Fran Jurga`s Hoofcare + Lameness

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Electrocution's Shocking Effects on Horses

From the annals of Hoofcare and Lameness Journal and the Hoof Blog, here are some memorable accounts of horses who have lost their lives or been injured or at least caught my attention by their ability to conduct electricity:

In 2004, Horse and Hound told us about a horse that really got a warmup before the cross-country phase at the Blenheim Petplan International Horse Trials in England. Special Agent Wal had his studs in when he perforated a power cable with one of them. It gave him such a shock that he was thrown to the ground. The veterinarians still cleared him to go and he jumped a clear round. Way to go! Is that what the Brits mean with those "Keep calm and carry on" signs?

In 1999, a seven-year-old Manhattan carriage horse named Jackie stepped on a steel Con Edison service box cover on East 59th Street. She reacted by kicking her driver in the head, then collapsed and died. A spokesman for Con Edison said that the use of salt in winter may have corroded wires underground and that humans wouldn't feel the electricity because they don't wear metal shoes. But poor Jackie felt it on a rainy day, in a big way.

In Ireland in 2005, the Dublin Horse Show champion Dimmer Light and a stablemate were electrocuted when a short circuit from a light switch in their stable yard electrified the ground and gates, according to a very sad news report in Horse and Hound that I have kept tucked away. I think the ironic match of the cause of the short circuit and the horse's name always intrigued me as much as the electrocution angle.

One of my favorite all-time horse safety articles is from Windy Meadow Farm in Maryland. Eventer Michael Hillman was challenged by his water trough. Little did he know that every time his horse tried to take a drink of water, he was getting a shock to his lips! Michael's article, Dear Diary, I Almost Electrocuted My Horse Today is a classic. So is everything he writes!

My friend Cyrstal Kimball, editor of The Equiery in Maryland, told me a story about a time when she was out hunting and the entire field came upon a hot spot. "It was a downed electric fence, still hot, that electrified the wet ground in the surrounding area, and when the field hit it at a dead run, horses were winging off in all directions..." (But it sounds like they lived to tell the tale.)

None of us can remember exactly where or when the show was, but a dressage show in the Northeast had a hot spot inside the arena. Every time the horses came to the spot in the ring, they reacted.

And then there was the one about the horse owner who was driving down the road and had his trailer struck by lighting, leading to an electrical fire in his horse trailer. So it seemed like a really smart idea to drive right into a carwash. The horse was electrocuted and died.

Horseshoes and thunderstorms don’t mix: This old photo shows what was once an unsettlingly common occurrence in America: multiple horse deaths due to electrocution in thunderstorms. This six-horse hitch of Percherons owned by the Christy Brothers Circus was struck by lightning on September 1, 1923. They were hitched up for the circus parade when lightning hit a transformer nearby. The wet mud surrounding each horse’s shoes provided a perfect field. In addition to this team, four horses pulling the calliope and eight horses pulling the lead circus wagon were killed. And a few people, too. Thanks to the Wisconsin Historical Society and Circus World Museum for the loan of this photo.

Speaking of lightning, that is probably the most common way that horses are electrocuted. I'm still struck by the imagery in this amazing story about a polo player's horse trailer and his ponies being struck in New Jersey in 2008. They all survived but I just can't forget the description of the ponies going down "like dominoes". For your own safety's sake, read the article, which has a lot of good information about lightning strikes.

A horse named Sadie survived being struck by lightning in 2001. Her owner looked out the window and saw a cloud of orange smoke where her horse should have been. She ran out and found the horse on the ground; the horse got to her feet after a while and staggered around. After a few weeks she was fine, except for lingering foot soreness. Her vet attributed her survival to the fact that she wasn't shod.

We all live in a tangle of wires, in an environment with increasingly severe weather and crazy service problems for our utilities. Our horses, even if they aren't shod, have plenty of metal on their tack, hang out by metal gates, live behind electric fence, and require heated waterers in their paddocks in winter and electric fans in their stalls in the summer. The possibilities for any of us to be zapped at any time, in any barn, are high.

Think about what you're touching, especially with your bare hands on a wet day, and keep an eye out for horses that might need help. And if a horse is acting completely out of character, there might be a good reason why.

© 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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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Aluminum Shoes May Have Saved Two Horses' Lives as Two Steel-Shod Horses Die in Possible Electrocution at British Racecourse

Video by ITN.

The worlds of both sport and horses were rocked today when news came from England that four horses had become agitated for no obvious reason in the paddock before the first race at Newbury Racecourse in Berkshire. The horses began rearing and falling as the jockeys were mounting. Within minutes two horses had died while two others rose back to their feet.

The rest of the horses continued to the start and the race was run, but track officials canceled the remainder of the program for the day. Rumors began immediately that the horses had been electrocuted, and that a groom had felt a shock come through the horse's body, and a lead line showed burn marks.

According to the Racing Post, unconfirmed reports suggested that some of the runners who actually took part in the race appeared to have burn marks around their mouths when their tack was removed.

In an interview late on Saturday, Joint Managing Director of Newbury Racecourse Stephen Higgins commented on the shoes worn by the four horses affected in the incident. He said that the two horses that died were shod with steel shoes. The two horses that went down and got back up were shod with aluminum shoes. The two metals would conduct electricity differently if a shock was transmitted through the grass.

He also mentioned that because horses have four legs instead of two, they are much more sensitive to electricity in the ground, and that that would explain why humans might not have noticed the electricity. There were also rubber mats on the ground which the horses were stepping off onto the grass when the incident occurred.

Commenting on the incident, Professor Tim Morris, Director of Equine Science and Welfare for the British Horseracing Authority, confirmed that a full investigation is under way: “Following the tragic events at Newbury today, our sympathies go out to connections of the two horses that died, Fenix Two and Marching Song.

"We have launched a full investigation into the events before the first race. Whilst there are suspicions that an electrical fault was the cause and this is being looked into by the racecourse and relevant authorities, it is important that we investigate other possible causes.

"Both horses have been sent for post mortem examinations and samples from both horses, and from the other two horses involved in the incident, have been taken and will be analysed. We will also be testing a sample of the water supply and have secured and will review all of the CCTV footage from the racecourse stables and footage from the parade ring itself at the time.

"We have gathered evidence and statements at the racecourse from the connections involved with the incident, including trainers, jockeys, stable staff and owners, the racecourse and BHA veterinary officers, and the racecourse executive including the health and safety officer."

On its Facebook page, the racecourse posted this message to the public:

"The whole team here is totally devastated and our condolences are with everyone connected to the horses and those that saw this happen. The Electricity Board are carrying out investigations now and a further statement will be issued tomorrow."

The British Horseracing Authority quotes Jonjo O'Neill, trainer of Fenix Two, as saying: "Kid Cassidy was in front (leaving the paddock) and he took a turn. We thought he was bucking and kicking and he went down on his knees then he seemed to be OK. Mine reared up and we couldn't get him back, it was like he was stuck to the ground. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life."

Marching Song's part-owner Graham Thorner said: "I was very fond of him and he had great potential. To a layman with no evidence, you would say it was electrical. The lad who was with him was saying 'I'm getting an electric shock off this horse'. It can't be coincidence four horses have done the same thing and two have died, all in the same area."

Press assistance from the British Horseracing Board was instrumental in preparing this report.

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Monday, January 31, 2011

Buck Brannaman Documentary: Real Life Horse Whispering at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival

Congratulations to Cindy Meehl and Cedar Creek Productions. Their documentary "Buck" was not only selected to be shown at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this week in Park City, Utah--it has won the Audience Award!

Buck chronicles the horse training phenomenon Buck Brannaman. Or should I say non-training. Or anti-training. Or alt-training.

Whatever you call what Buck Brannaman does, you can be sure that this film will spread Buck's non-violent horse handling word.

It will spread it around the world, as a matter of fact. The documentary was acquired by Sundance Selects for distribution in North America; it was also picked up for theaters in Australia and New Zealand by Madmen Entertainment.

I'm sure a lot of blog readers who've been around the horse world for a while will see the irony in this story. Buck Brannaman was the inspiration for the 1998 Nicholas Evans novel, The Horse Whisperer. When that novel was made into a film, it starred and was directed by Robert Redford. Technically, I guess you could say, Robert Redford played Buck Brannaman.

And Robert Redford is the man behind the Sundance Film Festival.

And so it goes.

Buck Brannaman and Robert Redford at the Sundance Film Festival last week. Buck's the star of the film this time. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images North America, mirrored from Zimbio.com)

The trailer gives a hint at how the film approaches who Buck Brannaman is and what he does. Once it gets to the theaters (unless you happen to be in Utah this week), take people to see it. Horse people, non-horse people, just people. They might learn a lot, so might those of us who think we know it all already.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Vet-Span: Watch an Arkansas Legislative Committee Consider a Bill to Clarify the State's Vet Practice Act

Legislative committee hearings are the first step in the life or death of a bill introduced at the state level. In the most basic process, it happens like this: a state representative or senator files a bill, it is referred to a committee, the committee approves or disproves it, and the bill either goes forward to another committee or goes to the vote of the House or Senate. If turned down, the legislation may be abandoned or it may be modified and brought before the committee again.

Each state has a veterinary practice act. Most are modeled after a draft document provided by the American Veterinary Medical Association, but there is variation among the 50 states. One of the most contentious parts of the newer practice acts has been the definition of veterinary medicine to include all acts of prevention and treatment of disease in animals.

At various times, the veterinary practice acts have been challenged with requests for changes or interpretation in different states and it is quite often the horsecare field that is the battleground. Equine massage and equine dentistry are two professions that the veterinary profession seems to have identified as trying to cross over into the practice of veterinary medicine. Horseshoeing, farriery, equine podiatry and the practice of providing hoofcare by any number of other names are often lumped in with other gray-area professions from dog grooming to acupuncture. Horse trainers in some aspects of their work may even cross over the line.

Some states have attempted to clarify or modify veterinary practice acts, but of course it is much harder to change something after it has already been signed into law. Arkansas is one of the states that tried to change, or clarify, its practice act to allow professionals besides veterinarians to legally provide their services to animals.

The Arkansas proposed change was introduced with the new 2011 legislature and had its first committee hearing on January 19. Quite unrelated, the state of Arkansas at the same time introduced live video streaming of its committee hearings. As a result, the entire meeting of the House of Representatives' Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development Committee could be downloaded and preserved on the Hoof Blog.

At the end of the video, you will see that the bill failed its first hearing. Jim House, a horseshoer from Fayetteville, Arkansas and former state legislator who introduced the bill, hopes and believes that it will be modified and reintroduced.

I've been in touch with Jim House extensively about his attempt to clarify and/or change the Arkansas Veterinary Practice Act. The presentation of this video is not to embarrass Jim or to publicize the bill's defeat or to criticize the way the bill or the Veterinary Practice Act in Arkansas or any other state.

The purpose of posting this video is to give you a clear view of the legislative process and how the care of horses and careers of professionals (whether veterinarians or not) can be affected by men in suits sitting around tables who may or may not know what the care of a horse entails. This is democracy in action, because these men were elected by the people of Arkansas. Think about that the next time an election rolls around.

If you are planning to begin or continue a career in the horse industry, spending the time to watch this video would be a good investment. It could be any state. It could be yours.

I've known Jim House (left) for many, many years. He is a horseshoer who has always been passionate, thoughtful and enthusiastic about his work. A former state representative in Arkansas, he said that he actually didn't undertake this project to benefit himself, or even his fellow horseshoers in Arkansas, but to benefit all who work with horses, and those who own them.

The Pandora's Box that Jim opened in his state is wide open, cracked, or at least being talked about in almost every state. No one but lawyers and opportunists will benefit from much of this until the vets and the professionals get together on their own, with the men's suits left hanging safely in their closets and with women, who predominate in both the horse industry and in the veterinary profession, joining in the conversation.

Finding and agreeing on common ground is the most important first step forward, if any of the three groups (owners, veterinarians and horsecare professionals) really wants, as Jim House says, to help the horses and not just themselves.

Meanwhile, the American Veterinary Medical Association is in the process of collecting comments for a new, revised Model Veterinary Practice Act (MVPA), as announced here on The Hoof Blog in November 2010. Once completed, the new MVPA will be presented to states and the AVMA will hope that state veterinary boards will adopt some or all of its tenets and present them to their state legislatures for approval, thus replacing the existing VPA in each state that adopts it.

So, any changes made to language in the MVPA would stand a good chance of being widely adopted across the United States. And those changes are being solicited right now.

TO LEARN MORE:

Download the Arkansas Veterinary Practice Act.

Download Arkansas House Bill 1055; click on "full text" to read the entire bill proposed to clarify the Veterinary Practice Act in Arkansas.

Jim House's passion for clarifying the Arkansas Veterinary Practice Act is presented in this article for Arkansas animal owners.

Read comments from horse owners in Arkansas (both pro and con) about House Bill 1055.

Read about the AVMA's call for comments on the new model Veterinary Practice Act.

Hoofcare Publishing provides these resources as information for our readers and does not have an interest in the outcome of the legislation in Arkansas or any other state. Our goal is to pique the interest and involvement by our readers in all matters affecting the betterment of individual and collective groups who care for horses. Be informed. Get involved. But work proactively and collaboratively; remember the words of John F. Kennedy: "A rising tide will lift all boats."

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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Video: Equine Biomechanics Integrated with an Icelandic Horse's Disco-Rhythm Hoofbeats by Swiss Researchers

Are you awake now?

This video is your wake-up call. It's a fast-cut peek inside the high-tech equine performance testing laboratory at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, where kinematic- and kinetic-research are undergoing an exciting fusion under the direction of biomechanics research professor Michael Weishaupt PhD DMV. Where the disco beat came from is anyone's guess!

Are the researchers trying to turn this Icelandic into an Olympian or a racehorse? No, there are no Frankenhorses in biomechanics labs. "The application of knowledge pertaining to sports medicine does not aim to increase the speed of the horse or allow it to jump higher, but to keep the athlete sound, prepare it optimally for a specific event, and to recognize detrimental influences early in order to avoid an untimely end to an athletic career," wrote Dr Weishaupt along with Zurich's esteemed professor of equine surgery, Dr Jorg Auer, in an explanation of the research at Zurich.

To do that, Weishaupt and his colleagues are combining kinetic and kinematic research in the same evaluation system. Two formerly exclusive branches of biomechanics research are now under the hood of the same laboratory testing matrix.

Kinematics is nothing new to Hoofcare + Lameness readers. Kinematics is simply the study of motion. A student of dressage could be said to be an equine kinematics scholar, on some level. But in the world of clinical evaluation of horses, we have typically talked about kinematics as the two-dimensional recording of a horse's movement in order to gain insight into a horse's stride's length or velocity or frequency, or to determine lameness. It works very nicely to prove or enhance what we think we see with our naked eyes or what the rider thinks he or she feels from the saddle.

For the past five years or so, kinematics in the laboratory has been moving ahead. Three-dimensional gait analysis has been used in research to delve deeper into the horse's movement so that joints can be analyzed for the complex structures that many of them are. A hinge joint like the fetlock might be analyzed in two dimensions, but what about the hock or the spine? And what about the coffin joint, a complex structure with three types of motion patterns--flexion-extension, abduction-adduction and axial rotation?

And what if a specific location in the limb could be isolated, such as the distal end of the cannon bone, where so many racing injuries occur? If the forces there can be measured over different track surfaces, aren't we light years ahead in preventing breakdowns?

When studying the motion of the horse, it's not just about the legs. The neck and head and back are critical components so gait analysis has expanded to putting markers all over the horse. The angular motion patterns (flexion-extension, lateral bending and lateral excursion) of six vertebrae (T10, T13, T17, L1, L3 and L5) and the axial rotation of the pelvis are calculated by the software used in the research--in the case of our friends in Zurich, that would be the Qualisys system.

In this video, provided by Qualisys, researchers used a similar system at the University of Agricultural Science in Uppsala, Sweden; 12 cameras recorded the horse in three dimensions on a sensitized treadmill so that the movement of the head and neck could be studied with each footfall and with the movement of the rider. Notice that the horse's center of gravity is always clearly marked on the screen.

So now the leading research labs may use three or many more cameras and create almost realistic moving horses on computer screens. Wireless technology has also improved the operations in the equine research laboratory.

If kinematics is the study of motion, kinetics is its alter ego, the study of force. Kinematics might not care if you were a ballerina or a gorilla crossing a Broadway stage--you'd just be a pattern of dots for it to interpret. And kinetics wouldn't care how synchronous or straight your limbs worked as you crossed; kinetics would worry instead about what happened when your feet hit the stage. Did you slide? Did you hit with enough force to break through a board? How long did each foot stay on the floor?

Researchers explore kinetics with force plates and, more recently, the alternative of pressure-sensitive materials such as mats and walkways embedded with sensors. In Zurich's case, it is an instrumented (sensor-embedded) treadmill (photo, above), or "TiF": a "Treadmill-integrated Force" measuring system able to record the vertical ground reaction forces of all four limbs simultaneously and report it instantly.

The buzzwords of kinetics are ground reaction force and center of gravity. A foot in water finds little resistance, but a foot usually lands on somewhat solid ground, depending on the nature of the footing. If the surface was rigid and foot was a wine glass, it would shatter, but it's designed to deform and store energy when it meets the ground. How to measure what happens during that meeting is the goal of kinetic research.

So the scientists at the University of Zurich wanted to analyze how the Icelandic horse on the treadmill in the video is moving (kinematics) while intermittently impacting the ground (kinetics) with his hooves. One of the new advantages of hoof-related research is the integration of the kinetic and kinematic tools. As the video screen draws the dotted horse that the cameras see, the pressure sensors simultaneously are recording the data of the impact of each footfall. The integration of these systems is relatively recent.

But there is a third entity going on here. The addition of a saddle and rider will affect the kinematics of the horse and no doubt the kinetics as well. So the researchers are measuring the pressure and movement of the saddle. Last year the same lab studied dressage horses at the collected walk--a deceptively simple gait that is a challenge to many upper level horses--and measured how much and in what direction at what phase of the stride the saddle moved.

Believe it or not, little research on the walk had been done before, and in particular, no one had tested how the rider and saddle might affect the horse's score at the walk. Since racehorses tend to trot, pace or gallop for a living, you will find a deep history of studies on those gaits over the course of equine biomechanics history. Sport horse kinetics and kinematics is a far less investigated field of study.

In the Zurich tests, all the dressage horses' saddles moved in the same directions at the same phases of the strides, and the rider's movement was the same as well.

And what about the hooves? Labs like Zurich have conducted comparative studies of how a horse moves while unshod, shod normally, and shod with rolled toe or "four point" shoes to study the effects of shoeing changes on kinematics and kinetics--in particular, the timing of the phases of the stride. Does a particular shoe cause a horse to keep its foot on the ground longer than another, and might this be associated with an increased potential for injury?

So now the dressage horses have gone home and the Icelandic horses are being tested. A research project in progress is Kinetics, kinematics and energetics of the tölt: Effects of rider interaction and shoeing manipulations. The tölt is the amazing fast gait of the Icelandic horse; it is their signature show gait, and possibly unique to the breed. Will changing the shoes on an Icelandic horse change its ability to perform the tölt?

Since no one has studied an Icelandic horse with the resources that are available today, no one really knows.

But someone will. And, by extension, the world will know soon after that.

Thanks to BartMedia Designs for this video.

Here's a little video about using similar but more simplified equipment for testing humans. I hope this helps you understand biomechanics research a little better! The concepts mentioned in this blog post are vastly over-simplified but once you understand the basic concepts, it will all start to make sense.

To learn more: BYSTRÖM, A., RHODIN, M., Von PEINEN, K., WEISHAUPT, M. A. and ROEPSTORFF, L. (2010), Kinematics of saddle and rider in high-level dressage horses performing collected walk on a treadmill. Equine Veterinary Journal, 42: 340–345. doi: 10.1111/j.2042-3306.2010.00063.x

Anyone interested in learning more about equine biomechanics would be well-served by attending the Equinology biomechanics course with Dr. Hilary Clayton at the McPhail Equine Performance Center at Michigan State University's College of Veterinary Medicine in the fall of 2012. A combined course in biomechanics and lameness evaluation with Dr. Clayton will be offered in England in March 2011 at Writtle College.

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Share the Hoof Blog's Success with a Banner Ad or Sponsored Post!

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It's time to open up the Hoof Blog and share the fun and wealth of more than 1000 articles and news items about hoof health, farrier science, research and the art, culture, and history of those who care for horses' feet.

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