Denise

John, Interesting topic. I wonder how many different types of "thinking" there really are out there. I doubt anyone knows. I was hearing on the radio lately about some people who hear or think in color. Apparently some people always see certain numbers or letters as certain colors, but since they get odd reactions when they are kids to their statements about "Isn't that a pretty yellow 6?", they quit talking about it. And some people hear music as certain colors. There apparently was a conductor who explained what colors he was hearing in terms of tone or volume (I guess) to his orchestra so they would understand when he told them "More red!! I need more red in this passage!!" The radio announcer gave a name for this way of thinking, but I don't remember what it was. And some people apparently think in pictures, not words. Temple Grandin is a professor in animal science who has done amazing work in creating animal handling systems that work so the cattle etc. walk through more quietly and without balking. She is also autistic. In her autobiography, she says that she never thinks in words, but only in pictures. (She was into her teens before she figured out that everyone didn't think this way.) She is one who can turn things around in her mind in 3D and never has to draw anything out to know what it will look like finished. She feels animals think the same way, and that is why she has been able to do what she has done. She believes she sees/reacts/feels what an animal will going through a loading chute, for example, and that is why she knows that the shadow we might not even notice is something that a cow will be afraid of and balk at. Remove the shadow, remove the clog in the system. Her designs are used all over the world now. So I find this topic really fascinating. I'm not at all creative, so I can't add anything to it. But I can make the books work out to the last penny and analyse data in charts, sometimes even making sense of it. Everyone has their own skills.

In Canada, by law the person calling is required to give you their phone number and the company they are calling from, especially if you are on the do not call registry. So now whenever "Michael" or "Rachel" call about our credit card interest rates, I immediately press 1 to talk to a real person, tell them that by law they need to give me this information and ask for it. They hang up, of course, because it is a scam and not a legitimate business. But they haven't bothered me quite as often since I started doing this.

When I was in vet school I was taught that about 90 percent of all lamenesses were in the hoof, especially in the front legs. Now vets are realizing that back problems not only cause unsoundnesses, but may be related to leg lamenesses too (though which comes first is a matter of controversy). Michigan state has even opened the McPhail Equine Back Pain Clinic. http://news.msu.edu/story/5593/ The problem is that few vets understand much about how saddles work (saddles are not a high priority when you are trying to learn the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, diseases, treatment and surgical procedures of all non-human species), and most saddle makers don't have a great understanding of the anatomy and biomechanical function of the equine back. That is not a knock against either profession. It is just a statement of fact. The more vets and saddle makers can work together and learn about the other's areas, the sooner we will get better fitting saddles and healthier horses. It may just be a terminology difference, but I wouldn't say that the trapezius muscle lifts the leg. It has two sections - the cranial (front) one originates on the nuchal ligament that runs along the top of the neck and is the top most muscle (under the skin and its muscle) in front of and on top of the shoulder blade. It inserts on the spine of the scapula - that ridge running relatively up and down that sticks out from the center of the shoulder blade. The caudal (back) part orignites from ligament that runs along the top of the spine (the supraspinous ligament) between T3 and T10. It also is the outer most muscle in that area (under the skin and its muscle) behind and on top of the shoulder blade, and it too inserts on the spine of the scapula, but primarily on a specific knob that is about 1/3rd or so of the way down from the top. So this is the section that gets pinched and damaged between the saddle and the moving shoulder blade if the saddle held is too far forward or doesn't fit well at the front. If it is badly damaged, it atrophies (shrinks) so there is more of a hollow behind the shoulder blade than there was before, the back of the shoulder blade is more visible (since there is less muscle covering it) and often the spine of the scapula is more visible too. The front section of the trapezius pulls the shoulder blade forward and up. The back section pulls it backwards and up. If both work together they do act to move the shoulder blade up compared to the withers, but there isn't a lot of room for movement in that direction. And they act only on the shoulder blade, not further down the leg. Probably way too much information, but as I said before, the more saddle makers learn about anatomy...

Thanks Mike and Johanna. I did that and have 56 things running. Hmmm. I think I best follow the last advice given:

Scary all right. Not guys you'd want to get on the wrong side of. But you think they might have been a little more creative in thinking about a name. I'm always amazed how some sports teams are named. In hockey there are the Oilers and Flames and Maple Leafs and Red Wings - and Penguins??? and Mighty Ducks???? How mighty is a duck? So they dropped the Mighty and are now just the Ducks. "Yes sir, I'm a professional hockey player. My team? I'm proud to play for the Ducks!!!" Just doesn't sound right...

From Ray's post, I am guessing the All Blacks are a rugby team from Wales who are currently playing a New Zealand team? How close am I to being correct? And why the name All Blacks? I'm not into rugby, as you can tell, but I'm willing to learn a little about it.

Could I have a step by step on what this means please? And please type s l o w l y.... Thanks!

I'm not surprised that it rocks on the donkey. They tend to have very flat (front to back) backs. I am rather surprised how similar the fit is at the back between the horse and the donkey. I would have expected the donkey to be a lot narrower. But you said your horse is only 800 - 850 lbs so he must be pretty narrow too. No, you can't measure an angle off the tree and order one like it from a different makers. There are too many other factors that come into play. I tried to explain more about that on our website here.

I have a small screen which means I have to scroll more to get to the bottom, but I don't have to move the cursor left and right to see everything - posts and ads. Do some of you have to do that as it stands now?

From what we can tell from the pictures, it looks like the angles are good front and back on the horse and at the front on the donkey. When you post your other pictures we'll see about the back on the donkey. Of course these pictures can't tell us anything about rock or total surfaces area, but you can tell those things quite easily. I assume you'll do something about that screw sticking out at the bottom of the gullet lip.

Pella, I would really like to see pictures from the back with the tree on both the horse and the donkey. I am just curious about the fit at the back end of that tree as well and the differences between the species.

Bille - The Member's Gallery is where most people introduce themselves, but anywhere will do. It will just be seen more there. Welcome to LW.net!

Doesn't read calendars well. Prefer to send him far, far away from here.

Arbalet12 I like your leatherwork. Are there a lot of leatherworkers in Kazakhstan? I don't even know what language you speak, so your English is good enough! Welcome to Leatherworker.net

Yeah, she had one a few years ago about a forum to help keep leatherworkers from needing day jobs. From what I have heard, it is doing fairly well...

I am always amazed by the breadth and depth of knowledge of the people who contribute to this forum. Thanks for the education!

Pella, Is it possible it may be a English style cavalry saddle? I googled British Cavalry saddle images and came up with a couple of interesting sites. This one talks of cavalry saddles made in Montreal. See what you think. http://kaisersbunker.com/cef/equipment/cefe25.htm

We have lots of moose up where we live too. I also have seen old pictures of moose in harness, but nothing lately. And nothing like your friend's website, Oldtimer! The thing people need to remember is that a moose, especially a cow with a calf, can be a very dangerous animal. Some people up here rank them right up with bears as far as dangerous.

My mother makes all sorts of beautiful clothes using a knitting machine. To do a straight, plain section, she hand moves the carriage back and forth and the machine knits a row each time. But to make a pattern or to cast on or off, she uses special tools to move individual stitches from one hook to another. (She designs her own patterns for construction as well as color and stitch variations.) So the row takes less than 5 seconds to knit, but the switching between rows takes a while. It takes about 2 hours to knit a newborn sized baby sweater with a pattern on it. Then the parts all have to be hand sewn together. So I wouldn’t call her sweaters “hand knitted”, because the machine does the knitting, but I would call them hand made or hand crafted because they were individually done with care. It takes some effort to move the carriage across. She is getting older now and if there were such a thing (I don’t know if there is) as a powered knitting machine where she pushed a button to make the carriage move, it would be easier on her shoulders, but I wouldn’t change how I thought of the result. It would still be hand made in my mind. Interesting discussion. It has made me think, which is always a good thing. Points gleaned: 1.) Hand anything is not necessarily synonymous with quality. (The reverse - totally machine produced is not necessarily synonymous with poor quality - is also true.) 2.) There is no consistent definition for either term. 3.) Quality shows regardless of what you call it. 4.) As far as marketing goes, showing goes further than telling. Thanks everyone!

That certainly wasn't my intention by any means. I had just never seen the two distinguished in that way before so I wondered what others thought. I was surprised that Seth saw "hand crafted" as involving machines and "hand made" as not. I hadn't thought about it before but would have labeled them the opposite. It is hard to know how to label our saddle trees. Production lines advertise they make "custom" trees because they allow some specification on the measurements. So we started using "hand made" to distinguish the fact that we build individual pieces specifically for individual orders without using duplicating machines, though we do use some power tools. Lately, I have seen "hand made" attached to trees that were touched by human hands during a production process. Yes, there are people involved in putting machine made parts together and sewing on rawhide or spraying on box liner, but we don't do it that way. So now I describe them as "hand crafted" to try to make the distinction. I agree that it is mainly semantics, but I was trying to figure out if using one term compared to the other would communicate better the difference in the products.

This is a quote from Seth on the "well finished" thread. I have never seen that distinction being made before. I'm wondering what others see as the definitions of hand made or hand crafted?

Bruce, For $135.00 - go for it!!

Aluminum trees were a new thing to me too, but they did exist and were discussed in this thread: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?s...teel+tree\ The basic shape of the one in the picture looks a lot like the one in the old ad. I guess since they were cast there wasn't a lot of options as far as the tree went.

I am no expert in equine anatomy either but I have been restudying the subject lately, reminding myself of things I learned in anatomy class more years ago than I care to mention. Keith is correct in that there is no bony attachment between the front leg and the body wall, but there are no ligaments that attach those two things together either. So there is no fixed point of connection. The only attachment is by a number of different muscles, which means that the shoulder blade can basically slide along the body wall until the muscles are at the extent of their reach in any direction. Most of the muscles that connect to the shoulder blade attach to its upper half. Some attach to the outside and some to the inside of the shoulder blade. Some attach to the cartilage that comes off the top of the shoulder blade. Most of them have a section that pulls forward and a section that pulls back. Some come down from the top of the spine. The large Serratus Ventralis muscles come up from lower on the body and connect to the underside of the upper half of the shoulder blade, basically acting to suspend the chest from the front legs as they also assist in moving the legs relative to the chest. So there are a number of muscles pulling forward and back and up and down on the shoulder blade and which muscles act in which phase of the stride still is not totally understood. Because the muscles are connected to large sections of the shoulder blade, it does not pivot from its top but rotates around some point along its length. I have yet to find out if there is a consistent "pivot point" or not. It probably varies with gait and phase of stride. If you walk alongside a moving horse feeling his shoulder blade move, you recognize that the top does tilt backwards compared to the bottom as the horse extends his leg and unless that tilt occurs as if the shoulder blade was hanging from its upper tip (which it isn't), then the back corner has to move backwards as the bottom moves forwards – i.e. when the leg extends. I have seen a number of YouTube videos demonstrating how if you lift the horse's leg and pull it forward, that back corner of the shoulder blade can go back a few inches. I think those demonstrations show an extreme movement caused by overstretching, but I do believe that is the motion that happens during the normal stride of a horse. Exactly how much during each gait has not yet been determined. To learn about movement, the research technique commonly used is to put reflective markers on the skin over points like the hip, knee, hock and fetlock and then analyze video footage of horses on treadmills. You can't do the same thing with the shoulder blade because it moves relative to the overlying skin while the other points they use don't. There is still so much to learn and our technology is still not good enough in many cases.

HHB You are correct in what you are saying. Ligaments connect bone to bone, so in a generic sense there are "spinal ligaments" - ligaments that hold the vertebrae together. Maybe you could could call them paraspinal ligaments, but really that would not be technically correct. However, I would see that "paraspinal muscles" would be a generic way of saying "muscles beside the spine" rather than listing them all. I guess it could be seen as semantics. On the other hand, I have seen the YouTube video of this presentor and she is demonstrating the "paraspinal ligaments" at least 2-3" away from any bone. Since ligaments attach bone to bone there cannot, by definition, be ligaments 2" away from any bone. That is incorrect terminology. Whatever she is trying to demonstrate (and I don't know of a distinct anatomic feature there although I have looked in my books too) is "paraspinal" but isn't a ligament. You wondered about ligaments directly under the skin the saddle could sit on. There is one - the supraspinous ligament. Supra = above It connects the tops of all the dorsal spines of the vertebrae. So as you run your hand down the backbone, the bumps you feel are the top of the spines of the vertebrae that are covered and connected by one long ligament. It connects to all the vertebrae from the sacrum forward to the top the withers, and then goes directly up to the back of the skull with "fingers" projecting down to connect to the neck and the rest of the thoracic vertebrae. The neck section is called the nuchal ligament, but it is part of the supraspinal ligament. This is why there is a gullet or channel between the bars or panels on saddles - you don't want direct pressure on the tops of the spines of the vertebrae, not just because you are damaging bone but because you can easily damage that ligament too, and ligaments are harder to heal than bone.