The next step takes us to "Anythings" articulation. Now was the time to start putting her back together. Since the vertebra were still in order at the orginal site, I had numbered them as I picked them up, so figuring out what order they went in was simple. The ribs were a tad bit difficult, but do able. Each vertebra was connected with a 24 gauge wire in 3 different places. Then each rib was connected to the vertebra in four seperate place wtih 22 guage wire. I used a 1/8" drill bit to drill tiny holes for the wire to connect the bones. Once the ribs were connected the whole back bone sat on a few boxes for safe keeping (these boxes also kept the ribs out and in good form).
The intersting skeletal feature in the Spanish Mustang is some are born with 5 lumbar vertabra (the normal is 6 with the 5th and 6th fused together) (the vert. between the rib and sacrum), if they are short a vertabra they also have one less set of ribs. "Anything" had 6 lumbars.
The next stage in the artilculation process was the legs. I used a much heavier wire to keep these bones together (32 gauge). Pending on bone I drilled between 2 and 4 holes to keep the bones from moving. I left some slack in the wire so the legs could have some give. This was where I discovered my problem. Anything LOOKED so perfect out in that field that I never questioned if all her bones were there or not. Guess what...I was missing from the hock down on BOTH of her rear legs.
Well, I wasn't about to give up very easily so I set about finding some replacement bones. I attempted to make a plaster cast of the front cannon bones, but that didn't do anything but make a HUGE mess. I was also missing all four hoof bones. It was then that it occured to me that the best place to find Spanish Mustang bones was to contact the Spanish Mustang Registry. I posted a message on their message board with little hope that anyone would respond to such a 'morbid' request, but I was wrong! Within the day I received SEVERAL e-mails from folks down south (Texas mostly) that were both curious about the skeleton (a lot of questions on the number of vert. she had), and a few that were willing to try and help. Thats when I met Vickie of Karma Farms in Texas. When I first chatted with Vickie she didn't have any bones that would fit the size ("Anything was 14.3 hands...she was on the large side for a mustang). This appeared to be a dead end. After all those replies NOTHING panned out. And I was still short bones (the ones you see in blue are waht I was missing).
Then I got another e-mail. Vickie's friend, Gretchen (a fellow SM person) had recently lost a gelding that fit the description needed. I got in contact with her right away and she was willing to help me out. Together Vickie and Gretchen got hte bones I needed to finish "Anything." The new bones came from an appaloosa named "Ziggy." Now "Anything" was "Anything's Ziggy"! Ziggy is in the back.
The bones arrived to me on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2000. About five months after I first came in contact with Vickie and crew. The legs still had a lot of soft tissue on them, and I was out of ideas on how to clean the bones without waiting until spring and letting the bugs do it. I'd never boiled bones before, but I decided this would be a good time to start. Since boiling bones over an open flame is VERY hard to do, and since I didn't have a pan/bucket that could with stand the flames, I decided to try something else. Being an avid dog person, I had an evil water-bucket heater. Instead of just heating the water to luke warm it heated it to 180 degrees F! WAAAAY too hot for dogs to drink out of, but hot enough to simmer bones. I put the legs in a 5 gallon pail and let them simmer for about four days. This worked WONDERFULLY! Once they were done getting the skin off I took a wire brush and got the tendons and such off, I then put the bones in straight ammonia to soak for two days (gets rid of the oil in the bones that is brought out by boiling). Once that was done I washed the bones off w/Ajax and water (to remove all of the ammonia), and then soaked them in Hydrogen Peroxide for another 3-4 days. Worked great! The bones didn't whiten as much as I'd have like them too, but they look good and don't differ from the skeletons color too much. Now my horse was done...she just needed to be mounted....
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