The opinion is rooting itself in me that a technical study of horse conformation is infinitely easier for you Geometry people out there. You know how in high school math people who excel in geometry frequently struggle in algebra? and vice-versa? Well, I hated freaking geometry. I have a college degree in mathematics, and I still can't consistently come back with the correct surface area and volume of a prism. Geometry bores me to tears.

I can't tell you how far out of my element I feel when trying to simultaneously visualize the different angles of a horse's bones! It's frustrating. I want to be able to do it, but the little interesting hooks that we rely on to learn new material are not snagging my attention. My brain slides off of this material the way oil slides over water. I'm impressed with you, Geometry person, I wish you could lend me some visual insight into the geometry of flesh on bone.

It was incredibly misguided for me to think that I would enjoy analyzing something so fundamentally geometric as skeletons. Anyway, at least there's more to it than that. And I'll be damned if I don't learn this stuff one way or another.

So here's the endeavor that brought me to my current frustrations. I suspect from this picture that Cheeto is at least mildly calf-kneed. I was trying to determine degree. I gave up on that. I feel a slight security in saying "Cheeto is calf-kneed," but I can't add a qualifier. He is splay-footed. And that is mild.

As for the neck, I completely gave up envisioning how that thing looks under all the flesh. In the second picture, the blue line represents approximately where Cheeto's spine should be. The red line indicates where his spine IS if his neck connects to his body in any kind of logical way at all. WTF?? I know that's not where his spine is. Oh! Oh! Ray of light! His head is lower than normal, and his neck is S-ing down. That's it, isn't it? It surely must be. At any rate, I suspect a slight ewe neck. I gather this from looking at the first picture, and trying to connect the neck to the spine. The neck looks to connect to the spine at a lower point than a horizontal line drawn forward from just below the hip. This makes me think it must dip down between the shoulder blades. But I can look at his topline and know that it's not a gawdawful ewe neck. Just, looking at the second picture, my first inclincation is to say that his neck is the perfect shape. That can't be, can it? It's so damn confusing. It would be awesome if I could see an x-ray of Cheeto.