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H & L Online News A collection of informal news from Hoofcare & Lameness: The
Journal of Equine Foot Science If you'd like to receive the next issue of this newsletter via e-mail, send your e-mail address to webinquiry@hoofcare.com. This issue graciously sponsored by SUMMIT TECH of New Jersey: 1 800 325 3357 wholesale and retail horseshoeing and blacksmithing tools and supplies, including many hard-to-find European imported items. New readers: Hoofcare & Lameness is a quarterly printed journal, dedicated to the prevention and treatment of lameness problems in horses and the promotion of professional-quality hoofcare. H&L supports and encourages a worldwide network of farriers, veterinarians, and equine therapists who generously share information with each other and with the horse-owning public through the magazine. Additional resources are a reference book and videotape retail sales center and an active Internet world wide web informational site (http://www.hoofcare.com). SNEFA Clinicians List Grows! The Southern New England Farriers Association annual fall clinic will be held on Saturday, September 18 at the Topsfield Fairgrounds in Topsfield, Massachusetts. This is an annual event, featuring all sorts of opportunities for farriers to meet, mingle, learn, and shop. A trade show is the keystone, along with educational workshops. This year’s clinicians include (in alphabetical order) John Blombach, Blake Brown, Kim Henneman DVM, Myron McLane, Jaye Perry, Rob Sigafoos, Bob Skradzio, and Eddie Watson. More speakers are expected to be added in the coming weeks. For more information call Geof Goodson: 860 267 7839. Have you checked on your Hoofcare & Lameness subscription lately? Renewal invoices have gone out to most states, and we look forward to hearing from you. If you think you need to renew or start your subscription, contact the office as soon as possible. THANK YOU to all the people who have already sent in their renewal checks. I especially appreciate all the little notes and drawings. And be sure to let us know if you have moved or have any kind of address update. It’s important! WHAT’S A SHEARED FROG? Find out if it's what you think it is in issue #72 of Hoofcare & Lameness, with a special article on what we call “deep cleft” thrush problems, fully explored by British farrier Tom Ryan. This is not the same as sheared heels, which are of course heels of different heights caused by hoof capsule distortion or prolonged medial-lateral imbalance. Heels can be uniform height and still become unstable and “split” between the bulbs. Find out why, and how to fix it.Thanks to Tom for a good article! RARE BOOK AVAILABLE Check your library; have you loaned out your copy of Adams Lameness in Horses (Fourth Edition) by Ted Stashak? Now sadly out of print, the publisher keeps postponing the 5th edition. Hoofcare & Lameness has one last copy-- first-come, first-serve! Cost is $125 plus $10 UPS in USA, $15 postage to Canada. Not advised for international shipping. Specs: 906 pages, hard cover, hundreds of photos, radiographs, and line drawings. Also available: Mediclip: Veterinary Anatomy is a CD-ROM of anatomy illustrations, including several dozen of Stashak’s line drawings from “Adams Lameness in Horses.” Plenty of drawings of the foot, including blood supply, solar and lateral views, tendons and ligaments, etc. CD also contains other species. A priceless resource for schools and libraries, valuable for anyone preparing lecture slides, publishing papers, etc. CD compatible for Macintosh or Windows, contains software for accessing images. It’s fun just to cruise around on this CD! Cost is $110 per CD, plus $5 UPS in the USA, $7 postage to Canada, $10 air mail elsewhere. Community News With great sadness, we report the death of three members of our extended community: Dr. Reiner Klimke of Germany, the world’s most accomplished competitive equestrian, died following repeated heart attacks in Germany on August 17. Dr. Klimke was known for his dressage performances, for which he won six Olympic medals as well as many European and World Championships.......Following the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, I was lucky enough to see Dr Klimke ride his gold-medal partner Allerich behind a single spotlight in Madison Square Garden during a special ride at the National Horse Show. The arena was filled with the sound of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York”; horse and rider danced in a completely effortless, flowing performance. I’ve never seen anything like it and will never forget it. Henk Schamhardt PhD of the University of Utrecht veterinary school in The Netherlands, a leading biomechanics researcher, died unexpectedly in April in a car crash in Victoria, Australia. Henk had written to Hoofcare & Lameness a few weeks before to announce that he would be taking a sabbatical in Australia, doing research with Dr Helen Davies at the University of Melbourne. He was so excited about going there, and wanted to make sure that his magazines would be forwarded. He died soon after his arrival, allegedly by the fault of a drunk driver. His death is a tremendous loss to the equine research community. Thanks to Hilary Clayton and Willem Back for information. Polly Phillips, British Veterinarian and national eventing team rider, was killed on Sunday, August 22, at a three-day event in Scotland when her top horse, Coral Cove, fell on her during cross-country. Polly is the third national-level event rider to be killed on cross-country at a British competition this year. She was 30 years old. Ms. Phillips’s fame as a rider skyrocketed this year, with the unfortunate news that she was implicated in a scheme to administer salycylic acid, a forbidden anti-inflammatory, to her horse at the World Equestrian Games. She admitted instructing team vet Andy Bathe to administer the drug, but denied wrong-doing. Britain’s bronze medal was rescinded and given to the United States, denying Britain’s auto-qualification to compete in 3-day at the Sydney Olympics next year. Phillips was cleared of intentionally attempting to influence the horse’s performance by administering the drug by the FEI investigation, but the medal was forfeited. She had been under a lot of stress. FARRIER CERTIFICATION IN NEW JERSEY The Garden State Horseshoers Association has announced that it will conduct American Farrier’s Association certification testing on October 16. A series of seminars will be held on three consecutive Wednesday nights beginning September 22 at Summit Tech Farrier Supplies in Cranbury, with coaches Bob Pethick, Bruce Daniels, and others. This is a low-pressure way to make sure you know what to expect on testing day, with no surprises. For more details, call Summit Tech at 1 800 325 3357. Australian Equine Laminitis Research Unit News From Dr Chris Pollitt, University of Queensland, Australia: “We have been granted finance to purchase a miniature video microscope. With this we plan to generate television images of the lamellar circulation via prisms surgically implanted between the lamellae of the hoof wall. This will help us understand the profound changes to the circulation which occur naturally under certain climatic conditions and during laminitis. This will be a project for a full time postgraduate student. “We have (also) recently discovered that we can study the separation of the lamellar connective tissue so characteristic of laminitis using in vitro tissue culture methods. With this exciting development we can now test a broad spectrum of pharmacological agents to block the laminitis mechanism without the need for live animal experimentation. Another project for a full time postgraduate student.” Watch for Dr Pollitt’s extensive reorganization and redefinition of hoof wall anatomy in issue #72 of Hoofcare & Lameness. Note: Dr. Pollitt will be in America later this year to address both the American College of Veterinary Surgeons and the American Association of Equine Practitioners. COLOR ATLAS OF THE HORSE’S FOOT AVAILABLE AGAIN Dr. Pollitt’s COLOR ATLAS OF THE HORSE’S FOOT is now back in print and available in a new edition from Hoofcare & Lameness. This has been our all-time biggest selling title, and if you could see a copy, you’d know why. Specifications: 208 pages, 488 color images, fully indexed, detailing every imaginable foot condition, lameness, and anatomical aspect. Cost $125US per book plus $6 UPS in USA, $12 per book elsewhere in the world. Some countries may be more. What’s new in laminitis therapy? Read all about it in the just-published VET CLINICS OF NORTH AMERICA: LAMINITIS special edition. A hard-cover book written by leading authorities (farriers AND veterinarians), filled with information on laminitis and founder, collected from around the world by Dr David Hood of Texas A&M University. This is sure to be the #1 reference book on the subject. Order your copy now; we expect to begin shipping them out on September 1st. Cost is $55 per book plus $5 UPS/US Mail, $7 Canada, $12 elsewhere. Where to visit the Hoofcare & Lameness Traveling Resource Center this fall: September 18: Southern New England Farriers Association Clinic, Topsfield, MA (with an all-star roster of nationally known vet and farrier clinicians) October 28-29: Sports Medicine Seminar, Rochester Equine Clinic, NH (with Dr Hilary Clayton, Dr Jean-Marie Denoix, Dr Joyce Harman) November 4: Farrier-Vet Seminar, Rochester Equine Clinic, NH (with Dr Doug Butler) November 13-14: Cornell Vet School Farrier Seminar, Ithaca, NY (with Mike Savoldi, Dan Bradley, Vern Hornquist and other speakers) December 5-8: American Assoc. Equine Practitioners, Albuquerque, NM (with Dr Chris Pollitt and other top speakers) (Other dates may be added, but these are definite) Congratulations to all of you who worked hard to prep Thoroughbred yearlings for the summer sales this year. As one of you so aptly put it, "Their feet will never look so perfect ever again in their lives." A BIG congratulations to everyone at the Saratoga sales, where records were broken and even tied the Kentucky prices for the first time in many years. I remember sneaking into the sales there as a kid...it was a formal event, full of glamour and intrigue. Saratoga is a magical place to visit and work with horses. Check out tv coverage of the Travers Stakes on Saturday, August 28 and you might get a hint of what makes that place so special to so many people. PRODUCT NEWS THE POWER PICK.... CUSOL THRUSH-MEDICATION PADS.... THORO’BRED’s NEW "BEVEL" GRAND CHAMPION SHOE....Even a hoof pick with a headlight on it! These are just some of the new products you’ll find in the “NEW MARKET” section of issue #72 of Hoofcare & Lameness. PLUS the inside “scoop” on the new laminitis supplement, “Prolamin”. And did we mention the new Sound Horse series of adhesive shoes? Call Hoofcare NOW 978 281 3222 to begin or update your subscription to our print journal! SHOES IN THE NEWS: Hambletonian Winner Never Breaks Stride in His Danish Shoes! Whoosh! There went Self Possessed, winning the 74th running (trotting?) of the Hambletonian at the Meadowlands in New Jersey on August 7 in record time. I tuned in ABC Sports rather half-heartedly, expecting to see just highlights of the famous race, and was delighted to see full pre-race coverage that included (to my surprise) a feature on special shoes used by trainer Ron Gerfein. In the colt’s last start, the Beacon Course Trot, he had broken stride and finished fourth. Gerfein did his homework and switched to a heavier shoe and a heavier sulky. The result: a mile in 1:51.3 and a new world record. It was interesting to watch driver Mike LaChance let the colt drift out into the middle of the track in the drive for the finish, so the horse wouldn’t break stride. Gone was the shiny steel full-swedge the three-year-old colt had been wearing on his front feet, replaced with a....flip-flop? Yes, a Flip-Flop. They sound like something out of a Jimmy Buffet song (remember the blown-out flip-flop in “Margaritaville”?) but “Flip-flops” are the backside name for the Danish “PP Combi” shoes, initially popularized in, interestingly enough, the 1998 running (trotting?) of the Hambletonian, when worn by then-winner Muscles Yankee. Leave it to tongue-in-cheek farriers to give a high-tech product the lowest-tech name possible! Flip-flops are half-moon shaped plastic disks, about .5 inches thick, that bolt onto a three-quarter (i.e. no heels) shoe. They give the appearance of an egg-bar shoe that is half steel (or aluminum) and half white plastic. Since the plastic is only attached to the shoe, not the foot, they...well, they literally flip-flop, hence the name. How they work, or why, is another one of the hoofcare world’s great mysteries. That they do, for some horses, in some races, on some surfaces, is all the harness racing world has needed to beat a path to the door of Summit Tech farrier supplies in Cranbury, New Jersey, importers of the Flip Flop...er, PP Combi Shoe. News this week is that Self Possessed has been pulled from this week’s Yonkers Trot in New York, second leg of the harness Triple Crown and will race this weekend. Hoofcare #72, available to subscribers soon, will have photos of the flip-flop shoes on a horse, as well as a product shot, courtesy of Summit Tech. For more information about the flip-flop (PP Combi) shoe, contact Tim Helck at Summit Tech. Tel 1 800 325 3357 (outside the USA tel 609 3951960), fax 609 395 1962, or email Summittech@erols.com. Write to Summit Tech, 2715 Rt 130 South, Cranbury NJ 08512. That’s it for now. As always, write or call with questions and comments, and keep in touch by email anytime you think that Hoofcare can help you in any way. About H&L Publishing.... Published since 1985, H&L is read by veterinarians, farriers, therapists, and owners/trainers/riders around the world and is the leading resource for the dissemination of new research, technologies, and ideas about the soundness of horses. H&L was honored to receive the American Horse Publications Award for General Excellence in 1998. H&L is published four times in each subscription period and is sold by subscription only. Cost is $50 in US, $55 in Canada and Mexico, $70 elsewhere in US dollars. An industry-wide "e-letter" called "Hoofcare Online" is sent free of charge to anyone interested in reading news from the hoofcare industry. Hoofcare's Editorial Advisory Board includes: Robert Bowker DVM, Doug Butler PhD, Emil Carre, Hilary Clayton MRCVS, Bruce Daniels, David Duckett, David Farley, Paul Goodness, Alison Hayes, Kim Henneman DVM, David Hood DVM, Alice Johnson, Grant Moon, William Moyer DVM, Rob Sigafoos, Allen Smith PhD, Tracy Turner DVM, Michael Wildenstein, Janice Young DVM, Chris Pollitt MRCVS, Alan Bailey AWCF, Simon Curtis FWCF, Edward Martin FWCF, Jean-Marie Denoix DVM, Bernard Duvernay, and Osamu Aoki DVM. H&L's print and email publications are supplemented by a reference book/video resource center, and hoof science information archive on the Internet's World Wide Web at http://www.hoofcare.com. Hoofcare & Lameness As always, feel free to pass this issue of Hoofcare Online along to friends, clients, and business associates. All we ask is that you do not change the copy and that you make sure our contact information is retained in the body of the text so we can be contacted. Just print it out for a friend, or hit your "forward" button to send it on as email. The newsletters are collected in an archive on our web site under "news and events". Remember that all Hoofcare Online newsletters are protected by international copyright law. If you wish to use anything printed in this newsletter for anything but your own personal use, please notify Hoofcare Publishing in writing beforehand. We have a few simple guidelines to follow. Your friend, Fran Jurga © 1997-99 Hoofcare & Lameness |