May, 2005
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For those of you who were unable to attend the hammer in at Rich Peterson’s farm last month you missed a great time. There were over thirty people in attendance. Though the list of distinguished guests was very long, I was asked specifically to single one out. John Davis of Ken Davis & Sons, Inc., made the trip all the way from Richwood Ohio to spend the day with us reminiscing about the old times. If I may speak for the rest of the attendees John is a small reminder of just how good the industry can be.
Overview of the demonstrations:
Bobby Menker CJF. started the morning off with an interesting application of sliding plates. The great thing was the feet that Bobby started with were fairly long. Many of us have attended other clinics where the clinician had short feet to start with, so not much time was spent on trimming. In this case Bobby was really able to emphasize the trim. He addressed something that can be a common problem with hind feet which is a deficient medial toe quadrant. He found that turning the shoe slightly to align with the leg gives the horse better “direction” during sliding stops. Which brought up another great point? Menker says that the shoeing applications have shifted the importance from just the sliding stop, to now a more rounded athlete. “The trainers were getting horses that would stop a mile, but struggle taking canter leads”.
Next Ralph Eckart CJF. and veteran clinician Laurie Fiesler CF. did a tag team glue on shoe demo. While each used slightly different methods, both jobs were good enough to make Equithane, and Kwik poly proud. I got a chance to listen to a few of the questions the audience asked Ralph about this procedure, and found that his methodical approach to shoeing horses carried over to his approach to teaching. While Ralph has the least amount of grey hair in the “old farts club” he has certainly earned his spot.
Finally Randy Luikart CJF. and Jim Bondra CJF. handmade 3/8” x 1” toe weighted front shoes, and finished the package on the foot with a 3 degree wedge, and leather pad. Jim spent a lot of time making excuses about how he doesn’t shoe many long footed horses anymore, and as most of you know the majority of my practice is long footed horses. Jim you sure fooled me. Whether or not it’s been a long time since you have done one, you still got it.
The rest of the day was spent making shoes, and listening to war stories. On behalf of everyone who attended I would like to thank Rich Peterson and his family for the wonderful facilities, Bob Hawk and his family for organizing the event, and all the clinicians who were so willing to share their years of knowledge with us.
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