Trot on! Hambletonian Winner Muscle Massive is a Jersey Boy But Might He Be the Last?

"Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated," is a line attributed to Mark Twain. The same could be said of The Meadowlands racetrack in urban New Jersey. Rumors from Trenton this summer suggest that the governor and state legislature might like to bypass support for casino-type gambling there in favor of other venues in the state. New Jersey's horse industry--much of it based in small Standardbred racing and breeding operations--is up in arms.

So when the $1.5 Million Hambletonian, the world's most famous trotting race, went off at The Meadowlands on Saturday afternoon, a crowd of 26,712--the highest attendance in five years--was on hand to watch, and a plane flew overhead with a banner asking them to "Save the Meadowlands".

The winner of the Hambletonian, a sparkling and regally-bred three-year-old bay colt named Muscle Massive, is a Jersey Boy and could be the poster child for Save the Meadowlands. He was bred right in New Jersey, at Perretti Farms. He's the son of Muscle Yankee, winner of the Hambletonian in 1998 and sire of 2008 Hambletonian winner Deweycheatumnhowe and 2009 winner Muscle Hill.

Muscle Massive clocked the second fastest final in Hambletonian history. The record was set by his sire.

If the horse is sound and that fast, credit must go his farrier and this horse has a good one. Congratulations to Conny Svensson (left) on shoeing his third Hambletonian winner. He also shod Malabar Man in 1997 and Scarlet Knight in 2001. Conny's most famous charge was the great and legendary globe-trotting mare Moni Maker.

Conny didn't comment about how the horse was shod--he had shod three horses in the race--but the trainer had this to say to Hoof Beats: "We raced him in steel shoes last week and I did that just for safety because he pulled a muscle, just to make sure he wouldn’t go off stride. I put aluminum shoes on him for today."
  
Harness racing is much more popular in attendance in Canada and in Europe than it is in the United States and yet The Hambletonian is still the one that every owner in the world would like to win. International wagering was nearly $2.4 million, up from $1.97 million wagered on the 2009 simulcast. Total wagering worldwide was $8,391,600, on the full card of yesterday's races at The Meadowlands.

Ah, but then in other parts of the world horse racing is often the only form of gambling, and the sport is a little more secure.

Muscle Massive is owned by a consortium of Swedish and Canadian interests and trained by Swedish native Jimmy Takter, who said in an interview that if The Meadowlands closed he would probably look for a different job.

A plane pulled a banner over the Meadowlands Racetrack on Saturday during the Hambletonian. The USA's richest Standardbred racetrack is endangered.

It seems like wherever I go, there is a crisis in the horse industry, and it usually has something to do with expanded gambling and state legislatures. I'd like to know how much better off the states with gambling really are; I think it is too soon to tell. What I can tell is that the pressure is on. New Jersey is caught between Delaware and Pennsylvania, where gambling is in at the racetracks; it is promised to come to New York at Aqueduct, a long stone's throw across the expansive marshland that gives The Meadowlands its name. The squeeze is on.  Kentucky feels the same kind of pressure. Maryland has struggled. Texas feels threatened. And here in Massachusetts,  our governor flatly refuses to save racing and insists of backing resort casinos identical to the ones in the state next door. Politics and horses have never mixed, but this is the future of all the horse industry that is at stake here. When the racing goes, other services go with it. Sport horses and pleasure horses will suffer, vets and farriers will suffer, hay and grain supplies and prices will suffer. And those are just the big ticket items at the top of the list. It's one big chain of dominoes. Just ask the owners of Perretti Farms, the largest Standardbred farm in New Jersey, where Muscle Massive's sire stands.

To learn more:

New Jersey Star Ledger's analysis of the effects of racing changes on vets, farriers, and sport horse industry in the state by Nancy Jaffer

Article about winning trainer Jimmy Takter and his comments on a future without The Meadowlands

© 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.

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Smiddy Stane: What Is this?

Smiddy Stane, originally uploaded by airth_man.

Do you know what this thing is? The Hoof Blog will be telling you, but I just thought I'd post this photo and see if anyone already knew. Or wanted to guess.

Lisa's Booby Trap: Sort Out the Feet, You've Got a Racehorse

Lisa's Booby Trap is a horse for anyone who has given up on horseracing. Or life. 
Photo courtesy of New York Racing Association.

Saratoga. Playground of the rich and famous. Well-bred people, better-bred horses. They check your pedigree at the city line.

But on Monday night, the best pedigree in the world couldn't get you to a new home; svelte yearling after svelte yearling went unsold at the Fasig-Tipton Select Sale, or sold at prices below what was expected, and hoped for.

The buyers turned up their noses at the yearlings. The hottest horse in town, instead, is none other than a $2000 freakishly-fast-finishing Florida-bred Finger Lakes filly who is trained by Tim Snyder, a guy from Maine who normally wouldn't be able to even get a stall at Saratoga.

The racing secretary at Saratoga does not have Tim Snyder on speed dial. The guy has one horse in his stable. But, this year is different in a lot of ways.

You see, Tim seems to think the horse may be the reincarnation of his wife, Lisa, who died of ovarian cancer in 2003 and vowed she'd "come back as a horse". And then this horse showed up in his life.

Lisa's Booby Trap. That's her name. The whole thing reads like a script for a video that plays inside a Hallmark card. Except it's really happening, right here in Saratoga, of all places. He was broke, and didn't even have a horse trailer to go pick her up when he bought her. She was club-footed, and only had one eye anyway. But, the way people tell me the story, she had not just a bad club foot but a flat pancake foot too and she needed someone to pay some attention to her hooves. According to NYRA, she wears a hind shoe on the flat front foot now. And she no longer hits herself when she runs. Tim found a horseshoer to get the job done. And now it is just a matter of waiting for Oprah to call.

Here's their story, though we don't know yet what her feet look like. (I'm on it, though.) This TVG segment was made when she had won her first three starts this spring and summer at Finger Lakes, which is sort of the "outback" of New York racing, out in the middle of the state.

So Tim must have borrowed a trailer or begged a ride for the filly across New York State to Saratoga. She made her workout debut during the morning trackside breakfast on the main track. The announcer didn't notice her streaking by, but the timer certainly did. That was a fast work. Lisa's Booby Trap had arrived.

Tim Snyder had never even entered a horse in a stakes race before. Not even at Finger Lakes. His filly was entered against a full card of Kentucky-breds. Two were conditioned by Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher. One was owned by Stonestreet Stables, owners of 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra. Speed demon Stormandaprayer is owned by chef Bobby Flay. And than there's Lisa's Booby Trap at 12-1, the only longshot on the program. Here's what happened:

According to NYRA and the Albany Times-Union, Lisa's Booby Trap will probably run next on Travers Day, which is Saturday August 28, in the Grade 3 Victory Ride.

I can't wait.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. 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). 
 

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Another Shed Row Heard From

Yesterday's blog story about the things that people see every day but don't stop to capture in photographs prompted Ada Gates to send in this photo from California. What do you see here? Two men in aprons. One working, one watching, right? "Here's my shed row picture," Ada wrote. "The apprentice learning from his boss farrier. I just thought it was sweet, and thankful the learning goes on." This is a timeless pose; apprentices have stood just like that with their hands on their knees for hundreds of years. Farrier apprentices aren't supposed to blink. Thanks, Ada!

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Friends (Alone) at Work: An Anvil for a Foot Rest

Double-click on the photo for a larger view.

I've had this photo on my mind for a while, and I wanted to write a story to go with it. It seems to warrant one.  It's at the San Antonio Rose Palace in San Antonio, Texas. The way I see it, two things could be going on: the farrier is waiting for a customer who is late (you know the farrier isn't early), or that's not the farrier stretched out in that chair, that's the customer, and she's waiting for the farrier, who unhitched his truck from the trailer to go get some lunch and hasn't been heard from since (and that was a long time ago).

We always see photos of farriers working, bending, pounding, and clinching but rarely do we see them in one of those rare down-time moments. Even more rare is a completely still shot of a typical moment of a typical summer day at a showground that includes a farrier, since the farrier is usually in great demand and resembles a perpetual motion machine. 

People don't usually take pictures of the moments when nothing's going on. But that's the essence of a summer day: things just seem to stand still, if you let them. And summer lasts longer, if you do.

This is what you might see when you come around the corner of any barn aisle across the USA today, tomorrow, this weekend and for the next month or so until the start of school and the coming cold weather chases everyone back home, so they can rest up and do it again next year.

That's my story, what's yours? 

This quietest of all farrier scenes was captured by Houston-area photographer Louis Vest, who is more at home aboard a ship than on or under a horse, but anything that he points his camera at is better for it. Louis is a ship's pilot in the Houston Ship Channel and travels the world. He has an amazing array of photographs (especially if you like the sea, which I do) on display at his Flickr.com site. Thanks, Louis. 

© 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.

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Free Donkey Foot Care DVD for Farriers

 

The British-based Donkey Sanctuary has recently launched a new short film on DVD that provides visual and technical support for farriers about the fine points of donkey hoof care.

An Introduction to Donkey Foot Care is free to all farriers and their apprentices and has been produced by the donkey-welfare charity to pass on the latest advice based from the charity's own experiences in the care and management of donkeys. The film also identifies key differences between horses’ and donkeys’ feet.

There are four main chapters in the 15 minute film, including:
• the normal donkey foot
• how to correctly trim a normal donkey foot
• how to deal with seedy toe (a.k.a. "white line disease" in the USA); and
• how to deal with trimming long feet.

Colin Goldsworthy, who is one of the Sanctuary’s most experienced farriers and who demonstrates all farriery within the film, says: “If you are just starting out as a farrier or even if you’ve been in the trade for years, please do get in touch for a free copy of this DVD. The film has been produced for you and the advice within it has been derived from The Donkey Sanctuary’s vast experience, having cared for almost 14,500 donkeys over the past 40 years.”

The DVD is free on request only to qualified farriers and/or industry apprentices. To obtain a copy please send an email.

The Donkey Sanctuary also provides free information sheets and training to farriers.

 © 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.