I could fill a pretty good-sized horse-lover's encyclopedia annex with the things I had to leave out of the book, and the things I learned after it was done. Some of them are new scientific discoveries, and some are old-timey things I hadn't yet run across by my deadline.
Today's discovery is an oldterm--cited on the Internet in a book from 1911, for example--called 'chinning' a horse. It's a quick and dirty way to estimate a horse's height. You first need to measure how tall you are at the chin when standing upright, and then you go stand upright next to the horse's whithers and see where your chin hits.
I first got on the track of this in a Draft Horse Journal article. The author, a draft horse judge, was asked, "Why do you smell every horse in the ring?' In fact he was chinning them. I would imagine it's an easy way to fool yourself, if you don't stand exactly the same way measuring to your own chin as you do measuring a horse, or if you shrink with age. But it was useful in the past, and probably you get better at it with practice.
Now I need to go measure my chin height, and go up and see the horses. I believe Robin is around 14.2, Martha is around 15.00, and Zeke--who knows? Maybe I will soon.
Today's discovery is an oldterm--cited on the Internet in a book from 1911, for example--called 'chinning' a horse. It's a quick and dirty way to estimate a horse's height. You first need to measure how tall you are at the chin when standing upright, and then you go stand upright next to the horse's whithers and see where your chin hits.
I first got on the track of this in a Draft Horse Journal article. The author, a draft horse judge, was asked, "Why do you smell every horse in the ring?' In fact he was chinning them. I would imagine it's an easy way to fool yourself, if you don't stand exactly the same way measuring to your own chin as you do measuring a horse, or if you shrink with age. But it was useful in the past, and probably you get better at it with practice.
Now I need to go measure my chin height, and go up and see the horses. I believe Robin is around 14.2, Martha is around 15.00, and Zeke--who knows? Maybe I will soon.