The Reader question edition
| April 10, 2014 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
It’s time for a light hearted fluffy post. The posts have gotten rather dense, the school work has gotten rather oppressive, and my job commitments have gotten overwhelming. Sounds like a perfect day to address reader questions!
What reader questions? – you might ask.
I have taken the liberty to provide answers to the “questions” that led you to this site. Courtesy of google searches.
Just call me “Dr. Helpful”.
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First up is this gem:
“(is) magic eraser safe for cleaning horse saddle?”
Now, anyone who knows me, knows that cleaning saddles (and blankets, tack, bridles, bits, pads, brushes…) is not my forte. In fact, if the synthetic wintec saddle hadn’t tried to thoroughly muderate me at my big ride last year, I wouldn’t even own a leather saddle.
My motto is the more time spent cleaning, the less time there is for riding (and blogging).
May I suggest you make an acquaintance with the biothane tack and bit washer in your kitchen. More commonly known as the “dish”washer. Husbands taking a shower (hello clean stirrups!) provides additional opportunities to clean tack, as can sneaking in loads of horse related paraphernalia into the washer. Don’t discount merely soaking items in tubs of water and dumping/replacing the water until clean as a foolproof method for girths, pads, and blankets to keep them in new condition longer with a minimum of effort or elbow grease. Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll let you in on my vehicle cleaning secret: vinyl floors+open doors of a vehicle + a stiff breeze = vacuuming). Now if I could just convince the other half of the relationship that we could adopt a similar policy for the house.
As for the magic eraser? I’ll stick with a full fleece cover and a damp rag when needed since the dishwasher, tub of water, and washer seem as inappropriate as using an item sold with the oven cleaners.
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“Unshoes choosing sole thickness”
You are officially dinged for making a statement instead of a question. See, this is what I’m learning in third year vet school – when I’m answering a question, my voice should NOT have an upward tilt at the end. For example:
What are the four reasons, commonly known as the 4 M’s, for a downed cow?
- endoMetritis, mastitis, musculoskeletal, metabolic?
Do you see how ridiculous that is? So ridiculous that they spend an entire 9 months chopping question marks off the end of our answers.
So now that I’ve paid (as of yesterday) $153,6xx to learn the difference between a question and a statement, I’m going to do you a huge favor and rewrite your question into the correct format.
“Which sole thickness should I order with my Unshoes?” or “How should I choose a sole thickness for Unshoes?”
Considering I am nursing a rather painful heel bruise from my run/death shuffle yesterday that resulted in hitting the wrong (&^&^^$$#@%$ piece of gravel scattered on the asphalt I would suggest a thicker sole than mine. On the other hand, my 10 day taper to my 50k will probably be wildly successful since the possibility of me taking a break from limping to my classes to go limp through a run is approximately nill. So perhaps the answer IS to get a thinner sole.
So glad I was able to decisively help you through that conundrum.
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“How to tack up a horse five paragraph essay”
First off, kudos for you convincing some poor educationalist that this was a worthy topic for your essay. Since a 5 paragraph essay is essentially 2 paragraphs of repeating yourself and 3 paragraphs of commentary, may I suggest the following 3 subtopics:
- How to tack up your horse properly
- How to tack up your horse badly
- How not to tack up your horse and still ride
Because let’s face it, if tacking up a horse is the process of attaching as much random crap as possible to the 4 legged beast, doing it properly is rather mundane and boring – not to mention highly unlikely (don’t believe me? Go ride a 50 mile ride in your current set up. Or a 100. 90% of us will have some small issue).
Doing it poorly however, THAT makes for a good story. Or at least, an unhappy horse and rider – and nothing sells better than a tragedy.
But don’t listen to me, I’m a bitter old rider who managed to once again give her horse armpit sores over the course of a 50 mile ride thus introducing the third concept – riding without tacking up.
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“Sudden onset lameness in barefoot horse?”
Do you want the differential list of 50 likely possibilities, or just my top 25?
The only 2 endurance related lamenesses I don’t have a good answer for are the 2 lamenesses my barefoot horse sustained WHILE I WAS IN VET SCHOOL.
Either the cause of the lameness is more obscure, OR the more I learn the less sure about giving my horse a definitive diagnosis.
That being said…….deep rooted thrush (often unseen) is the answer I shake out of the black ball most of the time with a previously sound and transitioned barefoot horse.
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That folks, takes us to the end of this feature. See you guys on the other side of my business final!!!!!!! (which I shall start studying for……at some point……very soon…..maybe).
HAHAHAH excellent & informative post!
I was snorting with laughter while trying to discretely read this during a slow moment at work…lol!
Good luck with your business final!
Glad you guys enjoyed it :). Can you believe that I didn’t make up those google searches? I literally just went to my blog stats and copy and pasted the search terms that led people to my blog in the last 30 days. LOL. I bet my old URL had some good ones too if I went back and looked.
For your next post: “Can you please suggest good food pairings for coconut rum?”
Although I suspect the answer to that question is more rum I will duitifully put it on the list! 🙂
LOL!!
Also, testing testing 123…will this comment make it? 😉 LOL
Very funnny. 🙁 I’m very sad when comments are thwarted.