Cart Wreck!

 

As I move ungracefully and reluctantly toward my dotage and the years of being an "older rider," I've long realized gravity is not my friend; that the ground is harder now, and hay bales heavier; that I don't bounce particularly well, and that body parts don't heal with either the certainty or swiftness they once did. A while back, thinking ahead to the days when I can no longer hop on a horse or mule, I decided to do more harness work with my crew so that if I can't throw a foot in a stirrup, I can still throw my aging posterior onto a cart bench. Besides, I've always enjoyed harness horses and hitches and wagons and such. With all that in mind, I've been working Odelia the donkey in harness more, and a few months back got her a beautiful easy-entry Amish cart. 

Odelia's been doing so well, too. She's a happy donkey, very eager to please and compliant, and she is thrilled when she sees me coming with the halter. She's not energetic, and isn't leaning on the tugs in a hurry to move out. That's fine with me. I just want a solid, quiet, amiable little buddy to pull the new cart around the ranch. I've chronicled parts of her harness-career saga in previous blogposts here.

On Thursday afternoon, two days ago, I hitched her up and drove her off the property for the first time. Not far - just to the neighbor's driveway, where we were able to make a turnaround. I drove her back to the barn, did a lap around the barn area, and then headed back along the same route to do precisely the same thing. In the meantime, the curious chupacabras turned out in the pasture - two mares and a gelding - had made their way to the fence line along the driveway to see what was going on. As soon as we approached them I knew there was going to be drama. I stopped Odelia and let her stand for a minute so they could get a good look. Horses that are unaccustomed to horse-drawn vehicle use are typically pretty spooky of them, and I knew - despite the many laps around the barn area I've done in recent weeks with Odelia and the cart - that there was a good chance those three knuckleheads would spook and bolt. Odelia, though, has been a solid little donkey. 

As soon as I started her back into a walk, it was obvious there was going to be a train wreck. The three horses spun and bolted. Odelia, despite having her blinkers on, bolted along with them. She was headed directly for a scrubby mesquite. I overcorrected and pulled left. Odelia is a responsive donkey with a soft mouth, and she spun around to the left as fast as her little donkey legs would go. She went left, I went right - right over the top rail of the cart and hard onto the gravel road. My right hip hit first, followed promptly by right elbow and right side of my head, as my left hand extended out to try to break my fall. I slid on said hip, elbow and head until coming to rest. It wasn't a graceful Trea Turner slide. It was a hard, painful, gravity-really-sucks slide, and as soon as I stopped I was aware of poor, frightened Odelia bucking repeatedly and finally trotting face first into the field wire fence as I vainly hollered, "Whoa, now!" And then, just seconds after it all unfolded, she came to a stop and stood quietly at the wire fence.

I was hurt. I started to get shocky and fought it as I have on so many prior occasions: "Don't pass out. Don't pass out. Breathe!" And in what has become all-too routine I took inventory of my body parts: Right hip, agony. Right elbow, agony. Head, OWWW! I touched my elbow with my gravel-filled gloved hand and saw blood on my glove. I tried to stand; my hip tried to collapse. I made it to Odelia's side and just leaned across her back, talking to her and trying to beat the persistent shock from causing me to pass out.

It was obvious I wouldn't be able to walk the 1/4 mile to the house, so I crawled back into the cart and asked Odelia to please take care of me and safely get me to the barn. She did. She was once again quiet, willing, sweet Odelia, and we made it to the barn. The entire distance the world around me turned bright, radiant yellow - the shock again trying to force me to pass out, while I continued willing myself to proceed - and I could barely see through the bright yellow surroundings. At the barn, I was able to get out of the cart, unhitch Odelia from the cart, remove her harness, and put her away ... and then I faced the long, arduous trek to the house. At each step, my right hip collapsed underneath me. 

I took a more detailed inventory. Elbow clearly needed sutures and was bleeding as well as leaking a yellowish fluid ... synovial fluid, as it turned out. I could move it, but with great pain. Hip: so swollen the swelling was visible even with my jeans on, terribly painful especially with weight bearing, but good range of motion, but that weird collapsing feeling when I took a step. Knees: Both scraped and the right one puffy. Head: Road rash on my upper right side, bruise and a large swollen area and road rash on the upper forehead even past the hairline. It hurt to touch, hurt when I didn't touch, and hurt in the mandibular area when I opened my mouth.  Everything else, pretty darned good. 

I hurt too much to try to go to the ER 45 miles away, so I soaked in a bathtub full of epsom salts, cleaned and debrided the elbow wound the best I could and dressed it with triple antibiotic and silver sulfadene and wrapped it with padding, and afterward I sat with ice packs on various body parts. Due to my kidney disease, taking anything more than a Tylenol was verboten. Throughout the night I was a case study of abject misery, the elbow throbbing as well as stinging like I'd thrown salt on it. 

First thing the next morning, after having the husband person drive me to the barn so I could treat a mare's injured eye, I cleaned up and shampooed the gravel out of my hair and had him tote me to the Benson hospital. There, a very kind and thorough doctor expressed his concern about a possible hairline fracture to the hip, infection to the elbow laceration that it was now too late to suture, and the fact my ears felt filled up (it felt like I'd been at higher elevation). By then, there was a line directly across my torso right below my breasts that was tight and tender. Multiple X-rays and CT scans, and a solid exam later, he gave me the amazing news that I hadn't broken anything. The hip: ligament and soft tissue damage galore, and a likely deep bruise / blood pocket. The elbow: Bruising, ligament damage, and that darned synovial fluid leak. The head: Hard enough to resist any injury beyond road rash and a good knot. As the doctor put it, I dodged a big one. 

So here I am, enjoying the irony that I pursue an equine activity intended to be a safe alternative to riding, only to be laid up for a while after all. The fact harness work is intrinsically dangerous is not new to me; I've spent thousands of hours reading through old papers and death records while researching for my western history books, and have read countless accounts of "local man killed in wagon wreck" or "child killed in buggy accident." The incident confirms my awareness of how hard the ground is, and how unfriendly gravity is. Horse-drawn vehicles are far more dangerous than the horseless carriage; there are no seat belts, or windows to keep you from being ejected, or airbags. The horsepower behind them is subject to flights of fear or fancy that can easily lead to runaway situations, and unlike being in the saddle, gripping with your knees and clenched buttocks isn't going to keep you from flying. 

The scene of the crime. You can see the tree we were headed to at right, alongside yaw marks and scalp scuff.

Odelia, by the way, is just fine, and to my relief has no injuries at all. My beautiful new cart is also, from what I could tell through my shocky eyes yesterday, also intact. I expect my hip will give me problems for some time, although I'm walking a bit better today and was able to drive to town to pick up the muscle relaxant the doctor prescribed. With its help maybe I'll get a bit more sleep tonight rather than waking up at 0300 with pain in the elbow. By the way - that elbow now matches the other one, which required six stitches when a horse fell with me on pavement many years ago.

Life isn't without risk, and I expect in a few weeks to be driving Odelia around again. All of us in the horse world know it's not if  but when and how many times an injury will occur. We make choices as to how much risk we'll take, and how much safety we will prioritize, but there's no way to make certain activities entirely safe, just to make them degrees of safer. I've had the thrilling joys of hang gliding, pursuit driving, twenty years of police work, distance cycling, backpacking alone, and a lifetime with horses. I've endured a lot of injuries along the way - but that adrenaline is addictive stuff, and horses more addictive still. So foolhardy as it may be, I will continue to enjoy my horses (between injuries, of course). It is my decision.

The deep scraping is where my hand or elbow slid along the ground. It doesn't show in the photo but there was a distinct, pathetic hand print in the gravel. Good thing I had gloves one!

A knot on the forehead and above the brow and some scalp scuff, but otherwise intact!

Yes, the elbow could've used a couple of stitches.

So no cautionary tales or morals here: Just be aware that you can be injured (badly) in a horse-drawn buggy as easily as in the saddle, and make your own decisions accordingly whether that be wearing a helmet, a protective vest, or other safety gear. For me, it means I'll probably invest in some good skateboard protective gear for my elbows and perhaps my knees. I don't know if there's much I can do to protect my hips. 

Time to curl up in the recliner with a heat pack. Be safe out there!

How to REALLY Draw a Donkey

Friends, it's time for a courageous conversation about abusive donkey drawing. No, not donkeys drawing cruelly heavy loads, but badly drawn donkeys and - gasp! - tutorials on how to badly draw a donkey. My recent online search clearly indicates there is a lot of interest in donkey drawing techniques. Unfortunately, the tutorials largely appear to be done by people who have never actually seen a donkey. Much like the early artists who drew fantastically weird New World animals, these samples of artistic splendor are chimeras of sorts: Goat-headed donkeys, and horse-necked donkeys, and donkeys with such weird proportions and oddly-placed features that even Picasso would be pained to see them.         

So here I am, not as an accomplished artist, but as a donkey owner who wants you, dear reader, to know the characteristics that distinguish a donkey from, say, a horse or a mule or a goat - what gives a donkey its donkeyness. With a little help from Odelia, my donkey-in-residence, I shall offer my best anatomical advice on donkey creation. I've patiently measured my very patient Odelia to provide actual proportions as a reference (see diagrams towards the end) so that you may have a quick reference for your future donkey creations. Using photo references is all well and good, but relying solely on those references won't give you a reliable sense of donkey perspective.

Donkeys aren't just horses with long ears. They aren't mules, either. Oh, what a dagger to my equine-loving heart to see writers and captioners of photographs and artists labeling something as a "donkey" when it is clearly a mule, and vice versa. Let's look at the differences.

Although there are several varieties and flavors of donkeys, ranging from adorable spotted Sicilian donkeys to mammoth jacks and onagers and woolly Poitou donkeys, I'll focus on the humble desert burro that is doubtless familiar to anyone who has read Brighty of the Grand Canyon or watched Treasure of the Sierra Madre or visited iconic Oatman, Arizona. Although the shade of their color varies, their basic shape and coat pattern is largely the same. Their most recognizable coat color is a basic grey. Odelia, our lovable Lady of the Bray here at Rancho Chupacabra, is all that: an adopted BLM donkey in the typical grey color. Donkeys also have what's called a "mealy" pattern: They're lighter on the underside of the belly and groin than they are above it. Note that they have thicker, coarser coats during the winter, and slicker, finer coats during the summer. 

Let's start at the head. Everyone knows donkeys have long ears! But donkeys don't have pointy ears like Arabians, folks. The tops of their ears are somewhat rounded. Quit drawing pointy-eared donkeys! The ears of a desert burro are rimmed with black. Their heads are generally shorter and heavier than a horse's or mule's. They don't have pointy little noses, either. I've seen a lot of artists drawing petite-nosed donkeys and you have to study the picture for a bit to realize it isn't intended to be a goat. Donkeys - in general - don't have dished faces, either, but rather straight, pragmatic-looking faces. If they do have a dish, it's going to be subtle, not concave Arabian profiles.

Donkeys have pronounced brow lines above the eyes, and generally there's adorable floof that drifts off the top of those ridges. Their eyes are set at a different angle from a horse, as well. And those eyes, which generally have either a mischievous twinkle or an Eeyore-esque woebegone pout, are surrounded by a markedly lighter shade than the rest of their face. Similarly, there's a distinct delineation between the top part of their face with its coarse, longer hair and the muzzle, which has a smoother, velvety texture.  Their nostrils are different from a horse's, as well, with a pronounced nasal ridge above the nostril. Don't forget to shade the area. Their mouths are generally shallow. Although they do sometimes have a bit of a star on the forehead - one of my donkey exes, Olivia, had that feature - it's not prevalent. However, there's a distinctive star-shaped whorl of hair on their forehead generally set just below the eyes.

Moving on to their neck: They don't have graceful, long, arched necks. Neither are they hamsters; they DO have necks, people. But the crest of the neck - that top line - is pretty darned straightish (and sometimes, in over-fed donkeys with "fat pads," the neck is concave or "crestfallen). And on top of that straightish neck is a short, erect mane. It doesn't grow like a horse's and flop over; it stands up in a scruffy mass like a zebra's. It's generally darker than the rest of the donkey. On your typical grey desert burro, it is a shade of sunburned black or burnt umber. The crest of the neck, from base of ear to withers, is twice as long as the underline of the neck, from jowels to chest.

The neck-bone is attached to the shoulder-bone, and that shoulder is straighter and shorter than a horse's. The withers - that arched protrusion between neck and back - is quite flat on a donkey, compared to a horse, and on burros, there's a dark linear marking that extends from the withers downward. In Christian lore, that line is said to be a cross bestowed upon the donkey for carrying Mary as she was seeking shelter just before the birth of Jesus. Why is it called a cross? Because it intersects their dorsal stripe, which extends from the top of the head down the center of the donkey all the way back to the end of the tail. You can see it in the photo of the donkey's tail, below. 

Donkey backs are fairly flat and proportionately longer than a horse's in comparison to front end and rumps. And the rumps? They aren't round and apple-butted and luscious examples of big booty. (Big ass ass? Don't get me started.) They're angular, narrow from the rear, and they slope downward in a flat line. And on the back end of them, there's a tail that is NOT a luxurious mass of long tail hair. They are scruffy tails with about as many bristles as an old man's ear until you get to the meager collection of slightly longer hair at the end. Don't draw a yak tail on your donkey! Donkey tails look like this. 

Moving down the donkey legs, now, note that your standard grey desert burro doesn't have white socks. They don't even have rear chestnuts. They don't have graceful long legs, but they reach the ground. And where they contact the ground are hooves that are more upright than a typical horse. The pasterns are not as sloped as a horse's, either. Don't put goat hooves on your donkeys, either. They aren't cloven, although sometimes donkeys will act like the devil.

Proportions

Just as in drawing people, knowing general or average proportions can be useful in evoking realism. Individuals obviously have variations in proportions; that's what make us unique. Knowing proportions can help you know what makes an animal look younger, or older, too. In the descriptions below I've tried to either avoid, or to explain, specific terminology on the parts of the equine to make it more accessible to non-horsey-people.

Head and Face:

From the front: The ears, as the most distinctive feature, are a useful point of reference. The ear is roughly 10% longer than the widest point of the face, which is just above the eyes. The ears are roughly half the length of the face. The widest point of the face is just slightly under half the length of the face. If you start with a kite-shaped diagram, as many of us were taught to draw horses long ago, the distance from the base of the ear extending diagonally to the top of the opposite eye is somewhat longer than half of the distance from the base of the ear to the top of the opposite nostril; the base of ear to top of opposite eye is just shy of the length of the ear. 

The top of the donkey's eye is 1/3 of the way down the length of the head (from poll to lips). The ears are roughly 1/2 the length of the head. 

From the side: The widest part of the face, just below the eyes and extending from the front of the face to the jowels where they meet the neck, is just over half the length of the long part of the head, from behind the ears to the tip of the muzzle.

The ears, if measured from the side, are slightly longer than they are if measured from the inside. In other words, if you're measuring the ears at the center of the head, they're shorter than if you measured them from the side of the head.

Neck: The topline of the neck - the crest, or silhouette of it at top - is TWICE as long as the bottom line of the neck. This means that from the side, the entire length from where the neck meets the chest to the front of the face is just about the same length as the distance from the top of the neck from behind the ears to the withers. The neck where it joins the head is shorter from top to bottom than the neck where it joins the chest. 

Withers: The donkey's "cross" or dark shoulder stripe is at the withers. The shoulder itself is straighter than the horse's shoulder; the ideal horse has a 45 degree slope to the shoulders, while the donkey is not as sloped.

Back: The back is longer from withers to the high point of the rump than the neck is from ears to withers. Compared to horses, donkeys are long backed. 

Body: Visualize a line from the bottom of the muscle that's just above the front leg to the withers. This length is shorter than the distance from the hoof line to that same muscle. In other words, the legs are longer than the body mass from leg to withers. From the front of the chest (where it meets the neck) in a straight line to the rump, parallel to the ground, is a distance that's almost the same length as the total height of the donkey from ground to withers. They're long-bodied animals.

Let's Draw our Burro!

Okay, let's do a quick step-by-step!

Here's a fairly straightforward reference photo of Odelia. For this quick exercise, let's just do the head and neck. Make corrections as you go along to keep the proportions right. Remember to utilize negative space to see the lines and angles more accurately (focus on, for example, the shape formed outside the donkey, such as the slightly rounded area where the underside of the head meets the underside of the neck.) Pro-tip: You don't need to include extraneous objects, like halters, fence posts, and other items in the original photographs you use. Pet peeve: People who take a cute photo of a donkey sticking its head partly through two slats of wood, and draw it with the wood obscuring its cute little head. The joy of drawing is YOU can interpret what you're portraying. 

1. Draw your donkey's face and ears, remembering the proportions above. Use the ear length as a guide for the proportions to follow.

2. Draw in the muzzle and jowels (jaws).

3. Draw the eyes and accent the browline. 

4. Draw the delineation between the muzzle and the upper part of the face.

5. Add the nostril, remembering the deep shadowing around the side and lower end of it.

6. Fluff up the ears and draw in the dark border that extends around most of each ear.

7. Draw the underline where the head connects to the neck; draw the upper line of the neck, keeping it straight.

8. Add the upright, scruffy mane and forelock. Shade your drawing appropriately, going in the direction of the coat. Congratulations! You've done a donkey portrait.

Note: From this point forward are instructions on drawing the rest of the donkey.

9. Draw in the shoulder and the flat, low withers. Shade in the vertical cross at the withers.

10. Draw the back. Keep it fairly straight.

11. Draw the front legs. Remember: Donkeys have joints! The bone above the knee is longer than the bone below the knee (the cannon bone). At the bottom of the cannon bone is another joint, called the fetlock. Below the fetlock is a slightly angled distance connecting it to the hoof; this angled section is the pastern.

12. Draw the underbelly. It is longer than the length of the back.

13. Draw the hind legs. They, too, have joints. The hock is the large joint above the cannon bone and bends in the opposite direction from the front knees. Below the cannon is the fetlock, just as in the front legs, and below the fetlock is the pastern that attaches to the hoof.

14. Draw the scrawny rump. Don't forget to shade the point of the hip.

15. Draw the scrawny, scruffy excuse of a tail.

Voila! A whole donkey. Now add your shading to indicate the hair, making sure you go with the flow of the coat. 

Supplies

For the purpose of the illustrations included here, I used a Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Progresso 6B woodless graphite pencil. I love these pencils! You can buy them here. Note: This is an affiliate link, meaning I may earn commissions from purchases made through this link (and for which I thank you tremendously for helping keep the donkeys in oats.) 

I also used a plastic eraser - in pastel, of course, because who can resist pretty erasers? You can buy them here (affiliate link). 

Now, go forth and create your own donkeys! If you'd like a mule tutorial, leave a comment. Also see this post for further info on drawing equines: What Horsemen Want Artists to Know

Copyright (c) 2024 Marcy J. Miller * All rights reserved * No part of this content may be reproduced without the express permission of the author * Thank you for stopping by!