by Fran Jurga | 23 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
Great Britain's National Association of Farriers, Blacksmiths and Agricultural Engineers (NAFBAE) announced this week that it was cancelling previously-announced plans to move and expand the International Team Horseshoeing Competition.
NAFBAE had planned to move the famous event, to be held on 27-30 August 2009, to the Aintree Equestrian Centre near Liverpool.
Richard Hurcomb, NAFBAE president, blames economic concerns for the decision to keep the event at its long-time home with the roaring forges at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire, England. “Whilst I am disappointed that we have had to postpone our plans to develop the ‘International’, I believe that to continue to try and do so in the present economic climate will put unnecessary pressure on our supporters and the organizing team," he said.
by Fran Jurga | 22 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
Do you notice anything about the new Kentucky Derby logo? It's a nice piece of artwork, but it's interesting that it fancifully represents a horseshoe that would not be allowed to touch the hallowed dirt that lies before the Twin Spires.
Here's a story you would only read on the Hoof Blog:
Churchill Downs has created a new family of logos for the Derby and the Oaks this year. I've already become so accustomed to seeing it that I didn't realize until today that the shoe in the logo is illegal at Churchill Downs since the CDI family of racetracks changed its shoeing rules back on October 14...and especially since it was double-scrubbed and approved for its safety policies by the NTRA recently.
Churchill Downs' rules state: "Front horse shoes which have toe grabs greater than two millimeters shall be prohibited from racing or training on all racing surfaces at all Churchill Downs Incorporated racetracks. This includes but is not limited to the following: toe grabs, bends, jar calks, stickers and any other traction device worn on the front shoes of Thoroughbred horses. "
And on hind shoes:
"Any hind shoe with a turndown of more than one-quarter inch will not be allowed on the dirt courses. Hind shoes with calks, stickers, blocks, raised toes or turndowns will not be allowed on the turf courses. This includes quarter horse shoes or any shoe with a toe grab of more than one-quarter inch."
Those heels on the logo shoe are not going to get past the horseshoe inspector.
Am I the only one who notices these things? Or is this artwork supposed to be a nostalgic icon for bygone days when you could nail anything you wanted on the bottom of a horse's foot and send it to the gate?
Now when the conversation lags at your Derby party next weekend, you can point to the logo and ask your friends, "What's wrong with this picture?" and impress them with your command of shoeing rules and horseshoe design.
by Fran Jurga | 21 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
Please allow time for NBC's "Thank Goodness" video to load. Click the play icon to begin. Note: It seems like NBC has changed the location of this video on its hosting site.
NBC News recently snuck up on farrier Paul Goodness and his Forging Ahead farrier partnership, headquartered in a lovely old barn in Round Hill, Virginia, in the horse country west of Washington D.C., near Middleburg. The crew's quick little piece on shoeing horses for a filler in NBC's coverage of the Kentucky Derby turned into a news feature on the unique educational setting in this area where the only traffic jam might be between trucks hauling horse trailers carrying some of the world's greatest equine athletes.
The greatest athletes...and the lamest, since the Forging Ahead partnership specializes in keeping horses either sound for top-level competing, or bringing them back from every imaginable form of lameness. And sometimes it's a combination of the two.
About three years ago, Forging Ahead initiated an innovative internship program for farriers who wanted more than an apprenticeship. Paul Goodness made a commitment to share his 30 years of experience with one or two interns at a time, and they are getting a place to live, a salary, and exposure to a rustic old fieldstone forge that, like a prop in a Harry Potter movie, doubles as a high-tech testing lab for new products and is a launching pad for many new ideas used in shoeing horses and caring for lameness problems.
Interns even get to work with Paul in his duties providing farrier services at the Marion du Pont Scott Equine Medical Center, a satellite hospital of Virginia Tech University in nearby Leesburg. You'll just never get Paul to brag about it, that's all. The current interns are Evan Mickle, fresh from completing the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine farrier program with Michael Wildenstein and Gwen Nardi. But the NBC piece is not about Paul, it's about the future, which is really what his entire career has been about anyway: making things better for horses, easier for farriers, safer and cleaner and lots less painful for everyone.
If the publicity could do one thing for Forging Ahead, Paul hopes it will bring new awareness to the internship program so that people who want to commit to an in-depth program to learn advanced farriery will find their way to Round Hill. Paul completed his own advanced farrier training in a similar program, now sadly discontinued, at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, and remembers that there was a long, long waiting list to gain a place there in the 1980s. The future looks bright for Forging Ahead.
In addition to Paul, the lineup of farriers working from Round Hill is currently Matt Hatcher, Randy Pawlak, Scott Sellers, and newcomers Zeb Foltz and Travis Burns (who is a graduate of the internship program), plus veteran farrier Scott Brouse recently joined the Forging Ahead roster. Farrier Amy Sidwar is on sabbatical, but still managing the internship program.
I asked Paul today how the economy was affecting the practice; Forging Ahead has a lot of mouths to feed. Although he said that his customers were buying fewer new horses, he said that it might work out for Forging Ahead if competitors want to take extra care to keep their veteran campaigners sound through the coming year.
"This winter was great, we actually are caught up, maybe for the first time ever," he sighed, but then quickly added that the expanding Florida eventing circuit was more demanding of their services than ever before, requiring at least one farrier to be there at all times.
"Things are just right," he said, but then remembered that the top event horses will come home from further south or from competing at the Rolex (Kentucky) Three-Day Event this weekend. "Everything could change next week, once they all get back," he acknowledged.
Whatever happens, the interns will have a front-row seat on some of the best action in the farrier world.
Click here to read an article about the launch of the internship program.
Click here to learn more about the Forging Ahead internship application process.
Update: Since this article was first published in 2009, a few things have changed at Forging Ahead. Randy Pawlak is now on his own, pursuing his career shoeing some of the world's top event horses. Former intern Travis Burns is now Resident Farrier and Lecturer at Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Virginia. Read the comments for more news!
by Fran Jurga | 20 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
The pony's first keratoma surgery removed a section of hoof wall and the tumor beneath. The first surgery was done with the horse standing. (World Horse Welfare photo)
What's a keratoma? An irritation in the hoof wall, or perhaps trauma or some other cause, can disrupt the keratinization pattern in the wall. The horn tubules grow abnormally and form what could be called a horn-filled, non-cancerous tumor. Since it is caught under the hard wall, it presses against the soft tissue of the laminae that surround the coffin bone, or may press against the coronary band and disrupt growth. And it would probably cause a horse a lot of pain.
Yet many horses have keratomas and never show signs of lameness. When a radiograph suggests a keratoma may be present in a lame horse's foot, the horse will have minor surgery to remove it; in most cases the horse improves. The cause and treatment of keratomas seem to be of mild interest to most vet practices.
But if you can read the vet journals and farrier books from Europe, you might think we're missing something. Just as the Eskimos have 100 words for snow, they have a word for every specific condition in the foot and keratomas are classified into groups so that they start to sound pretty interesting.
You will agree if you ever attend a lecture by Dr Hans Castelijns of Italy on keratoma surgery; it is a “don’t miss” opportunity. He says that the German vets and farriers differentiate strongly between a regular keratoma, which he says originates at the sole, and a strand-like tumor that runs the entire length of the wall and originates at the coronary band.
Dutch author Rob Van Nassau in his outstanding book Hoof Problems, classifies equine foot keratomas into three types: fan-shaped, toe, and side wall.
In the nipper jaws you can see the vertical strands of the keratoma that was removed in the initial surgery.
Today’s case involves what is probably a strand-like tumor in a foundered pony named Toby that was rescued by our friends at World Horse Welfare (formerly the International League for the Protection of Horses) in England. It took two surgeries to remove the entire keratoma.
As an introduction, the pony was severely overweight and laminitic; when the laminitis pain was relieved, he still had pain in his toe, and radiography showed a defect that was attributed to a keratoma, so surgery was performed (top photo). The process involves removing a strip of hoof wall. Most horses recover quickly and fully. Surgery is usually conservative because removal of hoof wall at the toe can de-stablize the foot.
After he had recovered and the hoof wall healed, Toby started to develop a bulge around his coronary band so the decision was made to go a bit higher with the surgery and remove more tissue and get to the root of the keratoma.
This is probably the strand type of keratoma referred to by Dr. Castelijns. A similar but more worm-like non-horny growth was featured in Hoofcare & Lameness 78 in an article by Andrew Poynton FWCF. While working on that article with Andrew, I found an old 1800s paper that suggested that these strands really were worms that were lodged beneath the hoof wall and were eating the soft tissue, causing great pain.
Settle down for a few minutes and watch Toby go through his surgery under the capable care of vet Andy Williamson at World Horse Welfare's Hall Farm in the United Kingdom. This might be a great video for horse owners to learn about surgery and anesthesia, too. The first surgery was done with Toby standing, but this one was more involved.
It looks like a simple affair to make a video like this but for Mr Williamson to perform surgery with a camera crew hovering over him and all the while speaking into a microphone and sounding coherent is quite an accomplishment.
World Horse Welfare takes their role in educating people about the best possible care of horses very seriously, whether they are working in the scrapheaps of Soweto in South Africa or keeping an eye on horse welfare at a posh three-day event. When they take time out to make educational videos that will help with hoofcare education and offer them to Hoofcare and Lameness readers, I am amazed at the scope of their mission and their service to the horse. And their generosity.
Please take some time to visit their web site and look around; their laminitis prevention work is wonderful. They need your support...they certainly have mine.
To learn more about keratomas:
Click here to see a 3-D cat scan of a hoof with a keratoma.
Click here to downloadHoof Wall Resection and Reconstruction for a Tubular Defect by Andrew Poynton FWCF as published in Hoofcare and Lameness Issue 78 as a free file from www.hoofcare.com.
Click here to order Hoof Problems by Rob Van Nassau and study the three types of keratomas.
by Fran Jurga | 19 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
NEAEP President Christopher ("Kit") Miller DVM and NEAEP Board Member David Farley work together in the barn aisle and in the board room. (NEAEP photo)
And now for something completely different...
A new organization unleashed a flurry of email promotions on the east coast of the USA this winter, and they're not done yet. The message is that a new organization, the Northeast Association of Equine Practitioners (NEAEP), plans to expand what (and who) an equine practitioner organization is by inviting veterinarians, technicians and farriers to become members of the new umbrella professional group.
And they would recommend that everyone's first step--whether members or prospective members--be to plan to attend an equally ambitious dual-program conference planned for the fall at the Foxwoods Casino Resort in Connecticut.
According to its web site, the mission of the NEAEP is "to improve the health and welfare of horses by providing state-of-the-art professional education and to support the economic security of the equine industry by complementing local associations thereby giving equine veterinarians, farriers, technicians, veterinary students and horse owners a unified voice at the state and regional levels."
Two farriers--Patrick Reilly of Pennsylvania and David Farley of Florida--are on the new association's Board of Directors.
Reilly said, "It is fantastic to have these two professions working together in these areas. While this was intended as a regional association, we have had interest in membership from farriers all over the United States, and from as far as Ireland. I am encouraged to see that other farriers are equally excited at this unique opportunity for our professions to work and learn together."
I caught up with Dave Farley recently to ask him about the organization from the working farrier's point of view. Dave is a longtime advocate of continuing education for farriers; he runs a show horse shoeing business with his son, both in Florida and in Ohio, and keeps up a busy clinic schedule working in product development and especially product education for Farrier Product Distribution.
"This is a commitment, it's not an experiment," Dave stressed. "And the wider membership extends to vet students and technicians. The NEAEP is committing to hosting a foot conference each year, which will benefit any farrier. It's really exciting, and a very open group. The veterinarians are willing to learn from us (farriers).
"One of the biggest accolades in the farrier industry is this, to be accepted on an equal level," he continued. "And here it is. I work with vets all the time, but I know a lot of farriers who don't, and this organization will help them."
Perusing the list of directors and officers of the organization shows that this group is rooted in the east coast circuit of show horses and sport horses, with several noted veterinary practitioners making a commitment to the startup, including Dr Mark Baus of Fairfield Equine Associates and Dr Stephen Soule of Palm Beach Equine Clinic. President Miller practices outside New York City.
The academic side of equine practice is not forgotten; Dr Jose Garcia-Lopez of Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine is currently President-Elect, and Reilly, the farrier quoted earlier, is on staff at the University of Pennsylvania and is on the board with Farley. You may recognize other disciplines and individuals on the long list of officials.
Hoofcare and Lameness has made a commitment in this venture as well. We will support the first conference and look forward to seeing many of our Hoof Blog readers and Journal subscribers there.
CONFERENCE DISCOUNT: The NEAEP has generously offered a $75 conference registration discount to Hoofcare and Lameness subscribers. This is like getting your subscription for free...with money left over! The catch is that you must pre-register by August 15th and, since the online registration is automated, you would need to register by phone to receive the discount. The normal registration for the three-day event is $465; the Hoofcare and Lameness rate will be just $390 for telephone registrations by August 15th.
By the time August rolls around, you will have forgotten this announcement, lost it, be away on vacation or be too busy to call. But you can get your registration done now, guarantee a hotel room, and plan to have a quality educational experience.
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.
by Fran Jurga | 16 April 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
UPDATE: Steffen Peters' freestyle score on Saturday night was high enough to put him over the top and declare the USA winner of the 2009 Rolex FEI World Cup in Dressage in Las Vegas. This is the first-ever non-European victory in the World Cup. Peters bested Germany's Isabel Werth on Satchmo by only .45 points; Dutch defending World Cup champion Anky Van Grunsven on IPS Painted Black--her #2 horse--was third.
The following story was written on Thursday night when Peters and Ravel won the Grand Prix, the first event in the World Cup competition. That was a shock in itself; this overall victory is astounding.
Two important bits of horse history were made and celebrated in the Thomas and Mack Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada today: First of all, an American horse and rider combination won the Rolex FEI World Cup Final Grand Prix, first leg of the Dressage World Cup Finals.
This is akin to an American soccer team winning in the FIFA World Cup! Steffen Peters and the black Dutch gelding Ravel bested second place rider (and defending World Cup champion) Anky Van Grunsven of The Netherlands by 3.8 points in a sport that is usually decided by decimals--and has never been won by an American!
But the Hoofcare and Lameness community will want to know that this was more than a sporting victory: it was a technological victory, as the San Diego-based duo did it the new-fangled way. Ravel has now won 11 shows in a row in the USA and finished fourth in the 2008 Olympics wearing glued EponaShoes on his front feet. Ravel is shod by Stephan Tournier of Fallbrook, California.
It was a great night for innovators in the hoof technology world.
I spoke with John Craig of Eponashoes tonight, who said that he and his wife, Monique, are thrilled for Steffen and Ravel; they are also the developers of Metron software for quantitative hoof measurement analysis. John said that the shoes are held on by glue and a couple of nails, as well, in the case of this large warmblood. Ravel is owned by Akiko Yamazaki of California.
The World Cup will be decided on Saturday night when the top horses from today's Grand Prix compete in the musical freestyle. Stay tuned: a lot can happen, but Steffen has a solid lead.
Top photo of Ravel links to www.clubequestrian.com, the social networking site of the US Equestrian Team. Thanks to Joanie Morris and John Craig for information used in this post.
© 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.
