Horses Are Half-tonne, Fraidy-cat Raptors

It's been a while. Lots going on. I've been studying for a thing, from which I'm currently procrastinating to write this post.

I haven't even had the chance to read any of Horses for Dummies in a while.

Anyway, in the bit of that book about the behaviour of horses, it explained how horsies are prey, unlike doggies, who are predators. This means that when it comes to fight or flight, horses are all about the flight. Dogs know this, so if they haven't been to any socialising days where they're taught to be cool around horses, dogs will viciously bark at them.

"Hi. I'm the exception that proves the rule."

I found this piece of information interesting, because of how horses weigh half a tonne and all.

Not long after, the book was telling me about how horses are social animals, and they like to hang out in groups. Wikipedia gave a bunch of suggestions on what the collective noun for a group of horses is. Following on from this, the book said one of the male horses will want to be in charge, and they'll fight it out with each other to sort that out, because they haven't got fingers and thumbs to mark a ballot paper to do it via democracy, or something.

This means that when somebody has a bunch of horses, they need to train them to be cool, and to understand that it's the person who's in charge. It's the trainer who has to be the alpha.

This clearly demonstrated that horses are raptors! Half-tonne, fraidy-cat raptors, but still! Raptors!

I know more about dinosaurs than I do about horses, so I was full on, capital letters INCREDIBLY excited to have a comparison between horses and something I actually know about.

As we all know - as established in Jurassic Park - raptors are pack animals. Jurassic World expanded on this a little bit. Apart from the generic dinosaurs-chase-people aspect of the film, a key subplot involved Star-Lord training raptors to be with him instead of eating him. So, just like Star-Lord and raptors, horse trainers train the horses to understand that the trainer is the alpha.

I haven't met any actual horse trainers, or hung out in a horse training environment, so I don't know if they can deliver lines pertaining to their status as the alpha of the group as coolly as Star-Lord does.

I bet they can't.

Fetlocks Don't Blow

A few days into my equine adventure, I thought it might be a good idea to undertake some further study, and assumed - correctly - that there would be a book in the ... For Dummies series related to horses.

£11.99 on the Google Play store later, and I was sorted.

This book was great. My colleagues were impressed that I was making the effort.

But then, in the second chapter, I came across something very, very unsettling.

In this chapter, they were telling us all about the different parts of a horse's body. Fairly important stuff if you're getting into that sort of thing. I came to this page with written descriptions.

Do you see it!?

It described what a fetlock is.

Do you see what it describes a fetlock as?

I'm a 90s kid. Not only that, but I'm a 90s kid from Ireland. This means core TV for me growing up was Father Ted. A key episode from that series is called 'A Song for Europe', where our hapless protagonists enter a song entitled My Lovely Horse to a competition. Without getting too much into into it, hilarity, of course, ensued.

The most popular and best known version of the song is the one that featured as a dream sequence in the episode:

If you're too young to know the song and can't watch it because you're reading this blog instead of doing work, here are the lyrics.

Do you see where the issue is? The line "Where are you going, with your fetlocks blowing in the wind."

With a read of this new book telling me that fetlocks are ankles, my entire childhood hung in jeopardy. I didn't believe it right away, so like a rabbit caught in headlights, unable to turn away, I swiped to the next page looking for a diagram.

And that was that.

I had just discovered that fetlocks do not blow in the wind.

This book had broken the 90s.

I was hurt and confused. I never questioned what fetlocks were in the 19 years since the episode came out. I was happy to take Ted and Dougal's word that fetlocks were something that blew in the wind. Why would they lie? Why would I ever have any reason to question them?

The revelation still bugs me, but I try not to let it affect me during the day when I'm at work.

Anyhoo, the song was actually composed by Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy, and he also sings the recorded version in that last video I posted. Here's he is playing a gorgeous version with just himself and a piano.

Did he know?

50 Shades of White

Yes, you read that correctly. I used "50 Shades of..." in the title of this post.

Don't worry, I'm fully aware of the douchery of that.

Anyway, during my handover period with the lady whose maternity leave I'm covering, conversation turned to colours of horses.

During this conversation, I was advised that white horses are called grey.

This makes no sense.

"Hi. I'm clearly grey. And I have a gentle glow around me. I should probably have wings."

A few photos of horses later, and we happened upon a horse that looked like this one.

"You will not BELIEVE what colour horse I am!"

Obviously I had to ask: "So what you call one of these? Would you say it's brown and white, or brown and grey?"

"No, these are called skewbalds."

Because of course they are. Because that's a word.

It reminded me a bit of guitars and the silly names manufacturers give to colours of guitars.

For example, here is my Fender American Standard Stratocaster signed by Dave Hill from Slade. You're probably thinking "Wow, it's a lovely cream colour!"

Used for playing barre chords on choruses with the middle pickup through a Smokey amp with the volume rolled down to seven or eight.

Hah! Any Fender catalogue will tell you that this is in fact Arctic White, despite it clearly not being white at all!

But it's not just Fender. No way José! If you put on your imagination eyes to see past the terribleness of the photograph (remember Blackberries?), you might see a black Epiphone Supernova.

Sitting at home in Castlebar in a case :-(

Except you don't. That's "ebony". The catalogue said.

See what I mean? Horse colours and guitar colours are practically the same.

Anyway, after a few hours reflecting on the matter, it occurred to me: "What about all the pubs called The White Horse!? Are they just wrong now!?"

Apparently so.

Google returns 25,500,000 results for "the white horse pub" and they're all just meaningless, whilst a search for "the grey horse" only returns 1,790,000 results.

I did think about this fact a lot, but it was nowhere nearing as crushing or life-changing as the next piece of information I would learn about horses. Not by a long shot...

Neigh Bother at All

I've just started working with a well-established horse charity in the UK.

Having lived all my life in towns and cities, I barely know one end of a horse from the other. You're probably thinking that's bad if I'm working with a horse charity, but the job is about doing digital communications, not doing horse things. I'm surrounded by clever people who know far more about horses than I.

To demonstrate how clueless I am when it comes to horsey things, let's examine my last three equine interactions.

1. In my last job (March 2015 - August 2015), people in the parent company decided that a website selling equine care products was a mega idea. Here's the evaluation of marketing the website that I included in a report (prompting an immediate phone call from the director asking for its removal) and my appraisal report:
   
   



Interestingly, it was displaying such foresight that led to being let go.



2. On visiting Verona in August 2014, I learned that there had been many wars there. Wars caused two problems: hungry people and dead horses. One of those problems solved the other problem by turning it into a local specialty dish. I could see how you wouldn't notice if it was mixed in with beef.
   
   

   Polenta with horsemeat goulash. Yup. #verona

   A photo posted by Ronan Fitzgerald (@ronanfitzg) on Aug 30, 2014 at 12:22pm PDT

   
   
3. Here I am on a pony at the Piccadilly Village Fete in July 2014.
   
   
   

As we can see, I wasn't completely averse to hanging out with horsies. In fact, on completion of a stint volunteering in Costa Rica, I was the first to point out that with our newly found freedom from the chains of corporate health and safety, as bound by a signed contract for the duration of the expedition, we were now allowed to go horse riding!

I did look into it at the time, but it was expensive.

Anyway, now I work for a horse charity, I decided that I should make a little bit of effort in expanding my knowledge of horsies. The bits I've learned so far have been occasionally mind-blowing, so I thought that it might be some lols to document the most mind-blowing in a blog.

So welcome!