Fran Jurga`s Hoofcare + Lameness

Monday, July 11, 2011

Calgary Stampede: Steven Beane Three-peats as World Champion

Steven Beane of North Allerton in Yorkshire, England captured his third consecutive global title at the Calgary Stampede’s 32nd Annual World Championship Blacksmiths’ Competition on Sunday. Beane is the first competitor to win back-to-back-to-back world crowns at Calgary since Welshman Grant Moon snared his fifth straight WCBC title back in 1992.

And Beane’s competition in Sunday’s five-man final made the feat that much more impressive. Stoking coke forges around the Big Top floor were Moon, with six world titles to his credit, fellow Welshman Billy Crothers, with five Stampede titles, and Paul Robinson of Northern Ireland, who won the WCBC crown in 2008 before Beane went on his current run.

“It’s very hard to win Calgary every time. But this year, with this field of competitors, there was nothing between us, you know?” said Beane, 32. “These guys are all friends and colleagues of mine.

The full top five were from the U.K., which is quite an achievement.

“And to beat them, you’ve got to be at your best, and I’m lucky it happened for me this week. I’ve prepared, and I’ve put a lot of time in for Calgary – for the past three months, Calgary has been my goal,” added Beane. “With the jet lag, I average only four hours of sleep a night here. So I’ve got to be fit. I’ve got to be focused.

“And when you hear who’s coming, it makes you more determined. You want to win the world championship when all the best farriers in the world are there.”

Beane takes home the winner’s check for $10,000, as well as a gold-and-silver Stampede championship buckle, a limited edition bronze trophy, and a champion’s jacket. Final standings showed Beane with 152 points. Robinson was second with 115 points, Derek Gardner of Scotland placed third with 111, Crothers was fourth at 102 and Moon finished fifth at 95.

Nathan Powell of Water Valley, Alta., was the top Canadian, finishing 10th overall. The WCBC has not crowned a Canadian champion since Bob Marshall in 1986.

The WCBC, known as the “Olympics of blacksmithing,” attracted 56 farriers from 13 countries around the world this summer: England, Denmark, New Zealand, Scotland, Australia, Ireland, Norway, France, Wales, Belgium, Northern Ireland, the United States, and Canada, with more than $50,000 in cash and prizes up for grabs.

Sunday morning’s semifinal saw the 10 remaining contestants shoe the front feet of a light draft horse in 60 minutes. The finalists were given another 60 minutes to shoe the hind feet of that same horse. Judges Ian Allison of England and Dan Haussman of the United States based their decisions, through a blind judging process, on shoe forging, finish, and nail placement, as well as preparation and balance of the horses’ feet.

Henrick Berger of Denmark, Scotland’s David Varini, Jim Quick of the United States, and Yoann Policard of France also made the top 10.

Moon, Robinson, Varini, and Crothers won the four-man team championship, splitting a prize pot of $8,000. Beane was named Forging Champion, taking away $1,000, while Robinson was tapped as Shoeing Champion, pocketing the same amount. Patrick McIvor of Salmo, B.C., took home Artistic Champion honors, while Jason Bromley of the United States was named Rookie of the Year.

At Saturday night’s Metal Art Auction and Metal Art Showcase, Doug Taylor of Blackfalds, Alta., was named overall traditional forging champion, McIvor took overall non-traditional forging champion honours, and Rodney King of New Zealand and England’s Jonathon Nunn teamed up to win the potluck forging category.

Competitors must do their best work in 10 different point classes, including Sunday’s semifinal and final, to win the WCBC. Beane knew he had a 13-point cushion heading into Sunday’s action, but wasn’t really interested in further updates. “I was happy with the work I did. The way I look at it, if I hadn’t won, I was still happy with what I’d done,” he said. “I think that once you please yourself, then you can please everyone else.”

Scores for Top Ten: Beane 152; Robinson 115; Gardner 111; Crothers 102; Moon 95; Berger 63; Varini 56; Quick 48; Policard 34; Powell 34 (Policard ninth).

Results and article provided by the Calgary Stampede.

Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal © 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.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Calgary Stampede: Farriers at the World Champion Blacksmiths Competition

They call it the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. There's no event quite like Canada's Calgary Stampede, held each July in Calgary, Alberta. It's the world's biggest rodeo melded into the world's biggest country fair and a world cultural fair, to boot. You can learn a lot, or just have fun. It has to be one of the world's largest volunteer-run events of any kind. The World Championship Blacksmiths Competition for farriers has been held at the Stampede for more than 30 years.

NOTE: On Sunday, July 10, the farrier competition will be livestreamed on The Hoof Blog. Watch the WCBC farrier events live on video. (Sorry about the ads, the stream providers just do that.)

Video clip assembled yesterday, shot during the two-man farrier competition.

Open-hearth coal fires blaze at Canada's Calgary Stampede in Calgary, Alberta.

The World Championship Blacksmiths Competition (WCBC) has attracted individual farriers and some national teams from England, Denmark, New Zealand, Scotland, Australia, Ireland, Norway, France, Wales, Belgium, Northern Ireland, South Africa, the United States, and Canada.

Competing for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes, the winning farrier receives a $10,000 check, a limited-edition bronze trophy, a Stampede hand-tooled buckle, and a champion’s jacket.

Steven Beane of England entered this year’s competition seeking his third straight Stampede title. Last July, Beane, from Northallerton, North Yorkshire, became the WCBC’s first back-to-back champion since Billy Crothers of Wales notched his second and third Calgary crowns in 1995 and 1996.

This year, WCBC organizers are also placing special emphasis on the four-man team championship, with the winning squad splitting a $10,000 pot. The competition’s forging and shoeing champs will each earn $1,000, as will the top rookie. The farrier competition begins before the Stampede does, with an educational clinic for the farriers.

Here's a quick video introduction to the agricultural side of the Stampede, including scenes from the farrier competition. Notice the spectator children touching the baby pigs and kissing a horse on the nose. Calgary still allows old-fashioned, unsanitary behavior like that. Long may they!

The Stampede has a terrific heavy horse show in addition to the rodeo.

People from all over the world flock to Calgary each year to see the rodeo, but there's a lot more to see at the Stampede.

If I ever saw an event that would have me strapping on a helmet and a body protector, the chuckwagon races would be it. I always thought it should be called the suicide runaway races. The Stampede beefed up its equine welfare program this year by implanting microchips in the horses to keep track of how often they race. Each horse is only allowed to race four days in a row, one race a day. Sadly, one horse has broken a leg and had to be destroyed. Two people have been killed in the races in the past 25 years.

The assembly of Native American nations at the Stampede makes it a world cultural event like no other.

I think the thing I like best about Calgary is that everyone in the city seems to be involved and they act like they are having a good time, even if they only wear a cowboy hat once a year! It's one of the best cultural mashups on the planet, as this string section illustrates.

The celebrity factor went a little off the charts this year when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge decided to stop by. The farriers were disappointed that they didn't come by the competition.

Stampede Photos by Mike Ringwood and Chris Bolin.

© 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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Saturday, July 09, 2011

Calgary Stampede World Championship Blacksmiths: View the Live Video Feed on the Hoof Blog

(videostream disabled because event is over)

There is some sort of a scoring problem and, as of Saturday night, the top ten for the live shoeing had not been announced. The competitors don't even know how they're doing!
England's Steven Beane, World Champion of 2009 and 2010 was off to a good start, winning two of the first three classes and finishing second in the other, before the scoring problem came up. The team results are not known.

Sunday update: The Stampede has not supplied any official information about this event.

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Shoes of the Stars: CHIO Aachen Creates a Walk Paved with History and Hoofwear

CHIO Aachen Show Director Frank Kemperman stands in the show's new starwalk

CHIO Aachen now has its own “Walk of Fame”. And just as the stars put their hand prints in the concrete on Hollywood Boulevard, it would have to be the horses who leave an imprint at CHIO Aachen, site of the World Equestrian Festival and what is widely regarded as the largest--and grandest--horse event in the world.

The squares contain the names of legendary horses who have shone underneath the stars of July nights in Aachen. And you can walk over it right now, because the show has just opened for 2011.

But not a hoofprint adorns the star. Instead, an actual horseshoe belonging to the respective four-legged superstar is embedded in the center of the star. There are names you might know: “Gigolo”, “E.T.”, “Ratina Z”, “Totilas” and “Hickstead”, to name just a few. There are 17 shoes, 17 stars, and 17 names of jumping and dressage horses, all of whom have either won the Deutsche Bank Prize, the Dressage Grand Prix of Aachen or the Rolex Grand Prix, the Grand Prix of Aachen.

And is there a correlation between champions and special shoes? There seem to be bar shoes of every type. It looks like a stroll down Aachen's Walk of Fame will be an education in orthopedic horseshoes. A little autograph by the farrier would be a nice touch--perhaps I will have to write a guidebook.

Embedding horseshoes in a plaque and then embedding the plaque in a walkway is much easier than trying to get real horses to cast their hoofprints in wet cement, as illustrated here by Dale Evans and Roy Rogers as they try to get Trigger to step lightly but not too lightly on his paver for Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame in 1949. The tourist guides tell us that three horses are immortalized on the famous stretch of sidewalk outside Grauman's Chinese Theater: Tom Mix's Tony (1927), Gene Autry's Champion (1949) and Trigger. Wait, what about Mr. Ed? There's no star for Mr. Ed?

The Show Director of the CHIO Aachen, Frank Kemperman, came up with the idea of this special “Walk of Fame”. It took a year to make it happen: “We tried out a lot of things before finding a way of embedding the horseshoes into the plaques,” commented Kemperman.
The plaques were being set into place just before the show was set to open. The “Walk of Fame” can be found right next to the entrance of the CHIO Aachen offices.

Whenever I feel like everything in the world has been done: every creative idea, every perfect photo, every stunning magazine cover, every clever title or slogan has been used up by other people and there's nothing original left, I never panic for very long.

I know I need look no further than the website or magazine of CHIO Aachen. They're always up to something. More than a horse show, horse event, or horse festival, it is more like a state-of-mind...if you happen to have horses on your mind

If you're a rider, driver or vaulter, Aachen is where you want to compete someday. For the rest of us, Aachen is a giddy celebration of not just the horse, but the best that horses bring out in us.

Aachen's message is to love not just the horse, but the way horses can and should make us feel. We're pulled to Aachen because we know it is a world stage where great things will happen to horses and to ourselves. We can be innocent and awed, all over again, by what goes on there--no matter how hardened and grizzled we've become by our years in the saddle or in the barn aisle.

For some reason, Aachen always seems to send me a subliminal message or two each year. There will be photos in the magazine or news items or events that use images or concepts of the hoof that leave me smiling and saying, "Why didn't I think of that?" and I know that I can and will think of something for my seemingly impossible challenge at hand. Like the one that has me stumped right now.

I need to just let myself remember that Aachen is out there, constantly re-inventing itself with an ongoing stream of creative interpretations of everything Horse (and sometimes Hoof). And remember that so am I, and so are you. There's no end to what we haven't imagined yet.

Walk on, Aachen!

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Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Olympic Test Event: London 2012 Will Bring a Country Sport to the City

Some images in this story are hosted from a remote site; please allow time for images to load.

London's preparing! The host city for the 2012 Olympics is running an equestrian "test event" over the inner-city park that will be home to all the equestrian events next summer during the Games. Photo by Ollie O'Brien.

The Olympics began this week in London. Not really, it was just the test event to get the feel of the equestrian facilities in Greenwich Park, but there's no doubt that the 2012 Olympics is only a little more than a year away, and there's no better way to make people take it seriously than to have a walk around the new facility. Forty top riders took part in the test event, which was at the two-star level and ended on Wednesday with show jumping. Dozens more riders attended as observers to check the lay of the land, or the arena, depending on whether they are eventers, dressage riders, or show jumpers.

An above-ground arena and stabling area was designed to be built in London's Greenwich Park for this week's Olympic Test Event and next year's Olympics. The temporary dressage and jumping ring means that the Olympics will disturb the historic park as little as possible. Photo by Khedara.

Notice that the grass underneath the dressage and showjumping arena was not dug up; the 5000 square-meter arena merely perches atop the grand lawn on 2100 legs. Presumably they are sunk into the ground.

Great Britain's Piggy French, the eventual individual winner, lead from the dressage phase. Just as much as everyone cares who wins, people care what the arena surface is like, how the warmup rings work, where the start for cross-country is located, and dozens of other aspects of the event. Eventing is only one of the equestrian sports, including modern pentathalon, that will use the facility.

Nina Ligon of Thailand (and Virginia, USA) rode her dressage test in the bright sun on Monday. Nina's farrier, David Watson, accompanied Team Thailand to London.

Haydn Price, head farrier for the Olympic Test Event (© photo by Fran Jurga)

The man of the hour is Haydn Price, head farrier for London 2012's test event. Haydn is from Wales and is normally Great Britain's team farrier for dressage and show jumping.

Haydn was ecstatic about the facilities that have been built at Greenwich Park--which include pop-up stables and an equally pop-up 5000 square-meter arena standing on 2100 legs. He described that setting as "lovely" by email and went on to comment:

"It is going to be an amazing event next year, (one) where the event will be taken to the people rather than the people taken to the event.

"The atmosphere here today has been incredible: the local schools have been made an integral aspect of this event by being invited to attend. Children of all ages have today experienced something truly magnificent; many of then had never seen a horse other than the occasional mounted police officers that patrol London and the district.

"Yep, the countryside has well and truly arrived in the heart of the City of London!"

The wash stall; the "pop-up" Olympic stabling area is built above ground on platforms; horses come and go on ramps. (© FEI photo by Kit Houghton)

Equestrian Route in Greenwich Park for 2012 Olympics

I had to ask what a "Saxon Tumuli" is (or are). Apparently they are ancient burial mounds.

Here's a map of Greenwich Park with the route of the cross-country overlaid, although I am not sure if this is the four-star cross-country route proposed for the Olympics or the five-minute 2-star used for the test event. What the Google Earth view doesn't show you is the undulating terrain, which made for a course with lots of tight turns and ups and downs.

This brief video, courtesy of www.greenwich.co.uk shows some action from the cross-country on Tuesday. The opening shots are from a jump where a group of vocal and local schoolchildren dominated the spectators. They added a very different dimension to the traditional course observation etiquette.

How's this for great community public relations? The schoolchildren of Greenwich are working to “design a Greenwich jump” which will feature in the cross-country course for London 2012.

The right stud for Olympic terrain

Riders chose to stud up today. From a report by John Thier on Eventingnation.com earlier today: "People were using some huge studs today. The ground was maybe a bit firm and not the least bit muddy, but it was still slick.

"I don't know how to describe the ground at Greenwich--it isn't sand but it isn't clay and it doesn't have the feel of plain dirt. It does not have much hold and after the first few rides word quickly filtered back to the barns to really stud up. With the big studs the ground rode fine."

A photo slide show from Tuesday's cross-country, courtesy of www.greenwich.co.uk.

Wednesday's program consisted of two consecutive show jumping competitions to determine both the team result (winner: Great Britain) and the individual high-scorer (Piggy French of Great Britain). A showjumping demonstration by specialist jumpers and riders also gave the arena a workout.

Showjumping in an outdoor urban setting was the grand finale of the test event on Wednesday. (© Kit Houghton/FEI image)

Leader of Greenwich Council Mr. Chris Roberts was quoted on the greenwich.co.uk web site as saying that being a host borough continued “to be a source of tremendous pride” for his district.

"(One thousand) of our residents are working on the Olympic sites, our businesses have secured something like £70million worth of contracts and we have the most iconic venues of the Games, which will continue to support our tourism in the years following the Games," Roberts is quoted as saying.

Just out of site in this shot is the Greenwich Maritime Museum, one of the greatest historical museums in the world, and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the 0 hour by which all clocks in the world are set and time zones and meridiens of longitude are determined.

In case you ever wondered: there is no daylight savings time in GMT.

If you're looking for Greenwich on your GPS, the longitude coordinate is 0° 0' 0". Latitude, however, is 51° 28' 38"N.

At night, a green laser cuts through the night sky in Greenwich to mark the meridien.

Test event individual winner Piggy French of Great Britain (© FEI photo by Kit Houghton)

So what happens on Wednesday night? Does someone pull a plug? Does the arena have a fold-up command, will the stables deflate, do the crowds just disappear?

The main part of the park has already been re-opened to the public, after being closed off during the cross-country.

You get the feeling that Greenwich Park--which is 568 years old--might just go back to being a place for picnics and dog walkers. There's probably a plan to fill in all the hoofprints, and leave no trace of the horses behind.

But they'll be back, and they're bringing their friends. Word is spreading around the world that Greenwich has passed The Test, with flying colors.

Let's hope that Olympic mascots Wenlock (left) and Mandeville (right) aren't allowed anywhere near the horses. (Photo by Matt Northam)

The Olympic Rings hang in a London train station; I wonder if they are pointing the way to Platform 9 3/4? There's no question that for many people, a trip to London for the Olympics next year will be full of Harry Potter symbolism. I wonder if the cross-country or show jumping designers will theme an obstacle or jump that will be recognizable as such only to the wizards in the crowd.

Travel from the coffin bone to the periople in a special microscopic image; just click here to order this poster created by Dr Lisa Lancaster at the Equine Foot Laboratory at Michigan State University.

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Tuesday, July 05, 2011

On the Case with Austin Edens: Engineering Prevention of Support Limb Laminitis with a Removable Clog Screwed to a Shoe

The plywood "clog" shoe used to treat laminitis can be a tool in itself or it can be a component of a limb extension and support package, as illustrated in this article about a removable clog used as part of a plan to prevent support limb laminitis. The system was designed by Texas farrier Austin Edens.

The Steward Clog was developed by Dr. Mike Steward in Shawnee, Oklahoma as an economical way for him to treat the rampant laminitis cases in his area.

Standard Steward Clog screwed into foot

He wanted an alternative for the horses of owners who couldn’t afford hand-forged heart-bar or glue-on elevator shoes and tenotomy surgery. He succeeded with a disk of plywood that he literally screwed into a horse’s foot. He charged the client $50. When the clog succeeded and he started telling people about it, farriers and veterinarians had to start adding their own high-tech touches to the world’s most low-tech shoe, whether it was casting tape, non-slip bottoms, shock- absorbing soles, impression material, or even plastic strap-on, strap-off versions.

Before we knew it, the once-lowly Steward Clog was turning into a designer horseshoe with a price to match. Not only that: in a few years' time, the clog design has gone full circle: the same concept can be utilized for both preventing and treating laminitis.

My eyes lit up when I saw a photo of a Steward clog of the latter type that looks like it has been to engineering school. And graduated at the head of the class.

Farrier Austin Edens probably chuckled as he set out to build a three-piece system out of a shoe that was conceived as the anti-system shoe. Consider Austin's illogical but ultimately functional design: he added not one, but two actual horseshoes, of two different metals, to a device that was meant to replace the horseshoe. Are three shoes better than one? The horse will decide.

Attaching the clog to a horseshoe so that the clog can be altered, replaced or removed--using a simple Phillips-head screwdriver and without re-shoeing the horse or disturbing its foot--is the bonus that an engineer-oriented mind like Austin’s can bring to the challenge of preventing laminitis.

Remember that the prospects for fine-tuning a shoe on the "good" foot of a horse with an injured limb are limited after the initial shoeing is done with the horse under anesthesia. The horse is not likely to be able to cooperate much in terms of lifting the good foot for shoe adjustment once he is standing. A removable device that screws onto a shoe and can be slid out from under the foot (and back on again) is a practical solution.

Some people still love a challenge; that is what this business is all about. Thank goodness Austin and people like him (and probably like many of you reading this article) are On the Case.

--Fran Jurga

PHOTO 1

1. I arrived at the vet clinic to find that surgical treatment for lacerated tendons on the injured left front leg of the horse had been completed. The horse was still under anesthesia and the “good” foot had been measured for the application of a support limb laminitis prevention shoe package. The surgeons asked me to add two inches of length to the horse’s right front, or “good” foot to aid in the prevention of support limb laminitis in that foot.

PHOTO 2

2. The surgeon asked me to elevate the "good limb" two inches so that it was the same length as the limb in the cast. The cast and its wear material on the near fore added almost two inches of length. My job was to extend the contralateral limb beyond the length of the cast limb and to prevent support limb laminitis. Using wood was the best way for me to elevate the limb.

The first step in creating the appliance was a beveled aluminum shoe with side clips, which I made from 1/2” x 1” aluminum bar stock.

PHOTO 3

3. The aluminum shoe was nailed on--not an easy thing to do on a leg that is dangling in the air and bouncing whenever the hammer touches it.

PHOTO 4

4. When I forged the shoe, I made six holes around the perimeter of the shoe, countersunk at 45 degrees. A block of wood (clog) 1.5 inches thick was shaped to the shoe, and also tapered behind the toe of the shoe for ease of breakover. I screwed in six 1 5/8” long wood screws through those holes into the wood. They held in the wood at 45 degrees, giving a good hold across the clog. A simple Delta Challenger horseshoe was nailed (with horseshoe nails) into the clog to prevent the soft wood from wearing.

PHOTO 5

5. One of the final steps was to pour Vettec’s Equipak into the cavity of the sole, filling up any space that existed between the foot and the plywood. This was a little awkward to do. I used Play-Doh for a dam to hold it in the foot.

PHOTO 6

6. This closeup shows the countersunk screw insets at the toe; there were also two at the heel and two at the quarters, all set at 45 degrees, to anchor the wood onto the shoe.

PHOTO 7

7. The final step, once the EquiPak was set up, was just for insurance. I wrapped the extension in Equicast casting tape.

About support limb laminitis

Laminitis is usually thought of as a disease with a medical basis, but it can also be caused by mechanical conditions. Both excess concussion, known as road founder, and lack of movement can result in a disruption in the metabolism of one of more of a horse’s feet. The most common scenario is when a horse injures a leg and the opposite, or contralateral, limb bears more than its share of weight. The horse may not shift weight regularly off the “good” leg, or there may be some circulatory or other reason why the laminar junction of of the hoof wall-coffin bone interface becomes compromised. Because the horse may be unable to shift its weight away from the pain of the laminitis, support limb laminitis is especially painful for a horse.

In order to prevent support (contralateral) limb laminitis, many equine hospitals routinely apply heart-bar shoes or go through a special protocol to pre-emptively shoe or cast the good foot when the horse is in surgery for an injury.

About Austin Edens

Austin Edens is a farrier who is based in Dripping Springs, Texas, and Wellington, Florida, but you might run into him almost anywhere in the world. He is widely known as one of the most successful and consistent international farrier competitors in history (including being World Champion) and a popular judge. Austin’s farrier work today is centered on a sport horse client list and challenging veterinary collaborations such as the one illustrated in these photos. He is also a product consultant and clinician with Delta Mustad Hoofcare in the United States.

On the Case is a new feature of the Hoof Blog. Brief photo- or media-based problem-solving reports on cases from subscribers will be featured. Text and photographs © 2011 Hoofcare Publishing.

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