Favorite Photo: A Good Hand Around a Horse

Working hand, originally uploaded by loustinephoto.

Some photos are more effective because of what they don't show you.

You don't need to see this farrier's face. You know him just by looking at his hand.

Look at the size of this man's thumb and the breadth from thumb to forefinger. My thumb doesn't even reach the first knuckle on my forefinger; it is set low on my hand and can't grasp much. This man's thumb is extraordinary.

I believe that a horse understands the difference when a hand like this touches it. A horse recognizes a touch somewhere in its genetic memory.

Maybe there aren't many good horsemen left, as everyone is always lamenting. But there are still a few good hands. This is one of them.

Global Hunter Takes a Detour to the Winner's Circle, Via Surgery at Alamo Pintado

It was a game finish to the American Handicap at California's Hollywood Park on the Fourth of July. While the rest of us were on the barbeque and fireworks circuit, a nice racehorse was being pulled up after winning the race by a neck. They called it a "bad step" in the racing press. In spite of the win, a nice horse became a statistic, and almost a fatality.

Global Hunter never made it to the winner's circle. The veterinarians took over and the Grade 1 stakes winner was vanned that night to Dr. Doug Herthel's Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center in Los Olivos, California. That's a long van ride; Los Olivos is north of Santa Barbara. But it was worth the trip.

Radiographs apparently showed that the horse dislocated his fetlock but did not actually fracture his leg, although I am sure more detailed images have been taken now, and the surgeons may have found some damage. Virtually all the racing publications, web sites and TVG reported that the horse went into surgery at Alamo Pintado under the care of Dr Carter Judy, and that he seemed to recover well afterwards and was standing on all four legs. Dr Carter's surgical repairs used plates and screws to realign and stabilize the lower limb.

Now begins the vigil. A Global Hunter Facebook page immediately popped up and will hopefully keep a flow of news available to those who care about the horse

Global Hunter is a seven-year-old Argentine-bred son of Jade Hunter who has done well racing in California. The Grade II American Handicap was a turf race.

About the joint: The fetlock, or metacarpophalangeal joint,  is a relatively straightforward joint that flexes and extends with the changing segments of the horse's stride. The cannon (third metacarpal) bone meets the long pastern bone (proximal phalanx) and the knob-like proximal sesamoids to form this joint. A small sagittal ridge between the condyles (rounded ends) of the cannon bone creates a sort of stabilizing bar within the joint so that it only opens and closes in a flex-extend acceptable range of motion. This ridge and the condyles of the cannon bone sit perfectly into the joint cavity created by the long pastern bone. Such a nicely designed joint architecture is held in place by a network of short, tight ligaments that prevent both side-to-side motion and dangerous knuckling forward of the joint. In addition, the two proximal sesamoid bones are points of attachment for the branches of the suspensory ligament (interosseous) and the deep digital flexor tendon rides across the back of the two sesamoids. In summary, the fetlock is much more than a mere joint: it is an intersection of both soft and bony tissue and one of the most critical structures for both weightbearing and locomotion.

Global Hunter will no doubt remain at Alamo Pintado for the time being. The hospital made this video available about its fracture repair services. While Global Hunter's injury may not technically not a long-bone fracture, the process to repair it is similar to the fracture repair and surgical processes detailed in this video, so I thought I would share this. He is a lucky horse, but we will find out in the weeks to come just how lucky. Maybe someday he'll make it back to the winner's circle at Hollywood Park for his win photo from the Fourth of July.

To learn more: An excellent paper on the structure and function of the fetlock joint and the how-and-why of injuries in racehorses is Articular Fetlock Injuries in Exercising Horses by Elizabeth M. Santschi DVM of the College of Veterinary Medicine at The Ohio State University. It is published in Performance Horse Lameness and Orthopedics, Volume 24 No. 1 (April 2008) of Veterinary Clinics of North America: Equine Practice.

Video courtesy of Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center in Los Olivos, California

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com
© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing


Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. 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.

Friends at Work: Ricky Price Shoes Horses, and Lives His Own Life

This week we have a fine example of the independent-spirit brand of American horseshoer. You don't have to call him a farrier, because he is perfectly happy being a horseshoer. In fact, he seems perfectly happy, period.

Ricky Price lives in Ramona, California and has used shoeing horses as a way to live the good life in the hills east of San Diego. In this nice audio slideshow from San Diego Online, you'll see Ricky (and his fantastic mustache) and you'll hear the sounds that he hears--horses, hammer on anvil, his pickup truck, the buzz of his grinder, a steel shoe being released from the pulloff jaws with a clatter.

Somewhere, there's the Other San Diego, with all the hustle and bustle, but Ricky's beyond all that, or at least he's east of it, out past San Diego Wild Animal Park. He won't cross Interstate 15, which is sort of a dividing line between San Diego, the sprawl, and San Diego County, the place where people like Ricky Price can and do live. He starts the day when he's ready. He finishes it when he's done. He still has time and energy to ride every night when it's over. He can still hear himself think, and one thing he thinks is that he can help a horse relax and enjoy being shod.

In the "Voice of San Diego" article that goes with this multimedia gem, Ricky Price gives the reporter a Lesson in Lifestyle...as only an independent American horseshoer who has found his place on the map--or is it off the map, Ricky?--can.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com 
© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing
Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. 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.

Have You Met Oscar, the Bionic Cat With No Hind Feet?

Oscar walks on two prosthetic hind feet that are attached to "pegs" surgically implanted in the remaining bone in his hind leg. The pegs mimic deer antler in that skin can--and does--attach to them. Once the pegs healed, the detachable feet could be attached. Photo by Jim Incledon via The Bionic Vet

You might want to think twice before saying, "Here, kitty, kitty!" to a cute little black cat...who is missing both his hind feet. Oscar got the short end of a run-in with a combine on a farm, but that tragedy led to his becoming possibly the world's most famous cat. Oscar was referred to an Irish vet surgeon named Noel Fitzpatrick who now practices in England.

Oscar became a candidate for a very special surgical procedure that implanted pegs into the stump of his limbs, in plain English. The implants healed and tiny prosthetic paws were attached to them.

Oscar, the Irish vet, the surgical process and an inspiring cast of surgeons, physiotherapists and forward-thinking animal advocates are featured in The Bionic Vet, a new British BBC "reality" show set in the progressive vet hospital where Fitzpatrick tries to help the handicapped animals brought to him.

Many readers know that I have been working with Molly the Pony for the last few years. Molly is an amputee who survived being abandoned during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans only to be mauled by  a pit bull; gallant surgery at Louisiana State University's vet school amputated her lower right front leg. She now visits hospitals and schools to inspire and encourage people to do what she has done: overcome adversity. (You'll be able to meet Molly at the World Equestrian Games this fall.) I've seen first-hand how complex the care of all four of her legs is, and always wondered if there might be something on the horizon. And now I can see it, though I realize it may be pretty far off for horses.

Here are a few clips about cases that you might see on the show if it is shown in the USA (or wherever you live). The dog paw is an older case but I thought it might be useful to show it:

The revolutionary design of the feet uses custom-made implants to ‘peg’ the ankle to the foot and mimics the way in which deer antler bone grows through skin – a case of science ‘copycatting’ the natural world.

These pegs, or ITAPs (Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthetics), were first developed by a team from University College London’s Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Science. Intraosseous means into the bone; Transcutaneous means through the skin; Amputation means the intentional surgical removal of a body part, usually a portion of a limb; Prosthetics means the design and/or application of devices to act as functional or cosmetic replacements.

In a three-hour operation, the veterinary surgical team inserted the ITAPs by drilling into the bones in each of the hind legs. This in itself was an extremely delicate feat, one that could have fractured the ankle joint before the procedure had even begun. It was even more challenging because it had to be performed perfectly twice, once in each leg. The artificial (titanium) implants which are inserted into the bone are coated with hydroxyapatite, which encourages bone cells to grow onto the metal.

The skin then grows over the special umbrella at the end of the ITAP to form a resilient seal against bacteria and potentially fatal infections. The ITAP itself protrudes through the bone and skin, allowing the custom-built artificial paws to be securely attached.

In 2008 Noel Fitzpatrick opened a £10 million state-of-the-art facility in Surrey, England. His goal is to transform the face of modern veterinary surgery. His clinic offers a unique blend of leading-edge diagnostics and surgery with rehabilitation modalities including on-site physiotherapy and hydrotherapy.

“Harnessing advanced biomimetic material and mechanics with the latest surgical techniques”, Noel Fitzpatrick says, “is set to transform the future of orthopedic practice in both human and animal medicine.”

To learn more: Read about Oscar and the Bionic Vet television show on the BBC web site. 

Now, who's going to get Noel Fitzpatrick interested in horse hooves?

Thanks to Rachelle Steabler for bringing Oscar and Noel to my attention!

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com
© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. 
Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. 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.

Star-Spangled Anvils: The Anvil Chorus May Have Been the Fourth of July's Original Crowd-Pleasing Music

I live in a place that takes the traditions of the  Fourth of July very seriously. It's a celebration here of Olympic proportions, as 800,000 or so of your closest friends all get together on the banks of the Charles River in Boston and wait for the sky to erupt in one of the most dazzling fireworks displays anywhere. Everyone waits for the orchestra to strike up the grand finale, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. The church bells ring, cannons fire, and the fireworks begin.

And it's all choreographed perfectly--every year!

But people haven't always cheered to the 1812. Tchaikovsky didn't even write his 1812 Overture until the 1880s and he probably never heard it performed outdoors with cannons and church bells.

Musical tone anvils are still manufactured today outside Boston, Massachusetts, as demonstrated here by manufacturer/percussionist Neil Grover.

No, that was Boston's idea. Back in the 1980s, the city needed to boost the outdoor concert; they needed a grand finale showstopper. The 1812 filled the bill, since there were churches nearby to help out with the bells. It worked so well that other cities and orchestras followed suit and now everyone connects that piece of music with fireworks and the US celebration of the Fourth of July. And everyone knows there was a war in the United States in 1812, even though the music was written to commemorate Napoleon's ill-fated siege of Moscow in 1812.

So what did they play for a grand finale back in the old days? Chances are, they played the Anvil Chorus. And they played it very loud. With anvils.

Like most Americans of a certain age, I grew up listening to the Anvil Chorus  because it was built so many of the soundtracks of the cartoons I watched on television. When you heard the familiar chorus, it signaled something dramatic to follow. Usually it was Roadrunner being buried under a pile of boulders that tumbled on top of him in time to the music.

To celebrate the end of the Civil War in Boston, 100 farrier anvils provided percussion for a performance of Verdi's Anvil Chorus in what was the largest outdoor concert in history until Woodstock in 1969.  Did anyone play an anvil there? Here you see the firemen rehearsing.

Verdi's opera Il Trovatore, which contains the Anvil Chorus, premiered in 1853, in an era when so-called "musical" anvils were already embedded in orchestras' percussion sections. Wagner used them elaborately in his German operas, but Verdi brought the anvils on stage. His score directed that the sound of the anvils was not to emanate from the orchestra pit. The singers in the chorus were to hammer the anvils: basses should play (hit) their anvils on the beat; tenors provided the offbeat on-stage percussion. The audience loved it, and the rest is history.

Percussionists have always appreciated what an anvil could offer them. But as percussion became more sophisticated, orchestras didn't use just any anvils; there actually was a demand for anvils identifiable not for their horn shape or heel width, but for their tones.

Even though the sound of an anvil can be created and manipulated electronically, percussion anvils--which look nothing at all like "real" anvils, but sound just like them--are still manufactured and sold; one manufacturer is Grover Pro Percussion, in Woburn, Massachusetts.

But sometimes just an anvil or two would not be enough: Wagner wrote music for 16 different anvils in his opera, Das Rheingold. And when the city of Boston was ready to celebrate the end of the Civil War, the party planners knew what the audience would want to hear. They put a call out to the city's horseshoers, who donated a whopping 100 anvils for the big night. The city's firemen were dressed up in finery to play the anvils. In an age with no microphones, no sound systems, and no speakers, you can be sure that the people in the back row over by the river heard the percussion for the Anvil Chorus.

That concert, by the way, was the largest attendance at a musical event in history, until Woodstock came along 100 years later.  Were there anvils on stage at Woodstock? The great tradition of the Anvil Chorus has always had a way of making anvils heard, wherever and whenever great music is made.

Happy Birthday, America! 

 

4 July 2010 | © Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. 


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Friends at Work: Holland's Rob Renirie Shoes for Anky Between World Cup Matches

Between World Cup matches, Dutch farrier Rob Renirie found his way to dressage star Anky van Grunsven's training center in Erp this week to shoe some of her horses in training; here you see him working on Nelson. Anky was impressed that he used a fan to keep away the flies. I was impressed that even Anky van Grunsven has flies. While Anky will not be competing for a place on the Dutch dressage team at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Kentucky this September, she scored a personal-best 70.5 on her most recent reining test.  I believe two 68s are the requirement to qualify for WEG. Unfortunately Anky's low score didn't count since she rewarded her horse too soon and her score dropped to zero! Rob Renirie, on the other hand, should be a shoe-in to be the Dutch team farrier at WEG in Kentucky and we'll hope to see him there! Maybe the Brazilians will have recovered by then. Photo mirrored from www.anky.nl.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com
© 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.