Transylvanian horseman

Bits and pieces

Here are two photos of a bit that I used for a while, until my ex took it when she left. I'm wondering whether any of my American readers can tell me anything about this kind of bit?

I know that it is some kind of Western curb. My old horse Marcu could be strong, and this bit worked well on him. He also tended to raise his head to evade the bit, especially at the beginning of the season when he was out of riding practice after being used for draught work through the winter. This bad habit was managed by my ex fixing a tie-down between his girth and curb chain.

Marcu's tie down was set long enough to allow him to move normally, but not put his nose up in the air. I do not know whether this is regular Western practice, or something invented on the spot. Marcu quickly was persuaded to keep his head in the right place, and not try to raise it to avoid the bit. As the season progressed, the tie-down was removed. It seemed like a technique to be used carefully, given the potential for an over-short tie-down to forcing the horse into an artificial shape or jerking his mouth trying to balance himself when stumbling. We didn't jump Marcu. Nor were clients ever allowed to ride him with this tack in place.

Anyway, it was a handy bit, and I'd like to find another. Doru is coming back into riding work after a winter of pulling carts, proving lively and trying to avoid the bit, reminding me of this useful gadget. He's ridden carefully on a loose rein, so he has no good reason to put his nose in the air. I like all my horses to go forward well on a loose rein. My current Western bridle has no place for a noseband, otherwise the tie-down could attach there instead. It has split reins which I like to use open when necessary for control, so a martingale isn't a solution.

Can any reader suggest where a bit like this may be obtained? I've not managed to source one in Europe. Perhaps it is a kind of antique?

All comments will be gratefully received, thank you.

Cleaning and shoeing

It's been a busy few days. I've had various things on my mind, so I haven't been diligent about posting. My stomach has been off-colour too, leading to early nights followed by hours of tossing and turning that were unkind to Danielle.

We're in our usual routine of cleaning, bringing fresh sawdust for bedding, and shoeing. Gelu has been busy pulling the tip cart. The weather has been wonderfully mild, the ground thawing so that new layers of previously-frozen manure are ready to be lifted and carted away.

A little way down the road, Gelu is passing a roadshide shrine to someone prematurely deceased. These shrines of painted tin are common throughout this country, and cluster especially around sharp bends, junctions and other hazards that Romanian drivers have difficulty safely negotiating.

The road has become muddy and pot-holed as it does every spring, when the people berate the mayor behind his back for not asphalting this backwater track. In vain, I tell them that the pot-holes slow traffic, knowing that local motorists will speed around crazily on a billiard table-smooth highway.

The forester's three year-old stallion came in for his dinner-plate feet to be shod with spiked creations that would shock Horseshoeing Housewife. For a youngster, he stood up quite well, with one man holding a foot up for the farrier. This is the usual way of working out here.

Hind feet tend to be more difficult, for the horse has by then rather lost patience with the operation. Romanians tend to blame this fidgetting on "the other leg going to sleep" rather than their own performance. This tendency to dodge responsibility is a very Romanian characteristic. Another piece of folklore asserts that weasels climb up the manes of stabled horses, causing the tangles that people in other countries attribute to a lack of grooming.

Back to the shoes, these ones were made by lengthening regular 18mm studs by welding a hexagon nut between each stud and the shoe. This is believed to give the horse "more traction". From what I have seen, wet snow will ball up inside the shoe almost irrespective of how high the studs are, whilst even short tungsten studs are effective on an icy road. At least, prompted by my reminders, Nelu takes care not to drop the heels. This is the usual sin committed by farriers out here, especially when they use a curious local push-knife to pare away from toe to heel.

The completed foot is painted with oil, mainly to make it look smart. It may also be a ploy whereby the farrier can resist any requests to lift the foot again for correction to be made. There can be a reluctance to finish the outside of the foot nicely or rasp away flares, often because the rasp is old and blunt. (My old rasps are sought after for re-use!) However, Nelu receives new rasps for the forge from time to time, so there is no excuse to be slack. I keep the new rasps in the house, because leaving a box of shiny new rasps in the forge would provide just too much temptation for pilfering.

With shoes like this, one takes good care that the horse does not step on one's toe! One has to be on the ball all the time. Even if I feel grim today, with a bad stomach, there is no chance of taking a day off sick. Oh, for the old days back in Britain, when I could phone in sick when I was ill. I didn't get sick often, however knowing that I could lie up in bed when genuinely sick was a comfort. One has to be tough out here on the frontier!

Festive horses

Gelu and Tudor went to accompany a wedding procession this afternoon. I photographed them as they departed ridden by our employee Nelu and a neighbour also called Nelu.

Each horse was decorated traditionally with flowers in the bridle and an embroidered saddle cloth.

After horses and riders left in the tail end of drizzle that had persisted since sunrise, the sky cleared and the late afternoon was pleasant in the last slanting rays of early evening sunlight. Good enough weather for a wedding procession. As I write, the inky night sky is dotted with bright stars.

Feline feedstation architecture

The cats are fed outside, at the end of the parking platform where a roof provides shelter. Their bowls for milk and dry food have been raised steadily higher. Now, after a spectacular display of jumping by the small, muscular dog Mina, I have raised the bowls to the highest point yet. In fact, they cannot go any higher. The cats have a ramp to access their lofty new feed station.

This is all necessary because some of the dogs prefer catfood to their own dogfood. At least one cat prefers dogfood, however the dogs seem up to the job of keeping interlopers out of their feed station at ground level.

Two cats say that they need to be well fed in security so that they can help in the office. I'm not sure whether to believe Lucky and Timid, however here they are ready to work.....so they say. Timid came to us when he was not quite young enough to readily get used to being handled. He has always enjoyed hanging around people though. Now he is six, and quite used to us, so he will accept being stroked and even picked up. He is a very familiar figure around here, and enjoys socialising with other cats. Lucky is more an executive toy, fluffy and cute to take away stress. He is extremely loveable, except during rare flatulent moments. Cats are such interesting companions.

Winter traffic

There are, it seems, people who can load even more firewood onto a cart than my staff can. It must be that rare incentive of paying per load. Danielle might joke about my Scottish heritage, however I am not the meanest firewood loader in the village!

The load pictured is rather large, however the journey is very slightly downhill on a hard surface. So it isn't difficult on the horses.

The equine welfare situation in southern Romania has hit the news again. It seems like the authorities decided to persecute the Roma (i.e. Gypsy) minority, presumably to get them to move on. (With the open EU borders, they might even emigrate and become someone else's problem.) In fact, what happened was that hundreds of horses were abandoned. This is very bad news, and not altogether surprising when some of the poorest people in society are stopped from taking their animals out to work. The link, if anyone wants it, is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/17/wrom117.xml.

Some friends in Fundatia ADEPT are arranging a meeting with the Romanian Prime Minister to discuss the situation, which is likely only to get worse over time. I have been busy drafting proposals to enhance road safety for animal-drawn vehicles. Friends and draught horse enthusiasts in Britain and Germany have given useful feedback - thank you everyone.

I hear that several equine and animal charities are taking an active interest in the situation. One charity says that it has funding to care for some abandoned horses. For how long?

However, the real issue is legal, since ill thought out laws will result in more and more horses becoming redundant. As usual, politics is at play in the animal welfare world. A well known British equine charity is trying to minimise the problem. Of course: their Romanian sources seem to be telling them what they want to hear, which is that their existing project in Romania is succeeding. No it isn't! It is ignoring the biggest single challenge to equine welfare. However, the directors of that charity hate to be contradicted, so their local agents are safer toeing the line and continuing to receive funding. I know: I have been threatened by that charity for questioning their judgment in an email conversation with them - not even for saying something publicly. (I was threatened by phone, via a third party on the charity's payroll, so that I can't prove anything in a court of law. Have they done this before?) Leaks occur almost everywhere, and one duly came my way later, a sympathetic individual confirming that I have indeed been blacklisted by the charity. Indeed, it was confirmed that, in at least one instance, they have attempted to harm my company (which owns and cares for 30 horses, I might add). I will not publish names here (readers can email me for details) since I know that an employee of that charity is subscribing to this blog. If that person has been reading posts with an open mind over the past few months, they will realise that real action is needed to help protect Romanian draught horses, not denial of the main issues blanketed by a smokescreen of projects that barely scrape the surface.

Someone in Europe commented to me that "redundant people aren't shipped to slaughterhouses, they are supported and work is found for them. So why should 'redundant' animals simply be killed?" This is an excellent thought.

Enough: I am annoyed and frustrated by this situation, where the utimate losers are horses. I have nothing more to say without beginning to really rant.

Heating pads for cats

In this cold winter weather, every cat needs a nice warm heating pad to sleep comfortably whatever the hour.

Here, our cat Claws has found an excellent heating pad, otherwise known as Doru the draught stallion. Doru doesn't mind in the least at having a feline passenger. Claws, for his part, seems to have realised that (despite his name!) he needs to tread carefully.

It seems like a good arrangement, though not exactly symbiotic as in the case of the waterbirds that clean crocodiles' teeth. There again, without reversible thumbs, Claws would find it difficult to hold a brush to groom his host.

Kaluga's life

I met Kaluga first at Beclean-pe-Somes stud, 80km west of here. I was looking for a sturdy draught horse, and spotted Kaluga with another mare pulling a cart on stable cleaning duties. The stud was only too happy to sell Kaluga because she had failed three times to carry a foal to term, making her of little use to a breeding facility. That's also how she gained her name, Kaluga, meaning monk (phonetically, anyway, as the correct spelling is calugar: why the masculine form was used for a mare, I don't know). At the then-current exchange rates, I paid around £300 (or $450) for her.

She arrived in an open truck, arranged by the stud. Livestock transport in Romania was quite primitive back then in 2000. Standing on the bed of the truck, her head was way higher than the cab roof, making for a strange sight as the vehicle arrived. In fact horses travel well in an open vehicle, since they can see the road ahead and soon learn to lean into the bends. Still, at the time it gave me quite a surprise to see a horse arrive like that. Since the truck had no ramp, we unloaded Kaluga a short distance away where we could back the vehicle against rising ground.

Kaluga's breed, the Semigreu or Romanian Medium Draught Horse, is derived in part from the Lipizzaner. She is a pure-bred example carrying stud brands. I was impressed by Kaluga's action, raising each front hoof high as she moved forwards. This looked splendid, although it also made her quite a slow horse in each pace. She was paired with our other grey, Gelu, a part-bred Lipizzaner. For seven years they made a beautiful pair, matched in colour if not exactly alike in build.

Although bought as a draught horse, Kaluga was ridden from time to time. She was useful for carrying unusually heavy or tall riders. The heaviest was a 250lb (120kg) RAF Wing Commander, a portly aviator not surprisingly relegated to desk duty.

On one occasion I rode her for a week, back in the first full year of operation of the riding centre. It was a bleak ride, over a cloud-covered Suhard ridge and down to the windswept Rotunda Pass, a place so remote that until recently a hermit lived there. We headed high into the Rodna mountains, on an exposed Habsburg track , experiencing swirling snow flurries on an incredible August afternoon. All this, the sturdy mare pushed through as if a long trail and bad weather were nothing to her.

On another early ride, we took a strangely unmatched group of three horses: the large, slow Kaluga for a novice rider; the fast, flighty Arabella for his highly exerienced wife; and Nelly the pushy Alpha Hutul for me. The objective, as I discovered out on the trail, was for the lady to convince her husband that riding was a good thing and therefore he should buy her a horse back at home in Britain. As it turned out, the wife was out of shape and, showing off by jumping the athletic Arabella, inflicted upon herself a groin strain. I had to get the group down off the mountain with her in considerable discomfort sitting sideways across a patient Kaluga, her husband leading Nelly (who was at least more sensible than an Arabian) and me leading Arabella. It was an ignominous event, although I heard later that the husband did yield and buy his wife a horse.

I shall not forget Kaluga's kind, benign expression and large, floppy ears. She has a kind face and large, quiet eyes that spoke of calmness. Those great ears were expressive too, moving to track whatever interested her, yet also inferring a gentle, untroubled nature. Two photos show Kaluga to the left of the shot, paired with a slightly smaller Gelu.

One summer afternoon last year, I drove Kaluga alone over the 20km forest track northward to Sant. She was a simple, straightforward horse to drive, and a communicative horse too. When thirsty, she would look across at a water trough or stream in an expressive way impossible to misunderstand. On the long steady descent into Sant, I screwed the cart brakes on lightly to hold the weight of the vehicle, then walked down the road next to her. If I walked in front, she would follow me. Where the gradient changed, necessitating changes to the brake setting, I could trust her to walk steadily ahead whilst I went to the back of the cart to make the changes. (The brake screw is at the back of a farm cart.) It was a great pleasure to travel with such a calm, friendly, sensible horse.

Kaluga was a superb logging horse too. She was a good, hard puller, who could lean into a load to get it started. She was sensible and alarmed neither by chainsaws nor by the crash of a tree being felled. When a load was too much for her, she would stop and decline to pull, telling us that something was wrong. A lesser horse would use that technique to shirk work, but not Kaluga.

I remember her galloping across the field at feeding time. Most often she walked, or trotted in her elagant high-stepping way, however we were treated to the occasional gallop. The ground shook as she passed.

I had expected that she would enter her twilight years slowly, spending a year or two on light yard duties. There is always a need for a safe, sensible horse to pull the tip cart, taking away manure and returning with sawdust. That is the horse that replaces a tractor. It seems that misfortune has cheated Kaluga of this role.

As it is, she is enjoying each day of a suddenly enforced retirement, basking in the sun during the day, and eating copious amounts of hay and plenty of corn. She seems happy and alert and, although thin, isn't suffering from the cold and isn't losing any more weight. She might see the spring yet. I hope so. I know that her condition is likely abruptly to worsen again, however I would like her to enjoy the warmth and fresh grass of one more spring.

I'd like to thank everyone who has sent a message of support. I do appreciate every thought and message. Thank you all.

Switching cars using a horse, 1993

I took this unusual photo back in 1993, near the village of Covasna in southeastern Transylvania. The location was, by then, unique in Europe. It was the last place where horses were employed to switch rail cars. It was also the last place to use a gravity-worked inclined plane to move cars.

The upper level comprised the remnants of a once-extensive narrow-gauge logging railway system, worked by a steam locomotive. The lower level comprised a few kilometres of narrow-gauge line running to a sawmill and main line interchange, and was also operated by a steam locomotive. The top and bottom of the inclined plane were each switched by a horse, a cheaper solution than using a dedicated locomotive. The narrow gauge cars are relatively light and easy for a horse to move because friction is much less than with a rubber-tyred vehicle. Switching horses always walk to one side of the track, so that the horse is safe if the car runs forward. The draw chain has a simple link that will slip off if the car passes the horse.

Strangely, it was rare to see railway enthusiasts or heritage buffs at places like Covasna. These places operated, and then closed, barely recorded.

This arrangement continued to operate into the year 2000, when the sawmill closed. The inclined plane has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, and the narrow gauge tracks at top and bottom still exist although derelict. Tentative plans exist to create a heritage centre based on the inclined plane and railway, so this sight may one day be repeated.

Firewood and feed boxes

Over the past few days, we have been busy collecting sawmill offcuts for firewood. Whilst it took just a couple of minutes to drag each load from our neighbour's sawmill, loading the multitude of pieces was a time-consuming business. We jammed some stout pieces in upright to act as bolsters, so that we could load more offcuts onto the cart, an important detail since we were paying by the load. Anyway, our neighbour sees this material as little more than rubbish, a waste product that is worth little, so he is glad to welcome others to cart it away.

Back in the stables, meanwhile, Cornel has been carrying out some renovations. New feed boxes have been added throughout the main stables, making it easier to cater for horses that require additional hard feed. Each position is equipped now with a stall chain and a feed box, so we can secure each horse to eat its particular portion.

Meanwhile, an overnight change in the weather brought more snow. In the afternoon the sky cleared. The wind got up, blowing flurries of snow off the roofs and the trees. As we forked the afternoon hay down from a cart into the hill field, bundles of hay blew downwind like tumbleweed in a Western movie.

Now, evening is freezing beneath a starry sky. Smoke trails from the chimney, white in the moonlight. The snow is crisp beneath my feet as a walk back from watering the three horses in the stable: Kaluga, Rozy and the Arab-Hutul cross foal Toby. It is beautiful outside: fresh and clean.

Staying upright on the ice

Regular readers will be well aware that Transylvania can be quite an icy place in Winter. On warmer days, the surface of the snow melts in the sun and runs across paths, then freezes into a sheet of ice at night. Snow cover on trackways is packed by passing traffic into solid ice. Travelling can be slippery. The pair in the photo are crossing a sheet of ice treacherous for a person to cross in smooth-soled shoes.

The solution for horses is spiked ice shoes. We are using regular Kerckhaert shoes with Stromsholm 18mm screw-in studs with tungsten inserts. These studs are sufficient for the relatively light duties (compared, say, to daily logging work) that our horses perform.

The inside branch of each shoe has a plain stud, to which I have added a surface of welded borium so that it doesn't wear away quicker than the other studs. This avoids the injuries that a sharp stud would cause in case of brushing. Horses can also misplace their footing when working on bad ground in deep snow, where a sharp stud on the inside branch could penetrate the lower leg or coronet.

The studs are fitted before the shoe is nailed on, and welded to stop them coming loose, making them permanent fixtures. I have tried simply screwing the studs in place, however too many get lost even if they are screwed in really tightly. The ends of the tungsten are rounded, and stay that way with wear, so these shoes are not sharp like arrow points. However, with the weight of a horse on top, they certainly grip the ice. A horse can trot or canter on ice, or negotiate icy slopes, in security. Out riding in winter, I am very grateful indeed for these shoes.

When using these winter shoes, one must take great care. Obviously it is disagreeable if a horse steps on one's foot. Horses cannot be allowed to kick one-another, and practically that means turning them out singly, or in pairs where a working pair get along very well. (A good working pair tend to be friendly companions when turned out.) Horses that over-reach do not do well with these shoes, which can quickly abrade the front of a hind hoof with multiple impacts. The studs also tend to tear up wooden stable floors, so a deep bedding is necessary. This also makes it easier for a horse to lie down without poking itself with the studs. The shoe pictured is one of Kaluga's, which I removed in order to transport her in the trailer.

The locals use heavier shoes, with studs formed from triangles of tool steel brazed to the shoes. That type of shoe will last for several winters.