New Business Cards!!

I received my new business cards in the mail and they look fantastic! Photos to come soon!

What is "pin firing"?

Before we can talk about firing, or pin firing, it is important to understand the idea of a counterirritation and a means of treatment for lameness. "Its [counterirritation] purpose if to convert an old chronic injury into and active form to begin an active healing process." (1) Essentially, by re-damaging an old injury, the thought is that the injury will be able to heal better the second time than the first time.

There are several types of counterirritants. They range from mild forms, such as braces, to severe forms, such a firing.

"Firing is ... [a] means of producing counterirritation; it involves piercing various parts of the horse's leg with a red-hot iron or needles, and may be used on splints, bowed tendons, osselets, rind bone, and sesamoiditis." (2) See photo for example of healed firing on horse.

As I understand the process of firing, it was a very popular treatment among race horses in the early 1900's. Even though it has fallen out of favor among horse-persons in recent years, there is still the occasional horse who shows up with the tell-tale scarring that results from firing.

1) Evans, J. Warren. Horses, 3rd Edition: A Guide to Selection, Care, and Enjoyment. Holt Paperbacks, New York, NY 2001. Page 350.
2) Evans, J. Warren. Horses, 3rd Edition: A Guide to Selection, Care, and Enjoyment. Holt Paperbacks, New York, NY 2001. Page 351.

Trail Rides at Rock Creek Park Horse Center

On June 28, 2009 I was helping out the barn by picking up an extra shift and getting the trail out. Much to my surprise and delight a photographer/reporter from the Washington Post showed up to take some photos and interview some staff. Take a look at the article and see me leading the trail out. =)

Why is it called a curry comb? - PART 2

I was talking to the barn manager, Suzanne Ward, at Rock Creek after my first posting about where the word "curry" in curry comb came from. Suzanne is very knowledgeable when it comes to horses and when it comes to random tid-bits and facts. So, it should not have been a surprise to me that she had a more definitive answer regarding the curry comb.

According to Suzanne, the word curry as it relates to the curry comb was first used in a 14th century French poem called "Roman de Fauvel" by Gervais De Bus. Roman de Fauvel is translated as the Faun Colored Beast. In the poem there is a donkey whose name is Fauvel. "The donkey's name, which when broken down forms fau-vel, or "veiled lie", also forms an acrostic in which each letter stands for one of the seven deadly sins: Flaterie (Flattery), Avarice (Greed), Vilanie (Guile), Variété (Inconstancy), Envie (Envy), and Lacheté (Cowardice)." (1) It has also been suggested that historically the word "fauvel" is where the word english "favel" came from in relation to currying favor. In my previous posting I referenced the idea of the words "fauvel" and "favel" having a relationship with favor, as in currying favor. In the poem, " The English expression "to curry Fauvel", (now to "curry favor") arose from the scene in which potentates descended so low as to brush down the donkey and clean him off." (1)

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_de_Fauvel

Why is it called a curry comb? - PART 1

I received an email from an instructor I work with about a question one of her students had asked her. Apparently her student wanted to know why curry combs are called curry combs. I stared reading through the small library of horse books I have acquired and while I was able to read all about what a curry comb looks like and what it does I was not able to find a whole lot of information regarding it's history.

The first thing I decided to research was the definition of the words curry and comb. Comb was self explanatory, so the next logical step seemed to be to look up what it means "to curry" something. According to www.merriam-webster.com, the word curry - a transitive verb - as it relates to horses dates back to the 13th century (1), specifically between 1250-1300 (2). It's etymology is listed as "Middle English currayen, from Anglo-French cunreier, correier to prepare, curry, from Vulgar Latin *conredare, from Latin com- + a base of Germanic origin; akin to Gothic garaiths arrayed" (1) At the bottom of the definition, Merriam Webster cites the idea of currying favor by stating, "— curry favor Middle English currayen favel to curry a chestnut horse: to seek to gain favor by flattery or attention." (1) Similarly, on www.dictionary.com they cite the idiom curry favor ["curry favor, to seek to advance oneself through flattery or fawning: His fellow workers despised him for currying favor with the boss." (2)] along with the verb definition of curry as it relates to grooming horses. "The word 'curry comb' itself, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is not recorded before the 16th century - though it also quotes, from 1398, the phrase 'coryed wyth an horse combe." (3)

After I determined the definition and origins of the word curry and the idioms that specifically relate to it I began to formulate my own theory as to why a curry comb is called a curry comb. Since the idiom that relates to the word curry is to curry favor, it seemed plausible to me that the curry comb got it's name from those who had to groom noblemen's, knight's, lord's, etc's horses; by grooming them well and making them clean and beautiful they were able to curry favor with the horses owner. However it was a book titled The Medieval Horse and Its Equipment, c. 1150- c. 1450 by John Clark from the Museum of London that provided the foundation for my theory. In his text on page 160 it states, "Kurath & Kuhn suggest the original meaning was no more than 'curry the master's horse' - presumably, to do dirty and menial work in order to get into the lord's good books." (4) Clark then goes on to cite, from Jones (1989a, 207-8), "...the development of the French estriller fauvel,' English 'curry favel' and Provencal 'saber de la falveta,' all found in the 14th century with similar meanings - to groom (use soft soap on, butter up) the (horse-)lord to win his favour." (4)

In conclusion, though it was difficult to find a large amount of texts or a variety of texts relating to the history of the curry comb, my initial theory appears to be valid -that the curry comb got it's name from those who groomed noblemen's et. al (noblemen, lord's, knights, etc.) horses in an attempt to gain their favor and to seek advancement.

End Notes:
(1) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curry
(2) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Curry
(3) Clark, John. The Medieval Horse and It's Equipment, c. 1150-c. 1450. Museum of London. 2004. pg 158. http://books.google.com/books?id=A6mfmPBUUewC&lpg=PA160&ots=BBF-ibqjyU&dq=where%20did%20the%20curry%20comb%20get%20its%20name&pg=PA158
(4) Clark, John. The Medieval Horse and It's Equipment, c. 1150-c. 1450. Museum of London. 2004. pg 160. http://books.google.com/books?id=A6mfmPBUUewC&lpg=PA160&ots=BBF-ibqjyU&dq=where%20did%20the%20curry%20comb%20get%20its%20name&pg=PA160

Reactions from the Horse Community - Cherry Hill

Below is an email I received from Cherry Hill on May 25, 2009 in response to my "Do Horses See Color?" Posting:

Hi Tzena,

Google tells me whenever someone posts something related to me or my books and I came up on your blog "Do Horses See Color?".

I wanted to applaud you for being a great teacher, reader and writer. Ah, very refreshing ! A nicely thought out and presented Q&A.

I wondered if you would allow me to post that Q&A on my website and refer my readers to your blog?

http://tzenateachestrotting.blogspot.com/

Have a great day and keep up the great work,

Cherry

Cherry Hill
author of over 30 books and DVDs on horse training and care
www.horsekeeping.com

Imagine my delight and excitement to receive such an email from such an important and highly regarded person in the horse community. According to Cherry, "It will be the first time I have a "guest" besides my husband Richard who sometimes answers farrier and facility questions." You can find a link to my blog and the above posting on Cherry Hill's website by either clicking on Today's Ask Cherry or the top one in the Ask Cherry Column:

http://www.horsekeeping.com/ask-cherry/20090530-seecolor.htm

I encourage you to take a look at the Q&A on Cherry's Website and the take some time to look around her website (www.horsekeeping.com) in it's entirety.

Do Horses See Color?

I had a student ask me a couple of weeks ago if horses see in color. I thought about it and said, “Well, as I understand it I don’t think they see all the colors we do, I think they see in shades of color…kinda like cats.” It was a reasonably lucky assumption on my part, but I wanted to know the specifics of if horses can see in color and what colors they do see.

It is a given that horses have a different field of vision than we do simply cause their eyes are built and located differently than ours. Because horses eyes are on the sides of their head (as opposed to the front like cats or like ours) the horse views a much larger field of vision.

In their book The Body Language of Hoses, published in 1980, Tom Ainslie and Bonnie Ledbetter state, “Many authorities have proposed that horses are nearsighted as well as color blind. Experimental findings support both contentions, but not persuasively.” (1)

As time progress our understanding and research progressed. As discussed in Desmond Morris’s book Horsewatching: Why does a horse whinny and everything else you ever wanted to know, published in 1988, he sates that “For many years horses were said to be color blind but we now know that this is not the case, although color vision is much weaker in them than it is in us. They are most responsive to yellows, then greens, then blues, and least of all reds, according to recent experiments.” (2)

William Micklem, in his book Complete Horse Riding Manual – published in 2003 – he says that “Research has shown that horses are dichromates, which means that they have limited color vision. They can distinguish between light and dark, between reds and blues, but not between greens and grays. This is why you will not find green or gray poles used in a grass showjumping arena.” (3)

Cherry Hill, in her book How to Think Like a Horse: The Essential Handbook for Understand Why Horses Do What They Do – published in 2006, she supports Micklem’s assertion that horses are dichromates. “The horse’s eye has two types of cone cells in the retina that are sensitive to color whereas a human has three types of cone cells. Whether horses can see colors as we do is still widely debated. Most researches agree that horses do have more than “shades of gray” discrimination but not the color range of humans. Exactly which colors horses see is sill unresolved.” (4)

“Equine vision expert Dr. Brian Timney, of the University of Western Ontario , explains that horses are like humans with color deficiencies. For example, humans with red-green color vision defects have only two hues (blue and yellow) rather than four. Such dichromates do not see intermediate hues, seeing instead white or gray or a faded form of the two colors.” (5)

“Horses have little difficulty in discriminating red or blue from gray. With respect to green and yellow, the results are mixed,” says Timney. His findings are similar to those from earlier studies but other researchers’ results differ. Exact answers have proven elusive in color vision research because of the difficulty in designing experiments with adequate controls (such as for brightness).” (5)

In the end, there is still debate about what colors horses see. It would be fair to say that there is a general agreement that horses can see colors, yet what colors those are remains to be conclusively confirmed.

End Notes:
(1) Ainslie, Tom & Bonnie Ledbetter. The Body Language of Horses: Revealing the Nature of Equine Needs, Wishes and Emotions and How Horses Communicate Them - For Owners, Breeders, Trainers, ... Other Horse Lovers Including Handicappers. William Morrow and Company, New York. 1980. Page 30.
(2) Morris, Desmond. Horsewatching: Why does a horse whinny and everything else you ever wanted to know. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. 1988. Page 41.
(3) Micklem, William. Complete Horse Riding Manual. Dorling Kindersley Limited, New York. 2003. Page 46.
(4) Hill, Cherry. How to Think Like a Horse: The Essential Handbook for Understanding Why Horses Do What They Do. Storey Publishing, North Adams, MA. 2006. Page 24.
(5) Hanggi, M.S., Ph.D, Evelyn B. “How Horses See.” http://www.completerider.com/horsemanfeb2003.html. Feb 2003.