Wild and Woolly

Wild and woolly and full of fleas; ain't never been curried below the knees.

My farrier was scheduled to come by the barn yesterday, so I got there a little (read: 2 hours) early to clean up my gross horse. Since it rained for three days, Gina's dry lot has become a mud pit; her frequent pacing churns up the muck and causes her to be fetlock-deep in the stuff. I figured I'd hose off her hooves and lower legs, pull her unruly mane, and start combing her knotted tail.

Gina sulking about being tied up.

I gave her a thorough currying and pulled off enough hair for at least three sweaters with my shedding comb. I have a wide-toothed metal comb that I usually comb manes and tails with; I like it because the teeth don't break off. I combed Gina's mane. It was full of dandruff and mud. Merely combing it caused giant handfuls of the stuff to pull out. 

"Are we done now? Where are the cookies?"

Brushing it made it look about a hundred times better. I went ahead and pulled it (somehow snapping my metal pulling comb in half in the process). Gina was pretty laid-back about the whole thing, but was starting to get sick of me yanking on her hair by time I got close to her head. I finished up and left her bridle path alone since I couldn't find the barn clippers or a sharp pair of scissors.

Sulky pony is sulky.

Lacking anything else to do, I reluctantly turned my attention to The Tail. If you'll remember, Moe's tail was in pretty terrible shape when I retrieved him to Tennessee last year. Gina's tail was worse. She has a super-long, super-thick tail, which was in a wad of tangles roughly the size of a cantaloupe. I don't have a great picture of it, as it was just a rats' nest mess which was nearly impossible to isolate. Armed with my trusty comb and a fresh bottle of Vetrolin, I attacked. And attacked and attacked and attacked. For an hour. And eventually, I triumphed over the tail! Hooray!

Back to being a princess pony.

Around that time, Anne and the farrier arrived. My farrier (who is possibly the fastest farrier in the world) squeezed in a trim on Gina while Anne was wrangling some of the barn owner's horses that were due for a trim. He commented that Gina's hooves look fine despite not being trimmed in like...four months. I was relieved, as they were looking pretty rough before he got a hold of them. Now Princess Pony is ready to return to action!