Horse Leg Redux: Cadaverous

Further to my previous post--and egged on by my friend Stefanie, the artistic, cultural & now literary doyenne of Schuyler, VA--I sent Dr E the following message:

Inquiring minds want to know:

1. Did you often cut off horse legs?
2. Why must the legs be put outside to "weather"?
3. Most important: Are there many more in the backyard?

Under the header "Cadaverous," she responded:

Well, Bella, it goes something like this:

In human surgery, rubber cadavers are made to hone stereoscopic skills like arthroscopy. No such luck in equine field. As such, to hone and retain skills, cadaver limbs can be harvested off horses that have died for other reasons. They are typically frozen and then thawed for practice.

I thawed this limb for practice but made the mistake of doing so on a weekend when I was on call. I got called in repeatedly and as such the limb was past its best, so I decided that it would not go to waste if I allowed time and microbes to ravage the soft tissue, leaving me with a nice anatomic specimen that could then be further cleaned (with acetone etc. to de-grease). Such specimens are helpful when explaining to a client a problem with a structure in the limb, since the anatomy is so different from a human.

I am completely at a loss as to whether there would be another limb. I never thawed more than two at a time, and in the majority of instances it was one at a time only due to time constraints. The only consolation I offer you is that the extreme length of time and overwintering the bones have encountered will render them no more noxious that digging in the garden.

I trust that satisfactorily answers your questions. I was talking to a friend and expressing amazement that you had a blog. We then discussed how amazing it is that we become so familiar with various things in our lives (like the use of cadaver tissue for learning) that it becomes part of our 'normal' and that we fail to recognize how bizarre it is in someone else's 'reality'!!!

As my uncle would have said--all a matter of perspective--his famous example being: "The grass is greener on the other side of the fence due to the palisade effect and does not look so green when you look down at your feet and see a mixture of brown earth and green stems!!!!"

Murder mystery writers may be interested to know that the horse leg in question still has some hair on it and is a bit smelly. Hence I covered it with more leaves, capped by a large stone to deter critters. And just in case Dr E's memory is faulty, I'm not doing any more digging in the 3-foot strip between the stone wall and back fence.

About that Horse Leg in the Backyard...

Email exchange between me and the previous tenant of my Gracious Home in Rhinebeck, a British equine surgeon.

Me: While tidying up the yard, I picked up a rectangular white plastic bin that was sitting upside down between the stone wall & back fence, to the right of the shed. Underneath it I was surprised to find a horse's hoof and foreleg protruding from a pile of leaves (now buried under more leaves, capped by a rock). I was wondering whether you know anything about this.

Horse doc: Oh I am so very sorry about the leg in the yard. I put them out to weather and they have been there a very long time. I completely forgot. Very sorry. They could prob go in normal trash now.

They??? I am so not digging any deeper. Nor will I be putting any horse legs, weathered or not, out for the Monday trash pick-up.

Great (Nasty) Minds Think Alike

I made sure to put the 4:04pm MST post time for the Kentucky Derby on my desktop calendar, with a 10-minute warning beforehand. I didn't bother to synch it up with my Palm, though, and merrily drove off at 3:40 to take the dog for a long walk in the park and then go grocery shopping.

Darling Husband got home around 6pm and said, "Who won the race?" I'd forgotten so completely that I answered, "What race?" Oops.

So I toddled upstairs to check the Derby results online. "Big Brown won by 5 lengths, from the #20 spot on the far outside," I called out. "And Eight Belles broke both front ankles and collapsed when she got over the finish line. She had to be put down right away." I told DH I was glad I'd missed the race, because I couldn't bear to have watched that. The memory of seeing Barbaro run on his floppy broken leg still gives me shivers.

Then a happy thought came to me. "Oh man," I said to DH. "Hillary said she was like Eight Belles and said, 'Bet on the filly.' So she's going to be beaten by the big brown favorite and will stagger to the finish, then be destroyed."

"You are really nasty," said DH with an amazed grin.

A couple minutes later, I clicked onto my latest addiction, Time's The Page by Mark Halperin. And look what greeted me:

Through the desert on a horse with no name

Nevada's Moapa Valley from horseback.

What's the first thing you think of when you plan a trip to Las Vegas?

Horseback riding, of course! If you're me, anyway. That's the first thing I think of when I plan most trips. Before I left Denver, I bookmarked a bunch of sites for trail rides near Vegas.

Yesterday, I went for the Jesse James Sunset Steak Ride offered by Sagebrush Ranch. We saddled up for a two-hour ride, to be followed by a "cowboy dinner." (Naturally it included baked beans; shades of "Blazing Saddles.") I was put on a very furry and wonderfully responsive chestnut quarter(ish) horse.

"What's his name?" I asked. No one remembered. So now I can truthfully quote America (whose songs I never could abide).

My experience was unlike the songwriter's, however. For starters, the desert was chill, still and dead quiet. Though there was "no one for to give you no pain," there were plenty of thorny shrubs and ultra-spiky cactus to avoid. And other than a distant helicopter or airplane, the air was NOT "full of sound." We didn't hear any animals or birds, though we saw bobcat and coyote footprints. In fact, the only visible wildlife was a bee that briefly hitched a ride on the wrangler's shirt back and an eagle that silently soared into a treetop at the end of our ride. No flies either. Bliss!

To misquote another song, I love to see that evening sun go down--especially when I'm someplace wild and beautiful. And QUIET.