Sunday, August 9, 2009

The horse carriage

You will have to wait a bit for the "Relationship with truth" write-up.. in fact, I am debating whether I can really do justice to that topic

Anyway, I mentioned it here to avoid burying it under new posts


Today I want to take a horse's point of view, of a horse carriage.

A horse is burdened as it is by his blinders. I remember wondering how frustrated a horse might be feeling under his blinders. When I was little, things like these would leap out to me. My perceptions and sensitivity were much keener.

I once saw a goat skinned alive in a road accident and it lay there bleating helplessly, neither bleeding to death, nor able to get up and leave. There was a huge traffic mess and heavy vehicles moved slowly inches past the animal.

The scene never left me for several months and I wonder to this day what would have been the its ultimate fate

The goat had a placenta-like covering beneath its skin.. and in different circumstances it would have been quite interesting to examine


Anyway.. coming back to the horse...

I boarded a horse carriage only one time in my life. I must have been around 10 or 11 at that time. It was a full carriage and I was supposed to squeeze up in front. I couldn't help wondering if the horse would feel better off if I boarded on the back, because it was a two-wheel carriage.
If the back of the carriage were heavier (significantly enough), the carriage would have an upward force on the horse as it moved. Maybe it would struggle a bit to get a grip on the road, especially when moving up-hill. If the front were to be heavier, it would strain the front ankles and bear down on the creature down-hill
This could perhaps be avoided if the carriage were a four-wheeler.

Or maybe not. Why? Because it is easy to design poorly. A design fault may make a yoke a tad too low for the horse, and it would have to put up an upward pressure on the front wheels..

Who wants to be a horse?

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