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H & L Online News
September 15, 2001
An information e-letter published and distributed periodically by
Hoofcare Publishing, publishers of Hoofcare & Lameness, The Journal
of Equine Foot Science, and the popular web site www.hoofcare.com
On this National Day of Prayer and Remembrance: greetings, friends.
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This week, it's not
only horses who are shod: Custom
shoes for search and rescue dogs at
Ground Zero.
Courtesy of Veterinary Centers of America
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I'd like to extend the deepest sympathy to any of you who may be affected by the terrible tragedies unfolding in New York and Virginia this week. I'd also like to express admiration for any of you involved in the rescue effort there; I am sure some of you are, and hope that you will all become involved in any way you can. Certainly all of us are affected, and we here in the Northeast will never, ever be the same.
Hoofcare & Lameness has grown into an international business with subscribers virtually everywhere, and it is really moving to receive email and phone calls from subscribers and advertisers in the farthest corners of the world. Our subscribers represent all races, all religions, and perhaps all political views, but your concern has been uniformly genuine and sincere. Almost everyone who has contacted me has expressed concern that changing politics may affect the great progress that we've made in helping horses around the world. I share that concern, in the long view.
In the shorter view: yes, I'm ok!
It is true that I've flown several times on American Airlines
Flight 11 to Los Angeles. And one of the flight attendants on the United
flight keeps her horse at the barn and had been assigned to a differnt
flight that day. One man from our little island was killed on the United
flight. Most of the people who boarded those two flights were from here
in
the Boston area. Everyone knows someone who was on those two planes. And
like everyone else, we are all still waiting for more information from
New
York.
No matter what the news event is, I can always find an animal connection, and some very poignant animal stories are emerging from the disaster, like the
Yellow Lab guide dog that led its master down 70 flights of stairs to safety.
Historical Precedent: The Inevitable Horseshoe Connection
Did you know about the involvement of horseshoes in the first attack on lower Manhattan by terrorists? No, not the bombing back in 1992. On September 16, 1920, a group of anarchists or "Bolsheviks" sent a horse pulling a wagonload of dynamite to the doorstep of the Morgan Bank on Wall Street. The wagon exploded, killing 38, wounding 300, and permanently scarring the building; the scars are still there today.
All that was found of the horse were its hooves, all four of which showed up in a neighborhood church. The police combed all the stables and blacksmith shops in New York City looking for clues.by trying to identify the horseshoes. Because the farrier had stamped the initials of his two unions ("JHU" and "NOA"), the shoes could be traced back to farriers who belonged to both unions, until the detectives found the farrier who had actually shod the horse.
To quote from the December 1920 edition of the Horseshoer's Journal: "Of course, no onus is attached to the shoer, but the link of evidence is of greatest importance. (The horseshoer's identity) lead to the arrest of the party responsible for the awful calamity which shocked not merely the whole of America, but the entire world."
The magazine showed a photograph of one of the telltale shoes, a heeled work shoe with a trailer and a huge toe calk.
Interestingly, farrier unions are among the oldest in America, and
in the 1920s, farrier unions espoused what sounds today like extreme
left-wing rhetoric. An editorial in the same edition of the Horseshoer's
Journal calls on local unions to oust their Bolshevik members.
Meanwhile, fast forward to this weekend: the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is hard at work in New York City. They have set up a command post and a mobile veterinary clinic at the corner of Houston and West streets at the Hudson River Pier #40. They are working on removing abandoned pets from apartments that lie in the buffer zone, south of Canal Street.
The ASPCA is seeking experienced volunteers to assist them in this effort. Their disaster hotline number is 212 876 7700 ext. 4PET (4738).
The ASPCA has set up a fund to assist with rescue relief efforts. Those interested in making a donation can call (212)-876-7700 x4516. You may also send a check payable to The ASPCA Animal Disaster Relief Fund at 424 E. 92nd Street, New York, NY 10128.
Directly on the site in New York, FEMA has Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams (VMATs)coordinated with the AVMA . You can read their site reports as they are filed at the Office of Emergency Preparedness website:
http://www.oep-ndms.dhhs.gov/activations/activations.html
I suggest that everyone visit the ASPCA web site (http://www.aspca.org) and take a few minutes to go through their steps for emergency planning for animal care in disasters. Some of the animals needing care this week are in need only because their owners are stranded in another part of the country by the airport closures. Think about what would happen to your animals if you were not able to get home, or if you left your dog in your truck and couldn't get back to it.
The ASPCA, by the way, was founded in New York City
in the 1800s by
Henry Bergh, a wealthy man dedicated to improving the lot of the city's
working horses. The New York Times called the horses of New York
"the
martyrs of the Industrial Age."
If you are wandering around the Internet this weekend, there is a nice story on the Discovery Channel's web site for their Animal Planet network, which tells some details of the two dozen or so search-and-rescue dogs in use in lower Manhattan.
(http://www.animalplanet.com)
The sniffer-dogs-on-loan are headquartered in Brooklyn at the NYPD K-9 unit. They have apparently sent out an appeal for food and other items for the dogs, who have been flown in from all over the country. They also need supplies like vet-wrap. There was a call out for dog booties to help the dogs walk across the piles of debris, but apparently some generous company donated them and they are all set. Several of the dogs were treated at St Vincent's Hospital for cut foot pads and smoke inhalation.
The New York Fire Department: Another Inevitable Horse Connection
Horses were never popular with the NYFD in the early days. Remember, New York's fire department claims the invention of the bucket brigade, way back in colonial times. In the 1800s, firemen resisted getting horses to pull the fire wagons because they thought it would put men out of work, since the fire wagons were pulled by humans, not horses.
In 1832, a cholera epidemic in New York limited the availability of firemen to pull the trucks, so they brought in the first firehorse. A rival neighborhood's fire crew broke into the stable, shaved the horse's mane and tail, and painted a skunklike stripe down the horse's back. It took more than 20 years before another NY fire station dared use a horse.
Once the fire department adopted the horse idea, the New York fire horses were among the finest in America; they were even shown in the National Horse Show in Madison Square Garden. They also had farrier wagons that raced to the scene of a fire in the event that the fire horses threw shoes in their haste to get to the fire.
And that did happen. A thrown shoe from a fast-galloping fire horse broke a third-story window.
An epidemic of distemper (called simply "the epizootic", or epidemic) hit the United States in 1872, bringing the nation's transport to a halt.In Boston, four fire horses died and virtually all the city's fire horses were declared unfit for service. It was not safe to bring fresh horses into the city until the disease died down, so firefighters were pressed to pull their own fire wagons; only one fire station had a team of horses healthy enough to answer the call.
The timing was bad; on November 9, what would come to be known as the Great Boston Fire broke out, destroying 776 buildings and killing 14 people, including 11 firefighters. Historically, the lack of horses is blamed for the city's inability to contain the fire.
The three-abreast hitch was popular with fire departments. Interestingly, the middle horse was recorded as the one first to break down and have lameness problems. Once this happened, the entire team was retired, since firemen believed that a replacement in the hitch would be a bad omen.
A startling feature of looking at archives of fire horse photos is that they usually did not
wear blinkers, as most driving horses do.
Firemen were known to be very attached to their horses and maintained
accounts to pay the retirement expenses of their horses. They were even
known to parade horses through the streets when one of the horses died,
to
let the city's people know of their loss.
The well-kept fire horses of New York probably never
knew the irony of
their frequent calls to stable fires throughout the city, especially
lower
Manhattan. The area around the site of the World Trade Center was dense
with horse barns. Horses were kept at night on the upper floors of
barns,
with carriages and harness on the ground floor.
When the stables of a lower Manhattan ferry company
burned, 1200 horses
were trapped inside. The New York Fire Department was prompted to write
a
report expressing its frustration at not being able to save helpless
horses
during the frequent stable fires.
Horses continued to work the streets on Manhattan until 1917.
The driver oversaw the exercise and training of the firehorses, while the "hosemen" were responsible for cleaning stalls and harness.
The farrier was an important part of each city's fire department, and sometimes even "played" with the firemen's band. On special occasions, cities like New Westminster in British Columbia, Canada would punctuate concerts with an "anvil salute". One anvil was stacked atop the other, with gunpowder in the hardy hole of the lower anvil. A playing card was lit at the end of the forge rake, then inserted into the hardy hole of the lower anvil. (Duck!)
Meanwhile, the horse scene in New York has been been reeling. The offices of the Daily Racing Form are very near the disaster site, and as a result the nation's daily handicapping paper has had difficulty being published. DRF's internet service was curtailed as well. If you're not involved in racing, you might not realize the implications of the DRF being "down." Basically, all betting on horseracing in America originates with DRF's electronic data.
The Meadowlands and also Monmouth Park, both horse racing tracks across the Hudson River in New Jersey, are being used as collection centers for donated items that can be used by the rescue workers. They are looking for toiletries, plus men's work boots size 10 or larger, women's work boots of any size, sweatpants, flashlights, and towels.
The Meadowlands was utilized as the site of an 80-foot cellular antenna for Verizon Wireless's rescue communications.
Belmont and Aqueduct, New York's two major racetracks, are located in the Bronx and on Long Island in New York; both are being used as staging areas for fire and emergency vehicles for the rescue effort.
Closure of the airports in New York left racehorses stranded, including Horse of the Year Tiznow; stakes horses from California scheduled for races this weekend in New York have likewise been stranded in Kentucky.
On Friday, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) , Breeders' Cup Ltd. and the New York Racing Association (NYRA) announced new plans for the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships on October 27 (to be held in New York at Belmont Park). NTRA and NYRA have established "NTRA Charities-New York Heroes Fund" so that part of the proceeds from the race day will go to charities to aid emergency and rescue workers, and victims of the attack.
(For more on how horses and horsemen are coping at the racetracks
in New York, read Steve Haskin's moving tribute on the Blood-Horse web
site
(http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=5861).
In Kentucky, the prestigious Keeneland yearling sales was postponed for a day. This resulted in an overflow situation of horses stabled at the racetrack, with van drivers scrambling to equalize the number of horses and stalls. When the sales actually started, a colt by Storm Cat brought $6.4 million; several yearlings were purchased by Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum of Dubai. Arabic owners like Sheikh Mohammed are major economic forces in US and global racing and breeding; they are also a major force in endurance competition.
In the show horse world, some events are on, while others are off. The USET cancelled its annual meeting, and also withdrew the US show jumping squad from the Nations Cup Final in Spain later this month, citing respect for the victims of the attacks, as well as the US Olympic Committee's concern over athlete travel at this time. USET Vice Chairman Armand Leone said, "The USET believes that showing proper respect, as well as protecting our athletes, are the overriding concerns."
I guess that's all the news, for now.
Way back when I was a kid, I remember everyone wanted to grow up to be firemen and policemen (preferably mounted policemen). This week, I've seen the ones who did grow up to do that, on the never-ending news. I don't think kids want to be firemen or policemen any more these days (I'm not sure what they want to be-rock stars? Wrestlers? Farriers?) but I can't help but wonder if the older children who are allowed to watch television this week must not be terribly, terribly impressed, awestruck, and humbled at what they see these men and women do in the name of their profession.
I know I am.
A veterinarian from Australia called and asked me if I understood how the horse is perceived in Islam theology: horses are the only animals allowed in heaven. A man may kill his wife or his brother and still go to heaven. A man who kills a horse, will not go to heaven.
I recall the Islamic reverence for horses from reading the history of the Arabian breed, so I pulled down a few books and curled up for a while. I have a feeling that the authors knew more horses than about religion, and the descriptions are more to aggrandize the Arabian horse than any insight to Islaam.
So I switched over to religious history instead of horse history.
I read that the Moslem community places farriers in a separate caste, and that farriers are exempt from military service. They are protected in times of war, as are women and children. A farrier's daughter can only marry the son of another farrier. The secrets of the craft are tightly kept because, historically, the soundness and well-being of the horses was of such importance to the success of the warriors.
In Arabic, there are 38 words to describe the shade of gray in a horse's coat. Fourteen words for trot. Thirteen words to precisely define a herd of horses.
Here in the USA, we have no words at all for the intense tragedy that surrounds us.
Forward this letter to anyone who'd like to read it.
Be safe, friends.
Sincerely,
Fran Jurga, Publisher
Hoofcare & Lameness Magazine
Fran@hoofcare.com
http://www.hoofcare.com
tel USA 978 281 3222
fax USA 978 283 8775
PO Box 6600 Gloucester MA 01930 USA
Credits:
Thanks to the Blood-Horse (http://www.bloodhorse.com), New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com), US Equestrian Team
(http://www.USET.org) and Daily Racing Form
(http://www.drf.com) for the roots of some of the news
used in this letter. Thanks to our friends at the Cornell University
College of Veterinary Medicine Flower Sprecher Library for the reference to
the Wall Street bombing of 1920.
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Lameness, The Journal of Equine Foot Science. For free
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© 2001 Hoofcare & Lameness
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