Since we’re on the subject of measuring, I thought I’d throw in the concept that we weigh horses using tape measures. You know, like your mom used when hemming your dad’s church slacks? Why should anything in the horse world resemble reality?
While it’s possible to put a horse on a scale, not many people own bathroom scales that go over a thousand pounds. (Personally I’m willing to go down on my knees in gratitude that I don’t need one that goes that high.) Plus it’s difficult to get an accurate reading while one is trying to cradle a grumpy horse in a teeny bathroom.
This is why we buy weight tapes. They are marked in pounds instead of inches. We can run the tape around the horse’s belly and it will tell us (more or less) what the horse weighs. How anyone first figured this out is beyond me, but I flunked calculus. When those of you who immediately understood Hands High (below) graduate from MIT, will you please get back to us and let us know?
The last thing I remember from math class was something about needing to calculate the height of a Sequoia by measuring the length of its shadow X something-or-other in relation to it’s something else. When I came to, I was surrounded by white light and quiet voices…in the infirmary. Ever since, I’ve decided some things simply need to be acts of God or firmly categorized into The Great Mystery. (I think I transferred out to “World Religions”.) However, the weight of one’s horse, is not one of them. THAT, we need to know.
