dr. Moyer's paper "Nonseptic Pedal Osteitis: A Cause of Lameness and a Diagnosis?" in the Proceedings of the 1999 AAEP Convention.

And put Red Rum on your list of legendary horse heroes. I suppose if he had come along now, they would have just paid to have him glued up but this is now and that was then. This horse and trainer did it the old-fashioned way, and moved a nation to tears...tears of joy.

Friends (Very Hard) at Work: Dr. Judith Mulholland Is Still Fighting Australia's Fires

by Fran Jurga | 2 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

Time flies. One minute we're worried about koalas in Australia, then the world's worries shift to Red River floods in North Dakota and all the animals at risk there. Just tonight, I heard about tornado warnings for the Louisville, Kentucky area. Will we ever reach a point of disaster fatigue? Do we switch disasters the same way we switch channels on television?

What many people seem to forget is that when the fire is out, or the flood recedes, or the earth stops trembling is when the next round of real work begins. Roads have to be cleared before rescue workers and veterinarians can even get to the animals. They have to not only treat the animals where they are but then figure out how to transport them to a save fenced in area, and to make sure they are fed.

So it was for our friend Dr. Judith L Mulholland BSc BVMS in the firetorn remains of the Australian communities in Victoria that experienced "Black Saturday" less than 60 days ago. Normally a podiatry-specialist vet, Dr. Jude took up the call to help however she could and has been pitching in. Among her ways of helping was to prepare a videotape of the animals she met on just one of her days of rescue work.

Along with this short video focusing on horses' fate in the fires (brought to you from Australia by the miracle of youtube.com), Dr. Mulholland said that she is working on an hour-long documentary about the devastation to livestock and pets.

I highly recommend a visit to Dr. Jude's excellent web site, www.farriervet.com. Many Hoof Blog readers will see an old friend on her opening page.

© 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.

April 1 Update: Breeders Cup Scandal Exposed Yet Cigar Still Refuses Comment

by Fran Jurga | 1 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog


And we thought drugs were a problem...

Secretariat Was Never For Sale, But His Photo Is (and with a discount, too!)

Yes, yesterday's mystery foal photo was a trick, to get you into the spirit of the April 1 Holiday! Thanks to all the clever people out there who recognized The Great One in his youth. As Denise said, "The three white sox gave it away!"

Hats off Lynne Myers of Vettec, who was the first to email in the correct answer.

Tom thought he looked wormy and ribby. I actually liked the ribby part. In recent years, I think foals and yearlings are groomed (and fed) to lose their youthfulness as quickly as possible and develop a filled-out horse body, for their presentation to buyers. Of course now that steroids would presumably not be allowed in the yearlings sales, we won't have people saying, "I bought a yearling at the sale and he didn't turn out to be as big as he looked."

Secretariat was the real thing. Big, but balanced.

To celebrate his birthday, The Hoof Blog has a special offer for you from Secretariat.com, where this image lives. Leonard has graciously offered to give a discount to any Hoof Blog reader who would like to purchase a high-quality print of this foal image over the next two weeks; the photo has never been for sale before.

You can even have it signed by Mrs. Chenery. (She was Secretariat's owner--but you knew that!).

The image is 10x8 and would love very nice in a frame. Just go to secretariat.com and find this page:
http://secretariatcom.stores.yahoo.net/base.html
which shows both a plain photo (nice!) of this image or an enhanced poster-type image.

On the order form there should be space for a code. Enter the word OATS in the code box and Secretariat.com will know that you came from the Hoof Blog; you'll get a $5 discount on either item. The offer is good until April 15. The print would make a lovely gift or award.

While you're at Secretariat.com, take a look around. They have some lovely memorabilia--even castings of the nails from Secretariat's shoes worn in the Belmont!

So...since we have so many smart people reading this blog...what was the name of Secretariat's horseshoer? Like Man o' War's Mr. McDermott, this gentleman was sort of overlooked in all the books about Secretariat. He's another Lost Legend! Did you know that every shoe ever nailed onto Secretariat was saved, from his earliest shoes? And even the nails were kept.

One of Secretariat's shoes was given to then-President Richard Nixon.

And don't forget that The Meadow, Secretariat's home farm in Virginia, is being turned into a horse park, and there will be a vet-farrier center built in honor of Dr. Britt (Secretariat's vet) and our friend, the late Edgar Watson. Donations are being sought to build the center and you can help! Click here to read more about The Meadow and the building fund.

© 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.

Thoroughbred Conformation Can Be Subjective: Would You Buy This Weanling?

by Fran Jurga | 30 March 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

Saturday was Man o' War's birthday; scroll down to Saturday's blog post to read the story about finding his farrier after all these years or click here to open that page.

But today is this colt's birthday and I wondered what you all thought of this one. I wish I had a good photo of Man o' War as a foal for comparison.

Click on the comments link below (it's ok to be "anonymous" if you wish) to share your opinion or send an email from fran@hoofcare.com and I will post it for you.

I'll publish the rest of the story that goes with this photo on Tuesday night. Be sure to check back!

© 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.