Saturday, January 22, 2011

Beth Garner: Farrier Industry Legend Goes on Ahead



I took this picture in Australia. The Hunter Valley was flooded when Beth and I were visiting, but our host, farrier Billy Neville, still needed to get into a big stud farm. Life had to go on in the Hunter Valley, so the farm had strung a suspension foot bridge over the raging river so that employees could get to work.

I knew better than to look down. I've seen all the Indiana Jones movies. I know what can happen.

So I did what I had always done: I followed Beth's lead. She just strode right onto that rickety, swaying bridge. I took a deep breath and put one foot on the boards, then the next. The apprentices behind us lugged all the farrier tools and equipment and we must have looked for all the world like a horseshoeing safari. As we neared the end of the bridge, I got up the nerve to let go of one of the ropes and take this picture.

Two things proved to be true of so many years, when it came to following Beth: 1) it never failed to lead me into an adventure; 2) it was always a good idea. I'd be sure to learn something. I didn't really follow anyone else.

Beth has now gone on ahead. Way ahead. She died this week in her beloved home town on the California coast. She leaves GE Tools in the capable hands of her son. She leaves me wondering what it will be like with no one to follow, or whether it's time to take the lead she always thought I should take.

"You want to go first?" she'd say in Chantilly or Newmarket or Christchurch or Scone, whether it was crossing a bridge strung from trees or walking into Francois Boutin's racing stable or climbing up a castle's stairs on one of Edward Martin's tours of Scotland.

I always let her go first, or made her go first, or hoped against hope that she'd volunteer to go first. That way I could follow behind so that at times like this I could remember what she might do or how she'd act or where she would have lead us next.


Beth Garner, aged 93, was the long-time public face of her family-owned GE Forge and Tool Company, makers of fine farrier tools. She took the company global in the 1980s, before global was the accepted way to go, and was the first American that many people in the farrier world in other countries ever met because she simply went where they were, wherever that was. She didn't wait for them to come to the USA.

Few people know that Beth Garner was also the impetus behind the founding of Hoofcare Publishing, the initial investor in the company, and the most trusted adviser. In her retirement, she transitioned easily out of business traveler mode and drove the length and breadth of the USA in a motorhome and went on expeditions to places like Antarctica. 


Among Beth's non-business accomplishments were donations of her time and resources to the farrier world. She organized annual meetings of farrier school educators who had never even spoken to each other before, and put up the seed money to form the American Farrier's Association's equine research fund, and served on the first board. She also helped form the Farrier Industry Association and supported virtually every farrier education event in North America and many in other countries.

Beth always claimed to not know anything about horses, though her travels took her to the finest farms and stables and races and shows in the world. She was just as impressed with the horses at a county fair as she was with the jumpers at Hickstead. 


What Beth knew about was people, and how to go around the world and always be invited back. She found doors in solid walls, made grumpy men who couldn't understand a word of English smile in spite of themselves and crafted distribution deals for GE Tools on restaurant napkins that are probably still honored. Her business card could have read: Trailblazer, ambassador, innovator...and trusted friend to all. Especially me.
 
© 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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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Todd Pletcher Wins Eclipse Award for Best Trainer, Gives Kudos to His Horseshoer, Ray Amato

I didn't see it live, but thanks to the wonders of YouTube and the NTRA's channel, I can share with you a magic moment at Monday night's 2010 Eclipse Awards. As Todd Pletcher accepted the Eclipse for Trainer of the Year, he made a little speech about the team behind  him. In particular he pointed out our friend, horseshoer Ray Amato, who was sitting at the table with him, and looking great in his tuxedo. I won't spoil it and tell you what Todd said; watch if for yourself. Suffice to say, it's the highest praise I've ever heard in a speech about a living horseshoer, let alone on national television. How about that!

Here's Ray at one of our Hoofcare@Saratoga events last summer. He's getting a hug from Ada Gates as he recalled how she came to him looking for an apprenticeship early in her career. Ada said he was the only horseshoer who'd even talk to her. She had to go to California to break into track shoeing; no woman had ever done it before, and few have since. Ada and Ray could have a comic speaker act. Like Todd Pletcher, Ray Amato won his first Kentucky Derby this year when he shod Super Saver for Pletcher. That night at Saratoga, he recalled how he had thought he had his first winner in 1973, when he shod Sham. But Secretariat had other ideas. The stories that these two can tell are amazing, as are their skills as storytellers!

 © 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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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

IRAP Equine Lameness Therapy: Two Veterinarians, Two Videos to Show and Tell the Treatment's Story

Interleukin-1 Receptor Antagonist Protein therapy (IRAP™) for equine lameness came on the scene a few years ago and seemed to be the province of university and referral hospitals. It was first discussed on this blog back in May of 2007, in New Lameness Treatments: IRAP™ Therapy.

Fast forward to 2011 and IRAP has become a word you'll overhear trainers using at the racetrack, and dressage riders quipping about as they compare notes on their horses' injuries. IRAP may not be an overnight sensation, but it would be close to the equivalent and if you haven't had first-hand experience with a case yet, just hang on--you will. Or, you may even be around horses that have undergone IRAP therapy and you didn't even know it: there are no scars, no bandages, no clipped hair.

But horse owners still call here and ask for advice: what is it? what can go wrong? who's had it done? It's true; some owners can't quite catch the name or the concept, and think of IRAP as just a very expensive joint injection. But they are usually pretty happy with the results.

IRAP isn't a treatment with a lot of drama or big equipment or flashing lights. It is simply a treatment of a sample of the horse's own blood, creating an enriched serum which contains anti-inflammatory proteins. These proteins are very specifically targeted to block the harmful effects of interleukin-1, an inflammatory mediator that accelerates the destruction of cartilage.

Will IRAP help every horse? Will it reverse the degenerative effects of years of arthritis? As the numbers of treatments increase, veterinarians are becoming more specific about ideal cases and potential benefits.

For the horse, the treatment consists of just two injections: first the drawing of a vial of blood, then the enriched serum is injected back into the horse at the site of the injury. Because the serum is autologous, or derived from the horse’s own blood, there is only a minimal risk of an adverse reaction.

When I went looking for a video about IRAP, I thought I would share two instead of one, because together they tell a good deal about IRAP. The two videos are similar, but show a lot of details about the process. Dr. McKee of McKee Pownall Equine Services has a Standardbred racehorse on hand as a patient, while Dr. Charlene Cook of Central Georgia Equine Services has a pleasure horse on the cross ties.

This may seem like too much information...until the day comes when you need to know about IRAP. 


Melissa McKee DVM of McKee Pownall Equine Services in Ontario, Canada leads the horse world through the demystification of many horse diseases and problems through her practice's YouTube channel. In this video, Dr McKee's straightforward explanation of IRAP should put horseowners at ease when their vets recommend the treatment. Thanks to McKee Pownall for their ongoing excellence in client education. Via YouTube and Facebook, they are educating many more of us than just their clients!

If you or one of your clients would like to read more about IRAP on paper, we have a link to an excellent document download, IRAP Therapy for Equine Osteoarthritis, created by Amanda House DVM of the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine's Extension Service.

© 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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Monday, January 17, 2011

University of Queensland's Equine Hospital Keeps Its Head Up Above the Flood


The photos of the devastation on the campus of the University of Queensland are pretty discouraging. As you've probably heard by now, the Brisbane River rose far above its banks and spread through and, in some cases, over the beautiful city of Brisbane in Queensland province in the northeastern corner of Australia.

A core group of veterinarians has created a virtual Noah's Ark for the animals that have been able to reach them...but the tragedy of a true flood is that so many animals are stranded where they are.

A dedicated veterinary team fed, washed, provided medical treatment and comfort to the animals that had been able to make it to their new equine hospital in Gatton. Gatton is the site of the University's new vet school, which only opened on August 6th.

University officials described "horses that had worn down their hooves swimming for up to 30 hours to stay afloat. "

Laminitis researcher and equine specialist Andrew Van Eps BVSc, PhD, MACVSc, DACVIM said that seven horses were brought in for medical treatment for injuries sustained in the floods and his staff members were heading out to farms to treat more horses.

“We have horses in various states of health. Quite a few horses have contracted pneumonia after breathing in flood water while swimming to stay alive,” Dr Van Eps said.

“There is a horse here that was housed in a stable when the flood arrived and had to tread water for about a day to survive.

“We are also are caring for a miniature horse foal that is only a few days old and was orphaned by the floods.”

Besides Van Eps, the equine hospital team includes Dr Susan Keane, Dr Philippe Manchon, Dr Steve Zedler, Dr Claire Underwood, Rebecca Johnson, Kylie Semple, Kate Hertrick,Trent Dawson, David Manchon and Natasha Curlew.

Photos and flood details courtesy of the University of Queensland.

 © 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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Friends at Work: John Edwards Is a Young Farrier Who Sees the Big Picture


When I first found out that John Edwards was only 22 years old, I thought that was pretty young. But when I listened to what he had to say about his chosen career as a farrier, I changed my mind, and I think you will, too.

John Edwards has the necessary sense of humility to understand that working with horses is a process, not a top-down delivery. And in almost any career you choose, when you work with horses your feelings for your career will go through changes. John Edwards may be keen on shoemaking now, but a few years from now he might get sidelined by working on some foundered horses or get fascinated with natural horsemanship or equine behavior.

All work with horses has many facets and phases, and he's absolutely right when he says that your learning is never done...and that anyone who claims to know it all or have all the answers must be very new to the scene.

John Edwards is a farrier in Navan, Ontario whose bio at the end of the slideshow gives the intriguing information that he plays the fiddle and curls. (Curling is that amazing ice sport played in the Olympics by players armed with brooms chasing what looks like giant spinning hockey pucks.)

This story originally was published in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper in Ottawa, Ontario. It was written by Bruce Deachman, who called John "One in a Million".

I know from personal experience that there are a lot more than "one in a million"...but we could still use a whole lot more young farriers like John Edwards.

Thanks to Bruce Deachman for making this multimedia file available for The Hoof Blog.

© 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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Sunday, January 16, 2011

Historic Hoofcare: The Ice Harvest


What you are seeing in this video is a pond in the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania. This particular project is to cut ice for one residence. The video follows the workers from the measurement of the thickness to the cutting of the ice to the removal of the blocks, loading the wagons, a visit from the man who had hired them, and then the transport and unloading of the ice.

It's hard to say how much ice a residence like the one in this film would require for a year, or even if the house is a year-round residence or not. But it was important to get the ice in, and if there's a saying for the summer months about making hay while the sun shines, there must have been a similar saying in the old days about cutting ice when the mercury's down in its bulb and the roads were clear of snow drifts.

I've been thinking a lot about ice lately. The heater isn't working in my car, which means that the defroster isn't, either. It's been below zero (Fahrenheit) and ice forms on the inside of the car while I'm driving. I'm not sure why, unless it is the condensation from my breath. But all the scraping (while holding my breath) gives me plenty of time to think about ice.

My conclusion: ice is great when it's where you want it (in a hockey rink, on an event horse's pastern, in your gin and tonic). But on the inside of your car, on your house steps, and especially in the form of black ice on a curvy road at night: not so great.

To say that we take ice for granted is an understatement.

But it wasn't always that way. Ice was an industry, and that industry used a lot of horses. And ice wasn't all created equal. Different climates, different water, and all sorts of different conditions affected the quality of the ice harvest. Some years have gone done in history for either the quantity of ice that was harvested or the quality--crystal clear blocks of ice were what they wanted to pull out of a pond. A warm winter sabotaged the preservation of perishable meat and foods the next summer.

So even though horses grow winter coats, they don't grow winter hooves. Crafty yankee horsemen had to figure out how to make their horses useful 12 months of the year. And so, it came to pass, that what we call "winter shoeing" was born.

Here's the ultimate in winter shoeing: four drive-in studs, a rim of borium, anti-snowball pads and frost nails on the hind foot of a Hanoverian driving horse who is in a serious training program in Vermont this winter. He's kept fit with regular sleighing work, but changing conditions mean that he can be on hard pavement, soft or hard-packed snow, ice, mud, or state-of-the-art indoor arena footing--or any combination of those. It's ok, he's ready for anything.
Winter shoeing these days is all about special anti-snowball pads, frost nails, studs or borium (or sometimes all of these!) to prevent slipping on multiple surfaces, or in some cases, studded removable hoof boots. Where we used to un-shoe horses for the winter months, many horseowners now opt add to their horses' shoeing complexity in the hope of making their lives safer. Many stables don't allow winter calks on hind feet for obvious reasons if horses are turned out in groups or blanketed.

In the old days, the concern was less about slipping in the paddock and more about helping the working horse stay on his feet and dig into the soft snow or hard ice to be able to pull a load, which was usually on some sort of a work sled in the winter months. Horsemen became connoisseurs of calks--just the right calk for that horse, that day, that road, that load.

An exception was the unusual contraption shown in the photo at left. This strap-on ice shoe was on display at the Monetta Farrier Specialties booth at the American Farrier's Association Convention in 2009. You might scratch your head over that one, as I did, since that company is located in South Carolina, where they were importing ice, not making it! But...collectors are collectors.

This shoe is similar to the strap-on and bolt-on shoes worn around here for salt marsh haying so the horses didn't sink into the boggy ground. Except where those shoes have a platform bottom, these have a steel shoe on the bottom, with welded projectile calks protruding around perimeter. This device would have been easy to remove so the calks wouldn't be worn down on a paved road but could be used when a horse need to grip in the snow or get up a hill. I wonder why we don't see more of these, and why Never-Slip calks were used so extensively instead?

The ice industry relied on very cold weather (like today) but without a lot of snow. The conditions had to be right, and when it was, it was a community effort to harvest the ice. The horses had to be shod so they could walk out onto the ice, and that part of the history of ice shoes was made universally possible by the invention of Never-Slip interchangeable calks. Otherwise, a change in weather meant a trip to the forge to add or remove or sharpen calks. And an expense.

Harness racing on Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. From an article by Caperton Tissot in the Adirondack Almanac about ice racing. In Minnesota, the horses raced on the Mississippi River.
Here in New England and in Maritime Canada, it wasn't just the draft horses who needed ice shoes. The speedy trotters  and their sleighs set out on the lakes and ponds and often raced across the ice. In Maine, I believe they still have Standardbred racing on the ice. I've always wanted to see that (from inside a cozy warm ice-fishing shack.)

This is what an ice-racing horse would probably wear on its feet; they are still worn today, if you can find the legendary races. It is a lightweight steel shoe with a very thin roll on the edge, into which tungsten tips are embedded, using copper solder. I've seen these shoes made in farrier competitions--they are not easy! I believe that this antique shoe is from Michael Wildenstein's collection.

One of the most interesting things I've learned about ice racing was that trainers used the snow season to spell the good horses, since there was no Florida racing until the 1930s, and only the trainers with the wealthiest clients could afford to go south. What the local trainers learned is that their good horses benefited from a rest over the winter, but that sore-footed horses that couldn't race in the summer and fall when the tracks were hard often excelled on the ice and some even went back to racing the following summer. I don't know how they conditioned horses for ice racing, but it's a cinch that the ice-cold footing, the low impact and the return to use (and its resulting stimulating effects on the circulation to the foot) were a formula for salvation for a lot of horses. Or maybe they were just going faster to stay warm.

The next time you walk over to your refrigerator with the automatic icemaker and fill a glass with cubes, think of these fellows out cutting the ice on a very cold winter's day, and think of the horses diving into their feed bags because they knew they were going to have to haul the heavy ice straight up a steep hill. Maybe those calks did a little double duty.

This is one of my favorite Hoof Blog photos, from back in 2008 when a terrible ice storm paralyzed New England.
Thanks to Adirondack Almanac, Minnesota Historical Society, Cape Pond Ice, Prelinger Archives, Farm Collector Magazine, Birch Hill Farm, Emily and Sarah Schwartz and all the people who've told me all the stories about the legendary ice races in Maine. I believe they exist. Somewhere.

To learn more: Right on cue, an article on the history of harvesting ice from the Hudson River was published in Friday's Troy Record in Troy, New York.

© 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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