Rearrangement: A Key Concept

Busy week, but back to fracture resistance. Txs to Bill for comments last post.

As I continue to think on this I might have just realized something that is going to change my conceptions quite a bit, an epiphany perhaps! Prior posts as our horse breezes down the racetrack noted what might be happening and the forces involved. Focus on a small portion of cannon bone tissue maybe the size of a dime. Will consider what's happening at the electron microscope level on out.

First, think of the leg bone of a chicken. I'd suspect human bones, and certainly large animal bones are far more calcified then our feathered friend, but, we see in the consistency of chicken bone the effect of collagen on the bone structure. There is quite obviously mixed into the mineral lattice a significant amount of live tissue.

Thus, when we consider what happens as the hoof strikes the racetrack at speed, and I noted:

1. heat buildup.
2. movement or oscilation at the cellular/molecular level.
3. damage and squeezing here and there.

But, as I'm visualizing what might actually be happening my thoughts trend in a different direction. Forces working on the lattice of a dead, solid object are going to create some mollecular movement. The molecules buttress each other, and unless the force overwhelms the final result probably is the molecules pretty much retain their position.

BUT, when we throw in the live tissue in the bone lattice I think we might get an entirely different result BECAUSE we have a different sort of bonding.

Imagine our cannon bone is constructed of water molecules. Then, let's harden it up a bit, but gradually. We have a substance slighter harder then water. The next substance is harder yet. The next substance harder and so on until perhaps we have a material as thick as pudding. We keep hardening the substance and finally we get something as thick as collagen.

I'm suspecting that forces acting on collagen instead of oscillating the molecules or causing them to vibrate instead act in a similar manner as when force is applied to water in that "waves" of material are REARRANGED. As the substance thickens there is less and less movement and the waves become shorter and shorter, but, the principle remains the same in that force merely rearranges very similar molecules vis a vis each other SO THAT THE END RESULT IS MATERIAL EXTREMELY SIMILAR TO WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE THE FORCE WAS APPLIED.

This seems to me a key concept for bones and fracture resistance. I'll expound, next post.

Training:
We're working on putting a new floor in the horse trailer. As soon as that's done we're off to the race track. This interfered with training a bit this week.
Wed 7/9: Both horses ran riderless in a still muddy paddock. We did very fast and very short spurts as the ground was ideal for that. Probably a total of nine 1/2f spurts with the horses galloping into and out of them. Nice, albeit short, speed work.
Thurs. 7/10: Art trotted 1.5 miles under tack. Rod walked 7f. He was a bit feisty and the cowardly Nob afraid to go into the trot.
Fri. 7/11 Tack work sacrificed to working on the trailer floor. The horses were galloped riderless 1.5 miles with speed work planned for tomorrow.