Michael Erskine, D.V.M.

This week, Dr. Michael D. Erskine began a new part-time job, that of interim director of Virginia Tech’s Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center, the Leesburg campus of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech.

“Dr. Erskine has been a friend of the college and Equine Medical Center for many years,” said Dr. Gerhardt G. Schurig, dean of the veterinary college. “He has always been ready to help with his advice and knowledge. He is once again stepping up to help lead the [center] until a new director is in place.”

A resident of Mount Airy, Md., Erskine will work on reorganizing, stabilizing, and enhancing the efficiency of activities at the center. “This is aimed at ensuring that we provide the best quality of service and client satisfaction,” noted Schurig.

Just a short drive from the major stables, courses, and tracks in both Virginia and Maryland, the Leesburg facility provides comprehensive equine healthcare services, cutting-edge research for the advancement of the equine industry, and specialized training for veterinary students.

Under Erskine’s leadership, the equine medical center will be actively communicating and promoting its activities to referring veterinarians and clients in order to be the medical center of choice for the equine community.

“The Equine Medical Center has been an important resource for my practice, my patients, and my clients for many years,” Erskine said. “I look
forward to working with all of the people at the [equine medical center] who work so hard to care for the equine patients in our area. We will build on our most important strength, an unwavering commitment to patient care.”

Erskine is an active member of the Equine Medical Center Advisory Council and serves on the council’s Executive Committee. As an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, he majored in biology, then graduated from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in 1988. He currently serves as president of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners and chairs the Maryland Veterinary Foundation. A member of the Maryland Veterinary Medical Association and the Maryland Horse Council, he is also a past president of both organizations.

Erskine practices with Damascus Equine Associates in Mount Airy, Md., a group of private ambulatory equine practitioners who serve a wide variety of clients and their horses in Maryland and surrounding areas. He has special interest in sport and pleasure horses.

The Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine is a leading biomedical teaching and research center, enrolling more than 500 Doctor of Veterinary Medicine students, master of public health, and biomedical and veterinary sciences graduate students. The college is a partnership between the land-grant universities of Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland. Its main campus in Blacksburg, Va., features the Veterinary Teaching Hospital and large animal field services which together treat more than 55,000 animals annually. Other locations include the Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg, Va., and the Gudelsky Veterinary Center in College Park, Md.

Oxbow and Gary Stevens

Yes, it is disappointing that there will be no Triple Crown this year. Yes, it is disappointing that a horse with Maryland connections did not win the Preakness. But, what a race! Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas made history on Saturday, May 18, when the 15-1 long shot Oxbow, owned by Calumet Farm, won the 138th Preakness Stakes Grade I by leading wire to wire giving Lukas his sixth Preakness win and his 14th win in a Triple Crown race.

After finishing sixth on a very slopping track at the Kentucky Derby, Oxbow entered the Preakness overshadowed by Derby winner and Preakness favorite Orb. But when you combine a Hall of Fame trainer with Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens, and a dry track, Oxbow sprang from the shadows and can now bask in the glow of being a Preakness winner. The win also put Stevens, who came out of retirement this season, in the history books as being the oldest jockey (age 50) to win the Preakness.

Although Maryland was out of the spotlight in terms of a Preakness winner, Maryland-bred Hello Lover won the first race on the card for owners Kasey K. Racing Stable and Brier Creek Farm LLC. The Not For Love grey gelding won the $40,000 Deputed Testamony Starter Handicap for Maryland-breds. He is trained by Robert Reid, Jr and was ridden by jockey John Bisono.

Debt Ceiling, trained by Laurel-based trainer Jerry Robb, won the $100,000 Rollicking Stakes for 2-year-olds for owner Tim O’Donohue under the guidance of jockey Eric Camacho.

For more photos and videos from the day, visit The Equiery’s Facebook page! And if you were at Pimlico today, share your photos with us by emailing them to editor@equiery.com.

Graham Motion receiving his second Touch of Class Award, pictured with Secretariat’s owner Penny Chenery, MHIB Chair Jim Steele and MHIB Vice-Chair Erin Pittman.

On Tuesday, May 14, racing fans gathered at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring for an evening dedicated to honoring equine excellence. The evening began with a live taping of ESPN.com’s “In the Gate,” a podcast panel discussion on the controversy behind Secretariat’s record-breaking time at the 1973 Preakness Stakes. On the panel were Secretariat’s owner Penny Chenery and jockey Ron Turcotte also with biographer Bill Nack and several racing analysts, journalist and representatives from the Maryland Jockey Club.

The podcast can be viewed later in the week on ESPN.com.

Next on the evening’s docket was a screening of the documentary, “Secretariat’s Jockey, Ron Turcotte,” which traces Mr. Turcotte’s rise to fame in 1973, the fall that left him a paraplegic in 1978 and his emotional journey back to the people and places that marked his life.

Following the screening, guests were invited to a VIP Reception hosted by the Maryland Jockey Club and Maryland Horse Industry Board where fans could meet Mr. Turcotte and Ms. Chenery. It was during the reception that three of Maryland’s racing greats were honored with Touch of Class awards.

For the second time, Fair Hill Training Center based flat-track trainer Graham Motion was honored for his work with the 2010 Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, who most recently won the $10 Million Dubai Gold Cup, the world’s richest race.

Mario Pino’s daughter Victoria accepts his Touch of Class award. Pictured with Ron Turcotte, Penny Chenery, Jim Steele, Erin Pittman and Mary Ellen Setting (Deputy Sec. MD Department of Ag.)

Maryland’s all-time leading jockey, Mario Pino was also honored with a Touch of Class award. He is currently 10^th on racing’s all-time win list with nearly 6,500 wins. He was also the winner of the 2013 George Woolf Award, a national lifetime achievement award for jockeys. His daughter accepted the award on his behalf since he is currently racing out of Florida.

Steeplechase jockey and trainer Patrick Smithwick, Jr. became the first author to be awarded a Touch of Class for equine literature. His book, Flying Change, A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing, received the prestigious 2013 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, which recognizes nationally outstanding books about horse racing. To read more about Smithwick’s book, click here.

Patrick Smithwick, Jr. accepting his Touch of Class award, pictured with Secretariat’s jockey Ron Turcotte, Ansley Smithwick , Penny Chenery and Jim Steele.

Look for more photos on The Equiery’s Facebook page and future print issues.

Going For the Gold

Michael Wharton’s Grinding Speed wins the Gold Cup!
(Photo by Isabel Kurek)

Starting closest to home, Michael Wharton’s Grinding Speed, with Mark Beecher in the irons, handily won the 88th running of the Virginia Gold Cup by 6 3/4 lengths over Straight To It, making that back-to-back wins for the Maryland-bred over the Great Meadow course after last fall’s victory in the International Gold Cup. The win was a trifecta of Maryland connections, as the seven-year-old grey gelding is owned, trained and ridden by Marylanders.

It has certainly been a heady spring for Reisterstown jockey Mark Beecher, with his claiming of the Maryland Hunt Cup the week prior aboard Mr. Maxwell. Indeed, the only bobble this year for the 2012 Maryland Governor’s Cup Overall Rider of the Year, Leading Timber Rider and Leading Amateur Rider was a tumble at My Lady’s Manor aboard Grinding Speed, which obviously has stopped neither the horse nor his rider (despite a broken collarbone) in their spring barnstorming tours.

A son of Grindstone, Grinding Speed was bred for the flat, but switched to the jumps in 2010, winning his first over the hurdles at Potomac that year before the pair switched to the sticks, and since then, with the Manor as the only exception, the Hunt Valley-based Alicia Murphy-trained horse has finished first or second every time. (It is no surprise to see a touch of Turn-To in the bloodlines of this timber horse.)

First Crown for Orb

Maryland connections continued to triumph, from over the sticks to around the oval, as Orb captured the 139th running of The Kentucky Derby. Although bred in Kentucky, Orb’s sire, Malibu Moon (A.P. Indy x Macoumba) has deep Maryland roots. Malibu Moon was purchased by the Pons family and originally stood at Country Life Farm in Bel Air. When his popularity began to increase, he was shipped to Kentucky where he now stands at Spendthrift Farm. Looking at Orb’s pedigree, you also see ties to Maryland-bred Native Dancer of Sagamore Farm when the Vanderbilts were in residence.

Meanwhile, Orb’s owner, Butler-based Stuart Janney III, has an equally illustrious Maryland pedigree, as his father (Stuart Janney Jr.) has won four Maryland Hunt Cups, the first in 1935 aboard Mrs. W. A. Wadsworth’s Hotspur, and then three consecutive wins in the ’40s aboard his own Winton. Janney, Jr. and Janney III have played prominent roles in both Maryland and U.S. Thoroughbred racing, with Junior having served as chairman of the Maryland Racing Commission and president of the Maryland Breeders association, and his son serving as a vice chairman of The Jockey Club and chairman of its safety committee.

Now the buzz around the news wires is all about who is going to enter the 138th Preakness Stakes to challenge the Kentucky Derby winner Orb.

To learn more…

Michael Wharton’s Grinding Speed captures the Gold Cup! (Steeplechase Times/This is Horse Racing!)

Baltimore Sun: Orb wins!

Steeplechase Times salutes Orb and the Derby

Stuart S. Janney III needed convincing to stay in racing (This is Horse Racing)

WBAL

Channel 13

Considering The Preakness (Baltimore Sun)

More on Janney’s Maryland Thoroughbred Connections, from the ultimate source, The Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred

Stuart Janney shuns limelight (Baltimore Sun)

Baltimore Magazine profiles Janney

Orb’s Sire Malibu Moon and Maryland’s Pons Family (Baltimore Sun)

Maryland’s Joe Clancy in The New York Times

Maryland’s Golden Girl & 2^nd Winningest U.S. Jockey Rosie Napravnik (USA Today)

The American Association of Equine Practitioners Welfare and Public Policy Advisory Council is working with the American Veterinary Medical Association and Congress to ensure that veterinarians can provide complete care to their animal patients.  The recent introduction of the Veterinary Medicine Mobility Act of 2013 (H.R. 1528), we have the opportunity to make an impact.

As large animal veterinarians, most of us have frequent need to use controlled substances to treat our patients at the stables, ranches, farms and other sites where they live.  However, the provisions of the existing Controlled Substances Act (CSA) make it illegal for any veterinarian to transport and/or use controlled substances outside of the DEA license location that is registered for that individual. This means that it is currently illegal for veterinarians to carry and use these vital medications for pain management, anesthesia or euthanasia on farms, at house calls, in veterinary mobile clinics, or in ambulatory response situations.

Veterinarians must be able to legally carry and use controlled substances for the health and welfare of the nation’s animals, to safeguard public safety and to protect the nation’s food supply.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which enforces the law, has informed organized veterinary medicine that without a statutory change, many veterinarians are in violation of the CSA and cannot legally administer controlled substances away from their registry site. The DEA has already notified some veterinarians in California and Washington State that they are in violation of this law.

We encourage you to contact your members of Congress and urge them to support the Veterinary Medicine Mobility Act of 2013 (H.R. 1528). This act would amend the CSA that currently prohibits veterinarians from transporting controlled substances to treat their animal patients outside of their registered locations.

Please join us in telling Congress that veterinarians need to be able to transport controlled substances to the locations of their animal patients, not only for the health and welfare of the nation’s animals, but for public safety.

The link below takes you to the AVMA Legislative Action Center where you can easily express your support of H.R. 1528.  Contact information for your representative(s) is generated  automatically by your zip code and a message which you may edit is provided.

Take Action!

Thank you for your advocacy.

Writer, teacher, photographer and lifelong horseman Patrick Smithwick has been awarded the seventh annual Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, for his 2012 autobiographical workFlying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing. The work is a follow-up to the author’s 2006 volume Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend, itself a finalist for the inaugural Book Award in 2006. A $10,000 winner’s check and a custom-designed Irish crystal trophy were presented to Smithwick on April 10 during an evening reception at  Castleton Lyons farm in Lexington, Kentucky.

In Flying Change, the author—a son and nephew of Racing Hall of Fame horsemen and a rider possessed of his own bonafide credentials—relates the story of his return to steeplechase competition in his late 40s, a quarter-century removed from his previous racing career. With humor, elegance, and charming introspection he recalls the difficult road back from complacent middle-age to athletic fitness … the doubts, the joys, and setbacks along the way in his quest to compete and to defy the passage of time.”

Smithwick’s beautifully written book impressed all three judges, who remarked on the loving detail included therein, and the honesty—sometimes brutal—with which the story was told.

Dr. Ryan, a successful businessman who founded Europe’s Ryanair airline in 1985, loved horse racing and a good story. In 2006 he tipped his hat to both by launching the Castleton Lyons Book Award, which with $10,000 in prize money quickly drew entries from some of the world’s foremost sporting authors. Although Dr. Ryan passed away the following year, the contest now named for him has since been carried on by his son Shane,  president of Castleton Lyons.

Judges for the competition were Kay Coyte, managing editor of the Washington Post-Bloomberg News Service; HRTV broadcaster and producer Caton Bredar; and attorney and author Milton C. Toby, winner of the 2011 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for Dancer’s Image: The Forgotten Story.