How to save money on the blacksmith

I have had my own horses now for about 20 years. When I got my first one, I was in a stable with 15 other horses, so it was quite a family atmosphere. The blacksmith that everyone used was a 70 year old guy, who came around with his little fire stove and his old-fashioned methods. He was a great guy though. He worked by himself, only the owner of the horse he was working on had to assist and hold up the feet. I still remember standing bent over breathing in clouds of smoke from the red hot iron shoe he melted onto the hoof.

Nowadays things are vastly different. The blacksmith comes with a helper and uses modern high tech equipment.

But after several years of watching the blacksmith work on my horse’s feet, I got a really good idea of it. So good indeed, that I am still doing my current horse’s hoofs myself. That only works of course, because he doesn’t need shoes.

It is actually very simple to do and I save a lot of money doing it myself. All you need is a rough rasp and a hoof knife, both of which you get in horse shops. I lift up the hoofs one by one and rest them on a brick, while I rasp them down evenly in a half circle. It seems rather natural how far you cut. Then I lift the hoof up, clean it and cut with the knife along the groves and take out all the soft bits that stick out. It is that simple.

Another good thing about this is that I can do that according to my own schedule.

There are only two things you have to be careful with: to not cut into the soft centre of the hoof inside and not rasp of to much.

How to cure dust allergy

When horses are kept in stables they often develop a sensitivity to dust. It mainly happens in stables, where the horses are indoors most of the time and the stalls are not cleaned out every day. It is common to throw on another layer of straw on top of yesterdays dirty one and only do a complete clean-up every two weeks or so, because it is much more economical that way.

Unfortunately that means the horses breathe in their own ammoniac gases all day, which irritates their respiratory tract. Over time they develop a serious allergy to dust, in particular to hay or straw dust. If you do nothing, they build up phlegm in their lungs which they constantly try to cough up. Their breathing becomes difficult.

There are a lot of things you can do as a temporary solution, if your horse has to stay in these conditions. The vet normally gives you a powder to make it easier to cough up the phlegm. You can also put herbal teas in their drinking water. But most importantly you put them on wood chips instead of straw and only give them wet hay to eat.

This is all very well, but it doesn't solve the problem. It only makes it easier for the horse to deal with it and can become quite costly for the owner.

The only way to cure the horse permanently is to move it away from living indoors. No matter where you live, the horse can be kept outside all year round, you only have to provide a shelter against weather. Horses are more robust then we think. When kept outside in the cold they grow a thick coat to keep them warm. They adapt very easily to their environment.

Fresh air and regular exercise are the only things the horse needs to stop phlegm building up in their respiratory system. I have heard about several horses (including my own) that have suffered severely from chronic cough and dust allergy and were nearly put down because of it. After four weeks of being in fresh air and getting exercised they ALL stopped having these symptoms and could be feed normally without any medication.

Sudoku - methods of solving

Sudoku methods:

step 1: check the obvious ones: go through each number in the top 3 squares vertically, and check, how often they appear, if maybe in one row there is only one spot left to be filled, etc. Do this for the 3 middle squares and the 3 bottom squares, then the same horizontally.

step 2: take a pencil and go through the free spot one by one and try all numbers 1-9 and write down the ones that could possibly go in there in the top corner. Start with the most promising ones, where you already have lots of numbers around that obviously can't appear there.

step 3: check line by line horizontally and vertically, and square by square, which penciled numbers only appear once per line or square. The number only appearing once of course goes into that spot.

step 4: Lets take a look at the top 3 squares as an example. Lets assume, the number 1 only is already in the first square, in the top row, but not in the next two squares. Lets also assume, in the middle square, the middle row is already filled. That means, the number 1 can't be in the first row, because thats where it is in the first square, and not in the second row, because all the spots are taken, therefore it must be in the third row. Because the number 1 ist in the first square in the top row, and in the second square in the third row, as established, it must be in the middle row in the third square.
This method works for all numbers, as long as you have a number only once in three squares, and in one of the three squares one row is full.

More about Global Warming

As I have said before, I live in Spain. Its a month and a half before the official summer, and it has been raining for two weeks solid. I am wearing long sleeves.
So my question is: Where the hell is Global Warming, when you need it???