A Good Man...Gerald Ford 1913-2006

I always remember that shot of Betty and Gerald Ford at Aqueduct in Breeder's Cup II, and Jack Van Berg's wistful look over another second place finish by Gate Dancer. Those were the days! The country might have gone down a different road had Ford won in '76, and that's nothing against another great man, Jimmy Carter.

Over the next few posts I want to continue to look at conventional training and how it impacts my yearling. For Christmas I received a replacement copy of Ross Staaden's "Winning Trainers". I read the original in the early '90s, loaned it out, and never saw it again. The book went out of print for years, but recently resurfaced on Amazon. If you're interested in training, grab one of these last few copies!

I'll do some posts on D.Wayne Lukas, T.J.Smith (the leading trainer in Australia--33 yrs. in a row), and more on Mandella, and how this all fits together in the next few days.

To catch things up, to explain why we rested Sunday I'll have to explain some shoeing. Nob after tacking on the lost front left shoe on Saturday had proffered, as if I wanted to hear it, all his problems attaching the shoe. You may visualize the veil of boredom over my face as Nob continued. It seems that part of the hoof wall on one side was broken so badly poor Nob had nothing on which to nail the two nails at the quarters. To make matters worse, droned Nob, the nail hole at the toe had enlarged so much from loss of shoe that essentially the nail at the toe also was useless. To make a long story short (please do), the shoe is being held on on one side only by nails numbered 4 and 5 at the heels. "If you run him in the mud the shoe will come off."

"Well", I responded to this news, "if the shoe comes off, Nob, you can just tack it right back on."
Nob now looked especially pained, and said, "there is the rub". "If the shoe comes off again, the wall will be so badly damaged I will have to rebuild the hoof wall with Equilox.

"Nob, I'm ok with you having to rebuild the hoof wall with Equilox". "Be glad to pay for your extra time, good buddy".

Now Nob became professorial, almost as if he welcomed this opportunity to recite technical information concerning his enthusiam for this great product Equilox which farriers use as a last resort to repair hoof cracks, replace broken area of hoof walls, or any other time a hoof wall substitue is necessary.

Nob had me read the instructions on the Equilox container: The farrier mixes the material into the consistency of wet clay, applies it to the repair area, shapes it, and then holds up the horses hoof for four minutes while the material sets up and hardens. After hardening the material has the same consistency as the wall. Nails may be driven in and they will hold. I once raced a horse where 26 or 27 of the 32 nails of the four feet where driven into Equilox. Indeed it's a superb product. That horse would not have raced but for Equilox.

"So, what's the problem Nob? We'll go ahead and exercise the horse. If he loses the shoe you can Equilox it back on".

Nob continued his tutorial: "couple of problems with that. 1. In wet weather the hoof is spongy and permeated with moisture so it will take forever to dry it out with acetate. But, here's the big thing. In cold weather the material takes twice as long to set up."

I was beginning to get the drift here as I considered my fidgety young animal. "You mean the yearling would have to hold up his leg eight minutes to let the material harden". "Yup, and that's after I put it on and shape it". Not. Would never happen. "So, you better avoid losing that shoe or you might be without one on that hoof for a while."

I thanked Nob, looked at the paddock and considered for a good long while before I cancelled the work, wisely so, without a doubt. We'll keep that shoe to work another day.

Y's training log:
12/24/06 rest (see above)
12/25/06 rest
12/26/06 15 min pasture romp. Best we could do, it's still very muddy, but ok now in the pasture. The yearling hardly looked too exciting, generally he stayed at the back of the pack just barely staying with the slowest horse. Then I found out why. Now he's lost the front shoe on the right leg. Another interesting Nob explanation to come, without a doubt. A little bellying under tack and we called it a day.