No Hoof, No Horse

Horses have to stand most of the time even when they're not working, so lameness is a huge problem. Some issues are fleeting.  A 'hot nail', one that hits the live tissue in their hoof, will certainly make them limp, but just drawing the nail can fix that. They can get footsore from hard ground & work, but some rest, shoeing, or even a rain which softens the ground can ease that.

A 'gravel' is an abscess, while white line & thrush are diseases that attack the hoof & sole, respectively.  Founder (laminitis) makes their feet get hot & sore.  It's usually the result of over-eating, poisoning, or a byproduct of colic.  All of these are usually resolved in less than a week one way or another.  (Colic can kill & a horse that founders too badly has to be put down.) Injuries to their joints or tendons can also cause lameness & will vary widely in their course & treatment, but they're also usually obvious.

Navicular is in a class of its own.  The navicular bone is the second lowest (just above the coffin bone) of the small bones in a horse's hoof with a lot of tendons & nerves running past it.  Navicular syndrome is just a way to say there's a problem in that area & folks rarely know exactly what it is.  It could be any of a number of things & often starts out as an intermittent minor lameness that slowly gets worse.  It's the most drawn out, saddening issue of them all to me since it's a mysterious, degenerative syndrome that often has no remedy.  That's the way it's happened with my pony, Chip, & it's been a really long sad, decline.

Marg, my wife, bought me a pony for my birthday in 2012 when he was 6 years old.  Chip is a 14.1h Appaloosa gelding with a cool disposition that had never been ridden before. I was riding him bareback by myself around the field in just a couple of days.  Marg was quite put out with me for doing that, but Chip & I just clicked.  (OK, it was stupid, but I'd rather have fun than be safe, anyway.  I've got the scars to prove it.)

With a few months of training, we won Reserve Champion in the 18" cross rail equitation division at a local show.  Sure, our competition was a bunch of little girls (The oldest, a 12 year old, whipped us.) but it was his first show & I hadn't competed in over 40 years.  Since then, we've been on trail rides & hunter paces in a lot of different places, but mostly we just ride around the farm.  We wander through the woods & fields jumping & cantering around as the mood strikes us.  We swim in the pond when we can, all the time with the dogs ranging about.  I even remove sparrows nests from the bluebird houses while on his back.  It's a great way for me to work off the frustrations of the server room & help desk duties.  He seems to enjoy it too & responds to my commands far more readily than anyone else.

A few years ago, he started having lameness issues in his front feet & we quickly realized it was navicular.  Not a broken bone, just a slow degeneration that's probably hereditary as we've since found out that both his grandfather & sister had the issue.  Drugs for pain & inflammation help somewhat, but too much of those will cause him to go off his feed or even colic.  Trimming his feet differently & eventually putting special shoes has gotten him by for quite a while now.  The last time his shoes cost $140 & he's still lame, though.  I haven't been able to ride him for over a month since he's limping around without my weight.

As cold as it sounds, money is a consideration.  His shoeing is now more than the budget can handle easily & it doesn't seem to be doing any good.  The operation to 'nerve' him is expensive & often only lasts a year or two before the nerves grow back.  I might consider it if only his heel was sore, but the vet says both of his hooves would have to be numbed - the entire hoof in both cases - & that's very dangerous.  Stumbling becomes a real issue & breaking a leg becomes more likely.  I don't want to have to shoot my pony because he broke a leg playing in the field.

We're going to try some more, but our days of riding around the farm & swimming in the pond are coming to an end, probably over, even at a walk.  A horse that's constantly in pain is a misery, so we'll have to put him down soon.  Sad days...

It’s The Time of the Zucchini

I had two zucchini plants that were out of control since I planted them on the dirt/manure pile out in the horse field this year.  It started out as a pile of top soil about 7 feet high & 20 feet in diameter, scraped off to level the area for the barn a decade ago.  We put all the horse manure, shavings, & old hay next to it.  I pile it up with the front end loader every few months.  I turn & mix the entire pile every year or two.  It hasn’t shrunk even though I use a fair amount.   

The plants are running wild and keeping down the weeds with very little care.  I haven’t even watered it, but I’ve never seen such big plants.  The cantaloupe plants are covering the top while one zucchini plant is front & center.  New manure & shavings are off on the right side.

huge zucchini plant

I wasn’t sure if the horses would leave it alone.  They did for a while, but Tango is a young (4 year old) Thoroughbred we rescued and he’s curious.  He likes to ‘help’ me a lot which can be a trial.  He snuck up behind me while I was pruning the plants & found that zucchini leaves are fun to hit the other horses with.  The fruits make great toys, so the plants are pretty beat up now.  Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Despite Tango’s pruning, we’re feasting on the zucchini now & struggling to figure out what to do with it all.  My wife cooks dinner most nights.  Her stomach is bad, so she just slices one up & microwaves it for a few minutes.  She eats it plain, but I usually put butter & some sort of all-purpose seasoning on it.  There’s way too much for us to eat it all like that, though.

Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different things with it.  It can be used like a cucumber, so bread & butter pickles made with it are good.  I thought I’d discovered something new, but Mom said I’d been eating them for years.  She just never mentioned it & I never knew.  

 I don’t like to cook, so any recipe I make is simple & forgiving.  My two favorite dishes are Zucchini Bread & Garden Lasagna. 

Zucchini Bread

3 cups shredded zucchini (2-3 medium)

1-1/2 to 2 cups sugar

2/3 cups Vege oil (or 3/4 cup butter)

2 - 3 tsp vanilla

4 eggs

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

(Optional) 1/2 cup nuts &/or raisins

Preheat oven to 350 & set rack so top of loaves in center.

Mix all together & pour evenly into 2 greased loaf pans.

Nuts & raisins are best put on last & cut in lightly else they'll sink to bottom.)

Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a knife is not quite clean when testing. Bake lower & slower, if anything.  Center tends to be wet & heavy, so it needs to be cooked without burning the outside.

Cut sides free & dump out immediately when done.  Let cool on rack, base down.  (Yes, I left the top down once & it stuck badly.  Live & learn.)

Depending on the base, the amount of sugar can vary by a lot (1 cup to 2.5 cups) & it still tastes good.  I’ll use less with bananas & carrots than with squash, of course.

Quick (batter) breads are both simple & forgiving.  Once you get a feel for about how thick the batter should be, you can use most anything in place of the zucchini.  I’ve used yellow squash, carrots, & over-ripe bananas, although I usually only get a few of those, so I cut this recipe in half to make one loaf per 3 bananas.

Garden Lasagna

9x13" baking pan, preheat oven 350 degrees

2 med zucchini sliced fairly thin - can cook out water first or use raw

1 lb ground beef

45 oz jar spaghetti sauce

16 oz cottage cheese

16 oz shredded Mozzarella cheese

1 tblsp parsley

2 beaten eggs

Seasoned bread crumbs

Frizzle beef

Optional: microwave some of the water out of the zucchini.

Beat eggs, beat parsley in & then mix well with cottage cheese.

Layer zucchini in 3 layers - (if uncooked, add a thin layer of bread crumbs to soak up excess water.)

- Zucchini (about half)

- Beef

- Sauce

- Zucchini (about 1/4)

- Cottage cheese

- Sauce

- Zucchini (about 1/4)

- Sauce

- Mozzarella cheese

- Top with some bread crumbs.  Not too many or the top crust gets too hard.

Bake 30 to 45 minutes until top cheese browns.  Let stand 15 minutes or so.

This year, I used about 2 lbs of zucchini (2 medium sized ones) & microwaved each one about 4 minutes then set them aside to cool.  I thought that would have cooked out enough of the water, but it didn't.  I think I'll nuke them an extra minute each next time & still put some bread crumbs on the bottom anyway.

Authors Must Publish A Blog...

... or so I've been informed.  It makes sense since there are over a million books published annually just in English.  Anything authors can do to get the reader's attention is a good thing, except bitching about piracy or promoting DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Readers: Pay for the book.  Preorder if you can.  Write reviews, even if they're just short ones. Don't write mean reviews.  It means way more than you'd think even for popular, well established authors.  A mean review can ruin a budding author.

Authors: DRM just punishes your honest customers & does nothing to stop piracy.  I'm a computer guy.  I know these things.  If people can display it, they can steal it. Once stolen, it will likely be shared. Fact of life.  Write more & think of piracy as advertising; the cost of doing business.

I don't really feel like an author, though.  Sure, I've self-published a few books, but the one that is doing the best, Inkle Loom Design & Construction, is really just a woodworker's thoughts filling a void.  It had to be written by someone & it amazes me that no one had written one before.  The portable hobby looms have been around for about 150 years, after all.  You'd think in all that time... Well, it's my good fortune & has been a source of much joy.

I email a PDF to those who buy the Amazon version, a far larger number than I would have imagined, so get to chat with some great people that way.  One guy sent me picture of 4 looms he'd made for his kids & the local 4H group.  Fantastic work where he'd mixed maple & walnut for some stunningly pretty looms.  Another guy sent me a big thank you for the Oven Rack Tool Plans that he's making with Boy Scouts.  Good stuff & it gets even better!

I went to the local Kentucky Highland Renaissance Festival a couple of weeks ago & was talking to a friend.  Jess is in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) & was weaving on her Inkle loom when a gal walked up & asked about the loom.  Debra proceeded to tell us how she'd found a great book on the subject & sang its praises.  I was basking in the glow while Jess kept pointing at me.  Finally Debra stopped & looked at us curiously.  Jess told her I was the author.  The poor woman was embarrassed then & the praises became polite & reserved.  Well, it was fantastic while it lasted.

The book I'd most like acknowledged, Horses and Farms for Fiction Writers will likely never be popular among authors since realism in fiction doesn't seem to be a big concern.  It's something I appreciate & I've mentioned it in many book reviews, but it's trivial stuff & there's a lot more to writing a novel.  Getting the trivia right makes the novel, but most seem content with movie caricatures of both, unfortunately.

The other two books are just Instructables that I wrote as practice for publishing my 'real' books.  They're ebooks only, available at Smashwords.com, where the Instructables are free or Amazon. There the Instructables are a $1 since Amazon does nothing for free.  I recommend using Smashwords for the 3 woodworking books since a PDF version is available which is best for printing out to use in the shop.