There's a kid growing up with obvious problems!

-The counselor told me that my mother was probably deflecting some leftover hostility involving two divorces, three car accidents and the appearance of my step-brother. At least that's what the counselor thought. I figured she was working on her doctorate or something since I had no idea what she was talking about. I still nodded politely at the end of every sentence. I wanted to avoid the next step, which involved a piece of lumber and the Vice-principal. Nodding politely didn't work in his office.


-I had to suddenly switch to Marlboros. Used to be Lucky Strikes. Stole them from the 'It' that kept catching the house on fire...
...I didn't smoke because of peer pressure. That was because I was the peer pressure. Funny how you can go from social outcast to idol with the addition of one bad habit.

Nancy Arbuckle's Hair?

"Good. Very observant. Actually, she did have a small fire in her hair. Seemed the eighth-grade class at Morgan Junior High set her head on fire up on Hiway 99...I got thirty pages of paperwork, workmen's comp crap...you have to take over her route."

"Oh."

Probably explains why she wouldn't let go of the fire extinguisher.

Table of Contents

1. Torn Faith

2. Under the Spreading...Tarpaulin

3. Nancy Arbuckle's Hair

Maybe I should explain what happened to Ms. Arbuckle's hair. Seems she drove a school bus. Eighth-graders as I recall.

"It's like this," he began. "You know Nancy Arbuckle?"

"Yeah. Well sort of, I mean not really. Her hair looks funny, like it caught on fire or something." I was fishing.

More on this mystery later.

[image: Ron & Joe.com]

Coming in April 2011!

About the Book:


Mares, Foals & Ferraris is a hilarious and convoluted tale of one man's quest to quit driving a school bus and become some sort of farmer. Like most quests, this one went a little siderways. Instead of turnips, he got racehorses. But underneath this story is another: a child trying to understand a violent world, a young adult trapped between a reluctant acceptance of what is and that wonderous free flight born of the what if. And finally, the insatiable curiosity of an old writer -- born in the bright dawn of Camelot, yet destined to wander the endless catacombs that shelter the what was.

Two puzzling questions the book will finally answer: Why children run away to live with animals? And on the more capricious side of life's mysteries, why people breed racehorses when they could just as easily own a Ferrari? Maybe two.

About the Author: A. Allan Juell has been writing about horses and the...well, those folks that tend to hang around with large, hairy mammals for roughly thirty years. His work appeared in periodicals such as The Washington Thoroughbred, EQUUS, The Chronicle of the Horse, Western Horseman, Thoroughbred Times, Anvil Magazine and many others. He picked up a few obscure literary awards along the way, as well as copious amounts of 'enlightened' criticism.

He spent twenty-five years as a farrier and farm manager and about fifteen years as an intinerant journalist, wandering most of the world's habitable continents and questionable bars. He holds a degree in history (international affairs) and sometimes attempts to further confuse the world's problems at Demokracy.com. He lives in North America...sometimes.

Fiction, available through the normal outlets in April 2011. Excerts here and at Horsetrionics.com around February.

The Horseshow From Hell

Late July, 1990. Arco Arena, Sacramento, California.

Every year a merry band of brigands—judges, stewards, jump crews, trainers, riders, vets & farriers embark on the Grand Prix circuit – a quasi-carnival of sorts that tromps around the western United States in search of glory, money, free beer, a shot at the Olympics – maybe just next week’s rent. A lot of this activity is simply designed to make a good horse a little better. It’s called mileage.

This particular show was added to the summer circuit. Think the promoter called it The Sacramento Grand Prix. Hardly mattered. Seems the promoter was already on parole for a previous promotion that went…well, south.

A lot of folks might think that ‘horse show people’ are snobby, uptight, ego-centric types that can’t take a joke. Actually that’s true, but they can pull together when it counts.

The promoter had rented the Arco Arena, promising a truly spectacular, audience- centered horse show, including a rare event in American show jumping: the Puissance Wall, an eight-foot something tall monstrosity designed to clarify the meaning of ‘jumper.’ That was a 5K class with a 25K Grand Prix to follow. The smooth talking gentlemen had also pre-sold about 5000 tickets to the public. Shortly thereafter, he was spotted on I-5 heading south – literally and figuratively.

Well, after a little discussion it was decided that the show would go on. The officials, the crews, the volunteers – even the exhibitors – all banded together and put on the show. The audience had paid for just that. Nobody got paid, nobody got their ribbons or year-end standings and the winner of the $25,000 Grand Prix of Sacramento got a round of applause. Not much else.

We nicknamed it “The Horseshow from Hell,” but in the end it was a lesson about doing the right thing at your own peril. I think they call that integrity. Hope some of the folks in this picture wander by again.

Never Look A...Mechanical Engineer in the Mouth

(Photo-Garry Jones, AP)

One of the bright spots in pre-Derby week was an article by TD Thorton in the Boston Globe about one Michael (Mick) Peterson Jr. (pictured at left), an unassuming sort of fellow that holds advanced degrees in both theoretical and applied mechanics – two subjects that hold interest for me (from a horseshoeing angle – pun intended) and also drive me marginally insane when ‘absolutes’ and ‘horse’ end up in the same sentence. More on that in a minute. Peterson is also a fan of racing. Definitely a bonus.

What the Globe article drove home is that answers begin with questions and great ideas often come zinging in from left field on a day when you can really use the lift. As Peterson stated, it all started with a “naïve question – what kind of standards do we have to meet?” Hmm. The focus had always been on real or potential problems and not on what might be ideal because that parameter had never really been established. No data existed to support the good news unless it was subtracted from the bad – that information buried in what the science bizz calls ‘undefined variables.’ Or something to that effect. And of course the horse, the biggest variable of the bunch. Peterson’s point: You can’t seek an ideal without identifying it first, a deductive process. That requires data and more importantly, an unbiased mind.

What does it have to with horseshoeing? Simple. Overturning tradition with either new information or in Peterson’s case, a better question. I started shoeing in the early ‘70’s – shortly before the union busting years at the tracks. I was licensed under some pretty questionable circumstances, but it hardly mattered since it sort of qualified under the ‘rules of racing.’ Yeah, they were pretty vague. I plated for a couple of years, but found the track superstitious, traditionalist and really, moribund. The last thing anybody wanted was an idea. Switched to jumpers. More creativity, but a lot of the same mindset as the track – a great deal of it invented by the veterinary community. They wanted to run our affairs primarily because they had no idea what we really did. They were the self- anointed chiefs’ of the mystics. As such, every time an article appeared in the Journal of Veterinary Medicine, a new fetish showed up in the barn. For a few years, it was wedge pads. Everybody was enamored with the angles of a horse’s hoof – an ideal. Nobody ever bothered to ask what the horse did for a living. We were plagued with soft tissue injuries. Pulled suspensories, check ligaments ad nauseam. We were shoeing to aesthetics, not athletics.

By the early ‘80’s, performance horses began to circulate around the country more. We got a chance to look at more horses from back east and reluctantly exchange some ideas or simply extrapolate a theory on the available evidence. Horseshoers were still not to the communication phase when it came to the competition. Two shoers back east, notably Brady and Fitzgerald seemed to be on a different wavelength, though they weren’t talking. However, their work had a lot to say if you really took a look at the subtleties. One thing you didn’t find were gimmicks, including wedge pads. The shoeing was focused on the job description of the animal, how that animal was constructed and really, with a certain amount of humility. These were the best horses in the world at their job – Olympic level grand prix horses. The idea was to not mess with something that’s not broken. Focus on the task at hand.

Around the same time, some research veterinarians, notably Dr. Hillary Clayton, at that time working out of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada were studying biomechanics with extremely high-speed video filming. I knew Dr. Clayton pretty well, (having traveled with her in China, looking at alternative medicine options) but admittedly we didn’t always agree on conclusions. Taking research from the lab to the real world is a difficult transition and is often based on a preconceived assumption, and when dealing with horses, a host of variables. There is also the inherent agenda that exists when academic medicine gets married to outside funding. However, we still get to keep the information.

During this period I also met up with a theoretical mechanics guy that worked in the aerospace business at Boeing. He also didn’t know much about horses, but was sort of fascinated by what I did – more accurately, how I decided what to do. We talked a lot about things like angles, weight distribution, psi, ground impact (something he didn’t like to think about with aircraft) and spent time with the films. He was particularly focused on how the fetlock of the horse seeks the ground when landing off a fence. Quite similar to a racehorse when the animal’s body passes over the front leg at the end of the extension process of a stride. He wrote some things down for me. I said, “I don’t do math.”

He said, “It’s like this. Ever see a woman sprain her ankle in a pair of high heels?”

Well, I hadn’t personally, but let him go on. “If the angle of the hoof is too high, then the horse will fall off his foot. A lower angle would seem better as the horse would be more on his leg and not so much teetering on his foot. Of course, you’ll need a bigger shoe since reducing the heel will create more posterior length to the hoof. Your ‘tip’ point will be greatly reduced.”

Oh.

Well, I took a lot of this heart and changed my thinking, which is really difficult if you happen to be a horseshoer. I also took a lot of flak, particularly from veterinarians up in the grandstands or other shoers. Partly because it wasn’t their idea and partly because it began to cut into their day money. Tendon and ligament problems dropped precipitously. The overall hoof was greatly improved. And the talent level went up. Jumping horses have a distinct need to feel confident about their landing gear. Over the ensuing years I was very fortunate to work on some very talented horses, including many of the members of six national teams at the international level. It was kind of humbling in a way, though that too is difficult for a horseshoer. But I did learn that answers sometimes show up disguised as a Boeing engineer. And when you have a talented horse to work on, then focus on doing the least, not the most, because it is really about his talent and his job, not yours.
So thank you Mick for taking a look at our bizz and asking that very important question. That’s the first step toward an answer.

A Little Accountability Would Be Nice

Ray Paulick (The Paulick Report.com) thought it might be a good idea to at least try to invest some of our time in good news. Hence ‘Good News Fridays.’ It seemed to be a chance to lessen our focus on accountability by folks who never really grasped the concept anyway. Accountability, responsibility, integrity – these are learnable traits, though admittedly, some painful instruction is included in the curriculum. If you can’t pull at least a ‘C’ well – one more disinterested, self-centered sociopath hardly matters does it?

Granted, there seems to be a lot wrong at the moment. In my neighborhood, we have Mt. Bay Meadows. It is this huge, concentric, rat infested monument that the San Mateo City Council evidently created as an abject lesson on the dangers of littering. Or was it loitering? Or maybe a case of litter, loitering. It’s hard to tell since the Council was so cash-struck on the idea of another thousand tax parcels that they forgot to see if the developer owned a dump truck. – or even a shovel. The Bay Meadows Land Company’s response? The economy went south. The City Council’s response. “Well, gee, uh, well, Bob was supposed to take care of that. Bob? Oh, Bob?” The real problem? The ink they use to print money. Causes the DNA to mutate into something resembling an infected molar.

Ray’s idea did cause me to pause and take a good look at the traffic flow. Greed seemed to be about the same. Avarice about par. Murders and robbery up, but hell, it’s a recession. Scams way up, but then scams are what they are and not wrapped around silly posturing like, “I’m going to save racing.” Even robbery has a certain honesty to it: “Gimme your money!” Not, “Sure, you can afford this house.” Pens, guns or Ford starter motors, all things seem about the same. And that’s what bothered me.

I believe the real problem is that the flow of information is exceeding the speed limit of our brains. It also makes it damn hard to keep a secret or weed out superfluous details. Twittering is specifically designed to not get to the point – ever. And it has been at least two years since someone said to me, “Let me think about that and get back to you.” Get back to me? Are you bloody insane?!

So let’s look. Mouth syringe in the security barn? Stupid, but not new. 'Milkshakes', pasta loading, packed red blood cells -- dried bat wings? Neglected, underfed (or abused, but one needs to be careful with that term) horses? Common as dirt if you really look around. That seems to upset a lot of folks and rightly so, but how does it compare to 100,000 children facing starvation in the Sudan? Can someone from PETA or the steward's box point out Sudan on the map? Racing is a lot about perceived advantage, not too different from any other competitive venue with one major difference. The horse is out of the loop in most, if not all decisions concerning its own well-being. A lot like a child. Due diligence needs to be conducted from the comfort of your own brain – that’s where accountability originates. Sure, we publicly chastise bad guys a lot quicker, but we’ve done little to reduce the overall supply of bad behavior because we embrace the very source of the illness.

Yeah, racing has some really serious difficulties. Most of the industry though is still above ground, as they say. Especially Bay Meadows. All of it is above ground. That in itself is both sad and irrelevant. A dead man’s testimonial to his own murder. Other cities might want to view the crime scene for themselves. Integrity is about making the right choice at our own peril. If we practiced that a little more, we might get two 'good Fridays' a week instead of one.