Things in Kentucky are continuing to go well. The weather has been pretty interesting. One day it’s cold and snowing. Then the next day the sun comes out and the snow melts. Next it starts to rain and then it decides to snow again.
The last two weeks we’ve been taking a farrier course at the Kentucky Horeshoeing School. It’s been really great. We’ve learned all about the internal anatomy of the hoof, shoeing principals, how the hoof and lower limb interact on different racing surfaces, trimming feet, and many other aspects of the equine hoof. It was an invaluable experience to learn all of these things in such detail and I know it will benefit me greatly in the future when I’m training. During these past two weeks we also had the opportunity to go out to Old Friends. Michael Blowen has done a great job with this facility and his obvious love of horses has really made the life of the horses in his care much better. It was great to get to see horses like Gulch, Commentator, Black Tie Affair, Jade Hunter, and Kudos.
This week we will be starting our work rotations at the Darley farms. It will be nice to finally get my hands on horses again and I’m looking forward to start doing manual labor again.
Regarding the foot vs. surfaces...has there been much study done about the multiple synth-surfaces out here in California?
ReplyDeleteAs a rather new owner on the SoCal circuit, what I've noticed is that it takes 3-4 weeks of re-conditioning when meets shift HOL-SA-HOL-DEL and so on. This can lead to a significant down time in a horse's racing cycle if you are trying to prep for a specific race or have a miler-only type horse.
I guess what I'm trying to spot/learn is if there are any shoeing techniques coming out to deal with the surface changes, since we are still seeing soft tissue injuries in training on the synth.