End of Week 4 -- already!

Well, I don't know how many of you have looked here this week and not seen any new information. While it may seem like that doesn't give you any information, it actually does -- I would suggest that this will tell you that I have had a VERY busy week! But before I tell you about that, I want to mention that I had a great time in Goshen, IN (and Chicago, IL, and the road in between) this weekend. Here is a picture of Lora, on the way out of the hall after graduating with her Masters of Divinity degree. It was fun to be able to celebrate with her, and to see the friends and community celebrate with her, too. It really does take a village to raise a child! :)

Here is a shot of the people who were gathered at the Open House that Adam and Lora hosted in Goshen, Saturday afternoon. And, another of Lisa and Joelle during a walk we took along the Millrace in Goshen. All in all, a great weekend (even if I did drive to/from Chicago 4 times in 3 days!


Back to Colorado -- so far, in Week 4, we have spent 1.5 days with a farrier, .5 day in an Anatomy Lab, .5 day in a pasture with 25 horses, .5 of a day working on horsemanship and a full day of Business. All of it the classes continue to be useful and interesting -- and I continue to be impressed with the quality of the content and instructors in this program.

(Warning: Some of the pictures below are interesting, but are of a dissection of a horse's hoof, so you may not want to look at them while eating lunch!)

Monday and Wednesday we were with Brian Buckner, a certified (by the American Farrier Association) Journeyman Farrier, who has been practicing and refining his art and craft for the past 20 years. Brian's commitment to life-long learning was evident in his passion and enthusiasm to share what he has learned with us! He is quite knowledgable about the form and function of the lower limbs of a horse, and blasted us with lots of great information on Monday and Wednesday. I learned lots of things, including a bit of history, philosophies and techniques of horseshoeing as well as benefits and drawbacks of different types of shoes and shoeing, in general. bottom. We had an opportunity to really practice this as Brian had a collection of lower limbs which he used as teaching aids. (Yes, he has a separate freezer to keep the limbs between classes.)While the whole time was fascinating (and I have to admit I was skeptical about what we would be doing for 12 hours) there were a few highlights I will mention. First of all, it was quite interesting to hear what we could learn, about a horse by just looking at the hoof, sides and Another highlight was watching Brian craft a handmade shoe, to fit a specific hoof. He was "hot shoeing", and the picture above shows him comparing the shoe and the burn marks on the bottom of the hoof. (Notice that there isn't a horse attached to the hoof/let that is being shoed, there isn't any trick photography for this picture.)

A bit later, he actually dissected two hooves, one to show us the anatomy and construction of the foot/hoof, and one to look at the anatomy of the muscles, bones, ligaments and tendons in/around the fetlock joint. It is at this joint that the anatomy of the front and hind limb are the same. Here is a picture of me and (most of) my classmates touching the coffin bone, after the hoof has been peeled off. It helped to give me a better understanding of the structures that hold the hoof together, even when you have 800-1500 lbs of static weight resting on it -- imagine the strength of those connections when the horse is moving! As I mentioned , the second dissection is of the limb, and this picture shows the distal end of the canon bone, and the articular surfaces with the proximal sesimoid bones and beneath those ligaments and tendons, the long pastern. It was very interesting to get "hands on" experience with the inside of the horse's leg! After spending most of the day talking about hooves and feet while looking at just the feet, then Brian introduced us to his family's horses, and it was great to end the day talking about how a horse moves and stands on its feet with live horses as the models!

Thanks for all of your input to my recent poll regarding content on this blog. This particular post was not really responsive to what you are interested in, but I wanted to give you a nutshell of the range of experiences that I am having here....and I'll post more ramblings and reflections and pictures of me and live horses in the near future.