I hate winter, but I hate spring even more. At least during the winter, I have a
valid excuse to bundle the horses up in seven blankets a piece, park them in
front of all the round bales they can eat, and hibernate in my house under the
mantra “It’s so damn cold out!” and feel relatively guilt-free about doing
so. People don’t judge you for
hiding inside when there’s frozen tundra on the other side of the front door,
because they’re doing the exact same thing. Unless they happen to have a heated barn and indoor arena at
their disposal, in which case they post stupid selfie after stupid selfie of
themselves and their horses being all warm, fuzzy, cozy, and productive in
their training. And the rest of us
hate them for it.
Anyway, I hate winter, but to me, spring is much MUCH worse. Spring brings sunshine. Sunshine brings the thaw. The thaw brings mud.
I hate mud. Mud means that
no matter how warm and sunny it is outside, my feet are cold and wet because
those great boots I bought on sale in January are no longer waterproof, and,
damnit, there’s another puddle that I end up shin-deep in because puddles
apparently eat Thoroughbreds. Try
as I might, there’s no convincing this stupid horse that walking THROUGH the
puddle does not mean that puddle monsters will painfully devour her from the
hooves up and consequently turn her into a pony. Leaping sideways and dragging me into the middle of
aforementioned puddle is clearly the only way to handle this situation.
Spring means that all of my fellow horse owners are getting
a jump on their show season schooling, their trail rides, their
pasture-seeding, and I’m over here trying to figure out how to lure an ornery
old Appaloosa mare to the pasture gate without actually having to let go of the
post I’m clinging to, because if I take one more step in, the mud WILL suck my
boots off of my feet. Evidently,
this wonderful new property we have has drainage capabilities comparable
somewhere between Louisiana Bayous and the Florida Everglades. I’m certain we already have mosquitoes. Completely ignoring the fact that the
entire property features a grade that makes it nearly impossible to construct
an arena or erect a barn without bringing in massive amounts of site-prep
equipment, apparently this “grade” isn’t enough to drain anything to the point
of being considered usable. This
is bullshit.
Unfortunately for me, my hatred for spring and the
accompanying mud is matched equally by my love of a long, thick, beautiful tail
on a show horse. Yes, I have a
garden-variety of tail extensions in my arsenal of show tools, but there’s
something so gratifying about a gorgeous natural tail on your horse that leaves
everyone wondering how the hell you got it that way. This past fall, a friend on Facebook finally shared her
secret to her “Holy Crap!” tails on her horses: The Polo Knot. She shared a video and within two days,
I was outside with conditioner, VetWrap, and a lot of concentration trying to
balance my iPhone on the back of my horse’s ass while trying to watch the
YouTube video and mimic what they did.
It worked. For a while,
anyway. Practice makes perfect
though, right? By the fifth horse,
I’d finally figured out how to perfect the knot, wrap it tightly, and make sure
that those tails were tucked away high and clean to be left there all winter,
fully expecting them to come out in the spring and cascade to the ground like a
Herbal Essences commercial.
Fast forward four months, and today I found myself
ankle-deep in mud chasing the back end of my stupid Thoroughbred back and forth
as we played our favorite game: “YOU’RE GOING TO EAT MY TAIL!”-Keep-Away. She was the only one of the five to
still have her tail wrapped from the original attempt back in December, a clear
testament to my ability to do anything right. Because of the mud, and the fact that show season isn’t that
far away, I decided then and there to re-wrap all five horses in hopes of
trying to preserve what tails they had, and maybe have enough there in a few
months to successfully hide an extension in.
Now, my original wrapping experience was back in December,
and I knew there’d be no way in hell that I’d find that original YouTube video,
taking thirty seconds to search for it just wasn’t in the plans either. I decided to redo the polo knots from
memory. It couldn’t be that hard
right? I knew there was a
three-piece braid in there to start with, pull out a small piece at the top to
twist with before you start the big braid…braid a little, fold, split the three
pieces into two, fold them back and forth a few times around the big braid…some
twisting…some turning…wrap with VetWrap and voila! Couldn’t be that hard at all! I mean, hell, if I could remember all of that, but I couldn’t
even remember what I had for breakfast this morning, CLEARLY I knew what I was
doing. Video schmideo….I had this
handled. It wouldn’t take more
than five minutes per horse, tops.
I’d be done in half an hour and could go start dinner.
Two and a half hours later, as I finished up Cleveland’s
tail and realized that I have horrible time-management skills, I couldn’t shake
the nagging feeling that these stupid polo knots just didn’t look right. I kept looking out in the field and
figured that if the four other horses’ tails all looked exactly the same, just
like this one, I must have done it right, but….I just didn’t remember the ones
last fall looking like this. It
wasn’t until I pulled out the black VetWrap for Cleveland’s tail and finished the
roll that I looked down at his tail in my hand and it hit me…
….Oh my god…My horses
have dildos for tails…
Bright pink, two neon green tails, a purple, and now this
gigantic monster of a black one.
My pasture looked like a Lover’s Lane store. I'm sure that the small population of porn-star horse-owners would be proud, but I am clearly the Worst. Horsemom. Ever. A quick holler up to Pat in the barn elicited an eruption of
laughter from him and a confirmation that even a non-horseperson could
recognize what I’d done. I have no
idea how I managed to do it once, let alone five times without realizing what I
was making, and I’m certain that if Sigmund Freud were alive, he’d have a field day and would come up with a very
complicated explanation centered around my subconscious desire for a
vibrant-colored horse-sized device or some crazy shit like that. I can assure everyone that I get quite
enough action in that department, no toys necessary, thank you very much. I really just have no idea what
happened there…in hindsight, I probably should have searched YouTube for the
instructional video.
After realizing that anyone that looks at my horses
distinctly-colored tails would wonder just what in the hell goes on here, (seeing
as the occupied pasture is along a main road), I had to make the decision. Do I chase down all five horses immediately
and rewrap them one by one? It was
getting dark and I knew I wasn’t going to have that kind of time. In the end, I decided to leave them in
all of their phallic-shaped-tail glory and take care of it during the week as
time allows. Screw it, we’re new
to the neighborhood, we should probably just give everyone something to wonder
about right off the bat so the crazy shit we do doesn’t come as such a
shock.
Worst. Horsemom. Ever.
