Friends at Work: Hoof Knives Hand-Made in Vermont by Farrier Jim Hurlburt

13 February 2010 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com

Please wait patiently for this video from WCAX-TV in Vermont to load.

Vermont is one of the horsiest states in the USA, although you might not know that unless you went there and drove the back roads. As a former dairy farmer friend remarked to me recently, "Horses are the new cows."

Texas doesn't have to worry about Vermont beating them in the number of horses in a single state, but the number of horses per square mile, or per capita, must be right up there.

For as long as I can remember, Vermont has been famous for having more cows than people--it is, after all, the home of Ben and Jerry's ice cream--but lately a lot of dairy farms have been converted to horse farms. And a lot of veterinarians and farriers and hoof trimmers have moved to the Green Mountain State to serve those horses. Some were even born and raised there.

The Vermont Farriers Association was formed about five years ago, has an active educational program and was one of the first farrier associations to openly welcome non-shoeing trimmers to its membership and its events. They'll host a seminar with veterinarian Tracy Turner of Minnesota next month.

The winters are long in Vermont, and most of the people are involved in some sort of craft or hobby or a second job during the dark snowy months. Farrier Jim Hurlburt of Stowe drives right by the famous ski lifts of his hometown to pursue his work with horses, and comes home at night to work on his hoof knives, which he sends all over the world.

That's the kind of place that Vermont is. Out in any back barn you can find almost anything being made, designed or invented on a cold February day. The roads may not be paved, but somehow FedEx and UPS find the most out of the way cabins and farmhouses and the labors of Vermonters get shipped no matter how deep the snow is.

Enjoy this little video about Jim Hurlburt and his knives, courtesy of WCAX-TV in Burlington, Vermont. I hope no one on the tv crew cut themselves while making this video. Jim's knives are sharp!

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. Please, 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.

Racetrack Surface Research Video: Building a TTD for the Track in a Box at the University of California

3 February 2010 Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com

(Caution: You might want to turn down the volume on your computer before you play this video. The soundtrack is loud!)



This video shows the development and constrution of the University of California, Davis, J.D. Wheat Veterinary Orthopedic Research Laboratory track-testing device (TTD). The TTD is instrumented with a load cell, accelerometer, and laser displacement sensor, and is used to compare the dynamic properties of Thoroughbred racehorse racetrack surfaces as part of the lab's "Track in a Box " project to simulate racetrack conditions in the laboratory.

The "box" in the lab acan be filled with layers of dirt, stones, asphalt and racetrack surface materials that could include wax, fibers or other materials. A drainage system allows the effects of rain to be testing. The spring-loaded mechanism simulates the impact of pounding hooves up to 100 times the force of gravity while measurements are taken to characterize surface behavior.

The finished TTD positioned over the box

The "Track in a Box" project is the work of Jacob Setterbo, a PhD candidate in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group, and Dr. Susan Stover, director of the school’s JD Wheat Veterinary Orthopedic Research Laboratory. The project is funded by the Grayson Jockey Club, the Southern California Equine Foundation, and the Center for Equine Health with funds provided by the State of California pari-mutuel fund and contributions by private donors.

I asked Jacob Setterbo about the fact that the TTD contained everything exect a shoe, and wondered about adding a shoe to the TTD, or even using it to test how different shoes load in different footing. Setterbo and Stover worked on a sensor shoe for racetrack testing which was featured on the hoof blog in an article last fall.

"That is a possibility we considered," Setterbo answered. "So the TTD was designed so that a new interface to the load cell can be machined so that a shoe can be added, and things such as toe grabs can be compared. Because we first need to establish the functionality of the TTD we decided to first start with a simple impacting part, which is an aluminum piece which is approximately the same area of the hoof. But the answer is yes, it is possible to modify the TTD to test different shoes."

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. Please, 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.

Hoofcare Scholar: Design a Foot with Professor Robert Full

by Fran Jurga | 1 February 2010 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

 

 
Caution: Don't start watching this video unless you have 19 minutes and 24 seconds to watch the whole thing through. And then you might want to watch it all over again. Professor Robert Full is Director of the Poly-PEDAL Laboratory in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. This video, which is now five years old, was always too long to post on the blog, but now it is possible...so here you go. If you like this, you'll enjoy a few more scholarly (but not too scholarly) videos that we've been preparing for you.

Dr. Full may work with cockroaches and crabs and centipedes and geckos, and he may be trying to build a better robot, not fix a lame horse, but this video can make you think about what a foot is and what it can and should do. And what you can add to a foot to achieve different goals, i.e. move across different surfaces.

Many of the concepts will be everyday to you. And maybe some of the exercises that Professor Full reviews will lead you to some brand new thoughts...or a brand new way of thinking.

Happy 19 minutes and 24 seconds!

And thanks to Robert Full and the TED conference for making this clip available! PS The impetus for this research is a robot that would be useful for first responders in emergency and disaster scenarios. Apparently some search-and-rescue robots have been used in Haiti during the earthquake response, but Professor Full might need to add digging to the task list of his robotic feet when it comes to quake rubble. Bare human hands apparently did most of the work, and search dogs were found to be very helpful. Texas A&M University is home to CRASAR, the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue.


© 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. For more news, follow @hoofcarejournal on www.twitter.com.

Weekend Humor: A Desperate Polo Widow and High Hoofcare Fashion News

31 January 2010 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com

It's Sunday, time to relax and have some hoofcare- or lameness-related humor. This week our humor comes from South America: what happens when the worlds of polo and fashion collide below the hock in Argentina?



I have to thank my friend Molly Knott of DappledGrey.com out in Oregon for that video. If you are interested in equestrian fashion or know anyone who is, Molly's web site is the place to find out about the newest and most stylish English gear and clothing for horses and humans.

The polo wrap boots from the video are an actual item--they really are for sale! What's more, they are a fundraiser for Ethiopian children with the foot disease Podoconiosis, an infection caused by a fungus in the soil there.

And from the runways of European fashion boots come hoof boots for humans, all part of the hot new equestrian look. Christian Dior last week showed models in veiled hats and side-saddle attire, and here we have boots that make women's feet and legs look like hooves, with just little black bases sticking out at the bottom.

Wait, there's more! I made a new friend this fall, San Francisco fashion designer Trace Cohen of Bind. Trace was interested in farrier aprons.

He added both a farrier apron and a tanner's apron to his line of super-hip men's clothing, so if you're walking around New York or LA or Milan and see someone walking down the sidewalk wearing a farrier apron...it might just be an expression of high fashion, not a horseshoer. The high-fashion farrier aprons come in black for winter.

Do you think that New England deep-winter barn clothes will ever have a high-fashion value? Two fashion shoots I've often thought someone should do were women from Maine in their favorite barn clothes and (more seriously) Saratoga's early-a.m. exercise rider colony, who have quite a style all their own.

That wraps up the fashion report, I hope it made you smile! It's all true!


© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. Please, 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.

Jumper Recovers from Laminitis to Win First "Pfizer HITS Million" Qualifier

30 January 2010 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com

The HITS Pfizer $1 Million Grand Prix is the talk of the East Coast show circuit this year, but when the first qualifier was held last weekend in Ocala, Florida, the prize money may have been upstaged a bit by the comeback story of the winner. Allison, an 18-year-old Rhinelander mare from New Jersey ridden by Callan Solem, has returned to the show circuit after recovering from severe illness that included laminitis and no prediction that she could ever even be ridden again, much less jumped at the highest level. Allison lived at Mid-Atlantic Equine Medical Center in Ringoes, New Jersey for two months while recovering from laminitis in all four feet. You'll want to be reading more in Nancy Jaffer's coverage of Allison's unbelievable story while I try to find out more about the laminitis. (NJ.com/Nancy Jaffer photo)

Not Even Martha Stewart Has A Recipe to Fix Chronic Lameness

by Fran Jurga | 26 January 2010 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog

Once again, celebrity horse owner Martha Stewart invited her readers into her barn in New York recently, through her blog. The photos were published over a period of a couple of weeks.

Martyn is a 17-year-old Dutch Friesian. Martha has been documenting his lameness problems for a while now on her blog, but her holiday message about the horse sounded quite discouraging. Martyn can no longer safely be turned out with the other horses during the winter, Martha wrote. The barn doors were kept closed and his stall door open, giving him the freedom of the huge stone barn.

Martha describes his problems as multiple, but chose to photograph the pasterns and fetlocks of his hind legs. Readers will probably "diagnose" this part of Martyn's problem. I don't know what else may have been diagnosed for the horse.

Soon after these photos were taken, the horse was euthanized. I can't remember another time when a celebrity figure detailed the health problems of a horse and its death on such a personal level.

A few months earlier, actress Glenn Close sent a video message to the
Fifth International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in West Palm Beach, Florida. She had been given an award for her role in a documentary about laminitis. In the video message, she mentioned her personal war with laminitis as she struggled to save her Morgan mare, Rosie, who was euthanized.

Lameness and laminitis can happen to any horse, but for these two women to speak out and show emotion over the loss of their horses is something new in the horse world. It can't change how a horse is doing, but perhaps it can help some owners stick with the program, or decide to get some tests done. Maybe it's the Internet, or maybe it's the age of accepting animals as family members, but it's a different world out there and owner emotions--positive and negative--are part of the equation of every horse's care and health.

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© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. Please, 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.