The Corolla sped smoothly down the road through the darkness on I-40. The sun had set long ago and my mind was already starting to weaken, ready for a good night’s sleep. I meant to leave town much earlier, but I didn’t want to miss a chance to say goodbye to Jeremy, silly as that may seem. In all reality, I was running so behind all day that I probably couldn’t have left much earlier anyway. I’d had to make a trip to the store for some wheat-free snacks and meals for the road since I can’t be sure of whether I’ll be able to find things to eat out anymore. I’d surely be hungrier than normal after running behind search dogs all weekend long. It seems I ended up with a day filled with errands, phone calls to Utah about some laminate flooring we are thinking of buying, and several clients who needed graphics sent to them on various projects I’m doing, combined with all the other tasks of getting laundry done, readying the house for my absence, getting meals ready for Jeremy to eat, and coordinating my stay with the Goffs. Then, I realized at the last minute that I still needed directions to the house where I’d be staying the next few days. I consulted Google Maps and it looked easy enough, but I printed out directions and two maps just in case I needed them. Better safe than sorry, right? Then, Jeremy got home so I decided to have some dinner and then we went ahead and ordered 500 square feet of flooring for the house. By the time I left town, it was mostly dark and even though I had two great new CD’s to listen to in the car, I knew that after a few hours passed, I would be getting quite tired driving by myself, without even the glimpses of interesting roadside scenery to keep my mind active. At least I could look forward to a nice night’s sleep since I would surely be tired after poor sleep the night before and my late arrival.

I was really looking forward to this training experience. The instructor coming was a highly esteemed dog trainer with lots of experience, including working canines with law enforcement for many years, training hoards of search and rescue dogs (and assisting other trainers), and the years since the September 11 attacks spent training and working bomb dogs for the FSA in airports on the East coast. As far as credentials and recommendations, I hadn’t found anyone better suited for helping me to advance how I teach and work my dog.  My mind combed over questions I had and issues I needed help with as mile after mile passed by. I tried to imagine all the things I might learn and how it would help me and Cabela as well as the rest of our training unit on the county’s search and rescue team.

Trying to make good time without driving too fast, I settled at just over 75 miles an hour. I was glad there wasn’t a lot of wind since I am not a fan of the feeling of driving a kite down the road at fast paces (it’s a tradeoff with the Corolla’s light weight and super gas mileage). The road was pretty empty this late at might, so after I passed Fort Smith, I didn’t have to worry much about other cars, which made the driving that much more peaceful, though it likely contributed to my fatigue. I’d now been driving in total solitude for the last 30 minutes, and I was more thankful for that than not. Driving at high speeds in close range of other vehicles always makes me nervous, so anytime I don’t have to feel defensive trying to predict everyone’s next move is a moment of bliss on the road. Having made this voyage before, I knew to break up the drive into small goals to keep it from seeming overwhelming, so Conway was my next goal and I knew it would only be about an hour and a half after that, making it a little better than a halfway point. I passed a roadside sign that indicated Conway was only seven miles now and I decided I’d stop there to stretch my legs and perhaps get a cup of coffee to wake me up if that was possible. I hated driving like this, but at least I wasn’t actually falling asleep, just feeling sleepy and ready for bed.

Then, I saw him. Huge and beautiful, his agouti, sandy-colored coat gleamed in the light from my car to the road in front of me. His eyes were focused on the other side of the road, far ahead of him now. He got in three ground-covering strides, coming up the grassy slope towards the shoulder, before I reached him. I remember thinking how nice and even and steady his coyote lope was. I was almost too mesmerized by him to react before my car slammed into his huge frame. It is amazing how quickly one’s mind can be awakened. I glanced in my mirrors to avoid hitting a car if one had slipped up on me, then I veered suddenly into the left lane of the highway, taking my foot off the accelerator though I’m not sure if I hit the brakes or not. I’m not entirely sure of what all went through my mind at all, though I do remember making decisions and thinking them through as best as can be done in just two seconds’ time, so there was bound to be at least a little logic in it. For whatever reason, it seemed like trying to get him out of my path was the best thing to do at the time. As it turned out, I hit him anyway but instead of hitting him dead center with the front of the car (which would have been bound to do much more damage and possibly strand me on the side of the road in the middle of the night by myself), I hit him with just the right side of the front of the car. The force of the car hitting him felt about like I’d hit a 100 lb. sack of potatoes and then run it over going 65-70 mph (for reasons unknown to me, I do remember glancing at the speedometer at the time of impact to see how fast I was going, as if that was a particularly important thing to know). He surely died instantly or at least as close to that as possible. Since I was so close to Conway and the car was still seemed drivable, I kept on going.

I was surprised at how little I had reacted to the whole thing. I mean, I did have a bit of adrenaline going, though not as much as I expected, and I wasn’t paranoid afterwards about something else jumping out in front of me, which is totally unlike me. I didn’t even grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white like I do so often driving down the interstate – another reason to enjoy having the road to myself. In fact, maybe the thing that makes me so nervous about the road is completely related to the other cars. The seven miles to Conway passed slowly though, as I wondered how bad the damage really was. The warning lights on the dashboard all looked normal and the feel of the car was as it always was, gliding effortlessly down the highway. Finally, I topped the road as it came through a shallow gorge the hills into the city and I turned down the exit ramp. I turned right and headed down the main strip towards the west and headed to the Wal-Mart parking lot. It seemed a nice place to pull over and inspect my car since several of the gas stations looked pretty vacant at this hour. I pulled into a spot and got out of the car to take a turn about it. I was amazed to find just that the bumper was a little cracked and a plastic piece was missing, as well as a huge dent just behind the wheel, between it and the door panel. I think I expected the whole front end of the car to be dented and bashed in with what I felt inside the vehicle. I did manage a mere glancing blow, so I knew I ended up lucky that I was able to swerve and keep from hitting him head-on. The coyote really was massive and I started to wonder if maybe I was mistaken and it was a German Shepherd or something instead. I estimated from my memory of his size that he would have been about 27” or more at the shoulder (Cabela is about 24” and I know he seemed taller than her). But that free, wild look about him was the one thing I was sure of. And I was certain he didn’t have a collar. Maybe the wolf really isn’t gone from Arkansas after all. Or, maybe coyotes end up extra large when they have no competitors or predators to keep them in check. Yes, I was quite sure of what he looked like, if I was sure of anything that night. It was the clearest memory I’d had in a long time, filled with tiny details so that I could paint a picture of it from memory. He had managed to capture one hundred percent of my focus in those last two seconds of his life and I thought to myself that was definitely not a bad way to go. He was the biggest coyote I’ve ever seen, his golden fur, shiny and full, ears pointed straight ahead to the other side of the highway, his bright eyes as steady and sure as his pace. Loping along gracefully with a spectator to remember for all time how glorious he looked in his last seconds in life. And then it all went black.

Well, Jeremy and I decided to make a small investment in a horse to transform from a poorly shod horse to a performance barefoot horse. I’ve been learning to trim my own horses using the Equinextion method. They have an online forum which makes trimming easy with personal critiques on your photos. I have seen four of the horses at our farm transformed by this kind of trim as well as some horses belonging to a friend. The principles of the trim are to give the horse the same kind of wear a wild horse would get on their own feet. By keeping horses in small enclosures with limited variety in terrain, we keep them from wearing their feet as they do in the wild. So, just like artificially providing them with other things they’d find on their own in the wild such as hay and minerals, we artificially provide ‘wear’ on their hooves. I realize I alternate calling them feet or hooves, but I mean the same thing by both terms. Hooves are feet and feet on a horse are hooves.

So many horses end up with hoof diseases as a result of improper trimming and by shoeing a horse. People have been putting metal shoes on horses feet for thousands of years, I realize. By restricting movement and blood circulation, it by all means can make a horse instantly sound and I can see why people resorted to doing that when horses were a means of transportation and livelihood. Now, we can deal with a horse being sore on their feet temporarily to end up with healthy hooves for a lifetime. My goal was to find a horse with screwed up feet and transform it and then sell it as a performance horse. Then, I found Teddy. He actually didn’t seem to have that much wrong with his feet, except for an old leg injury but he was in definite need of an overall re-haul. The poor thing was starved, had a skin fungus, and had horribly long feet, causing him to kick the bottoms of his front feet with his back feet as he walked and occasionally kicking the sides of his front legs with the other leg, enough to draw blood and to wear a regular scar there. It seemed straightforward enough on the feet, but getting weight on him is in first order. I decided to put together his own blog to keep track of his progress as he is restored to health and then put into eventing (the kind of riding in the Olympics) training once he is ready. He is a very willing horse under saddle and despite all that’s happened to him, he is incredibly sweet.

You can read all about him here: Theodore Recovery

So, in celebration of my newfound interest in math, I thought I’d entertain all of you with a discussion on the force and velocity of impact when being bucked off or falling off a horse. In this example, I am going to compare Lisa’s worst fall with my only fall. Background information: I jumped from a runaway galloping horse going at close to top speed as an alternative to being flung from the horse a minute later while going over a jump. My logic was that the force in my case would be less if I fell from a lower height (height of horse versus height thrown upwards from horse). In Lisa’s case, she also fell from a galloping horse but it was a slower gallop but the horse did buck her off.

The questions I’ll answer are … whose fall was worse and did I do myself a favor by jumping from the horse?

I will start by explaining the parts of the equation and we will start with Lisa’s example since it involves an extra force .. that of the buck.

Okay, so first we have the constants:
t_buck = 0.5 seconds (time of the buck)
t_impact = 0.5 seconds (time from the buck to the impact)
g = 32 ft/s^2 (gravity)

Then, we have the inputs:
m_input = 105 pounds (rider’s weight)

m = m_input/g (mass)
h_input = 15.5 hands (height of the horse … in hands … a hand equals four inches)
h = (h_input*4)/12 feet
F_buck = 50ish pounds (force of the buck)
v_x = 0 feet/second

Now, for the calculations:
h_2 = ((F_buck * t_buck)/m)^2 / (2 * g)  … which gives me feet
d = h + h_2 … again in feet
v_y = sqrt (2*g*d) … feet per second
v = sqrt ( (v_x^2) + (v_y^2) ) … feet per second
F_impact = (m/t_impact) *v … in pounds

In our case,

m – weight of the person…say, 105 lb
h – height of the horse…say, 15.2 (5.2 ft)
v – speed the horse was going…we’re estimating at about 20 miles per hour
Fbuck – force of the buck…say, 105 pounds–enough to toss the rider 2 ft up above the horse’s back
t_buck – time the buck took (assuming 1/2 second)
g – gravity (32 ft/s²)

So our inputs for Lisa’s fall are:

weight of rider: 105 (in pounds)
height of horse: 15.5 (in hands)
speed of horse: 29 (in feet per second)
height tossed above the horse: 1 (in feet)

We get these results:

Velocity at Impact (in feet/second): 35.15
Force of Impact (in pounds): 230.69

Now, changing things up a bit and taking out the buck but increasing the speed of the horse, as was in my case of falling off, we have my example:

So our inputs here are:

weight of rider: 108 (in pounds)
height of horse: 16.5 (in hands)
speed of horse: 44 (in feet per second)
height tossed above the horse: 0 (in feet)

We get these results:

Velocity at Impact (in feet/second): 47.83
Force of Impact (in pounds): 322.87

Suffice it to say that my fall was worse than Lisa’s, which surprises me!

Now, let’s say that I had chosen to stay on the horse and be thrown, would it have been worse as I imagined?

So our inputs here are:

weight of rider: 108 (in pounds)
height of horse: 16.5 (in hands)
speed of horse: 44 (in feet per second)
height tossed above the horse: 1 (in feet)

We get these results:

Velocity at Impact (in feet/second): 48.5
Force of Impact (in pounds): 327.36

And the answer is slightly worse. However, the main favor I did myself was in controlling where I landed and how, so I’d say it was a good choice. So, keep that in mind when riding, ’cause you’re taking a risk, calculated though it may be.

I really like the FHS Band’s show this year and I got a chance to tape it during a concert. Enjoy!

Last Sunday, just after Hurricane Ike’s tropical storm came through the night before, we went hiking out near the Buffalo River. The large amounts of rainfall were sure to mean lots of waterfalls along Indian Creek, which is located inside a nice little canyon, providing plenty of places for water to come spilling down into the creek, which is often dry. Jeremy, Dad, Mom, Lisa, Matt, and I all headed out early Sunday afternoon to start the hike in from Kyle’s Landing. We hiked a short distance to the creek, then headed upstream.There were lots of trees down, some of them over the trail, and several we saw had evidence of being struck by lightning. I was surprised at how many trees were down with how tight the bluffs in the canyon were, so that shows how strong the winds must have been.

As expected, there were lots and lots of waterfalls, and the creek had a fair amount of water in it as well. Several crossings, and one in particular, proved to be a bit of a challenge with the strong current. Jeremy and Matt both thought it would be fun to tube down the creek, and they’ve made plans to take a canyoneering trip involving rapelling the upper falls, then tubing down the river after a hard rain. Sounds like a lot of fun! When we were a short distance from the upper falls, we had to cross a difficult section of the creek with a really strong current and we ended up rigging a rope across the crossing and Jeremy helped Lisa, Mom, and I reach the other side, though not without Mom nearly getting choked by the handline. Just after that, it was getting late enough that Mom and Dad thought we should head back. Instead, they waited there and Matt, Jeremy, Lisa, and I went on ahead to the source of the creek. We quickly made progress until we reached Tunnel Cave and the falls in the upper parts of the canyon, and it was well worth the trip. We didn’t take long there, though, before turning back so we didn’t end up out on the creek after sundown.

To avoid the creek crossing with the strong current and slippery rock banks, we stayed on an upper trail for a good part of the way back. It did help us make much faster progress, but it was a little scary at times with fairly sharp drop offs and a very narrow trail. There were also a few tedious creek/waterfall crossings that we made sure to take our time crossing, cause as in Dad’s words, ‘The penalty for failure’ would be bad. Mom and I both were a little freaked out by how high on the cliffs we were and what the consequences might be for even a little trip or slip of the foot, but we all made it down safely. Not too long after that, we were back and the car, and before we pulled out of the parking lot, the sun had set. We made it back with just enough time to spare so it was a good thing we took the high trail and saved the time of many creek crossings. You can see some of the lesser-scary moments on the film below. In hindsight, it would have been neat to get the upper trail on video, but I was too scared to stop and pull anything out of a pack, much less, look at the camera instead of my feet, so there isn’t a record of the trip back. It was a good day and a great hike.

So, my scavenger hunt project kicked off yesterday!

Here are some things you’ll need to know:http://singleleafgraphics.com/hunt.htm

Here is where the Clue posts every week: http://singleleafgraphics.wordpress.com/

And Here is the first clue …

Jeremy managed to capture the elk on video where we saw the first herd. It was still very foggy at around 7AM, so the picture isn’t terribly clear, but you do get to hear the elk ‘chatting’ to one another (which, by the way, sounds much more like dolphins than cattle in case you’re ever out looking for elk and it is really foggy), and get a general idea of what seeing them in person might be like.

Elk Watching September

So, this Labor Day, we decided to go looking for some Rocky Mountain Elk. The alarm went off at 4:30 in our patched up backpacking tent and I think my words to Jeremy when he told me that my watch was going off were ‘What ….. what?’  To which he replied, ‘Remember that whole thing about getting up early to see some elk?  Well, it’s early.’

That’s right, ELK, here in Arkansas.  We camped overnight at Lost Valley (after tooling around the Upper Buffalo yesterday afternoon) and awoke early with high hopes of seeing some of the local elk.  These elk are descendants of elk brought in in the 1980’s from Colorado and Nebraska as part of an effort to bring elk back to the area.  So far, the elk have done very well and the area is becomming known for the elk, with some 15,000 coming every year to see the beautiful animals.  Of course, I wanted to see some myself.

The first attempt was Boxley Valley just across from the Lost Valley area.  To avoid the entire embarrasing story, we thought we were about to see some elk as the sun started to rise and (thanks to the heavy, heavy fog) it ended up being just cows.  Dissapointed but not ready to give up yet, we drove down to Steel Creek to see if any were grazing those pastures.  Not a one, though we did see two very skiddish whitetail down there.  Our last attempt was just to drive north through the Boxley Valley region keeping a close eye on the pastures.  We were finally rewarded and managed to pull over next to some farmland and get to watch a small herd of the elk graze and jump quite effortlessly from pasture to pasture.  While they were concerned about our presence and slowly moved away out of sight, we were able to see them for a bit and take some photos to ‘preserve the moment in pictures’. We then continued up the valley and took some pictures of Boxley Baptist Church and then got to see another small herd of elk just across from the BRT Trailhead at Boxley.

While we were out, we managed some other shots as well, inlcluding some fun night shots taken while driving down the road.  I think I’m going to have to title those ‘Impaired Driving’.  We enjoyed the elk enough that we just may have to schedule to come back during the rut in October and again in the winter, which is supposed to be the best time to see them. You can see some of our best photos from the weekend in the album link above.

Well, she has been back for quite some time but I hadn’t ever gotten around to posting the video.  You’ll appreciate the fact that it’s edited and doesn’t take forever to watch (since the videos of her leaving were quite the challenge to watch).  I particularly like the part where she’s talking in the car … funny story time!

MOVIE COMING SOON …

I got to help out giving some “Lost in the Woods” presentations to kids several times this year.  It’s a basic survival class for kids that teaches how to keep from getting lost and what to do if you do get lost so that you stay safe are are easy to find.  It’s a great program and the kids pay better attention if you have the dogs around for demos, so it’s great to have the K9 Unit give the presentations.  It’s also a great training opportunity for the dogs and shows how well they sort through the ‘wrong’ people scent to find the one they have been told to look for.  One of these trails I did, I even scented Cabela off of a rock that the child had touched.

We’ve got a border collie on our team that’s going to give me a run for my money – Alon is fit enough that he runs behind his dog even on long trails, so Cabela and I are on a fitness program to keep them from getting too much better than us.  I’d post my video of the same trail, but it isn’t nearly so smoothly filmed as my video and it made me feel motion sick, so I thought I’d spare you that.