There’s an eerie silence that settles over a barn full of overly enthusiastic owners who are attempting to return their horses to a sleeker, slimmer, springtime silhouette.
There are many ways to quantify the return of warmer weather, but for the equine enthusiast, nothing says spring with more certainty than that swirling, twirling, mass of electrostatically charged hair clinging to your pony. We riders are never happier than when witnessing our furry friends shedding their winter woollies, but I have to admit that I greet each spring with mixed emotions as the battle for a hair free zone rages and I try to decide which is worse…long annoying hair on the horse, or long annoying hair on everything but the horse.
When you get right down to it, removing winter hair from a horse is actually a pretty simple process if you’re willing to stand back and let mother nature do the job for you. Usually one pony, one paddock and one massive amount of springtime muck and guck is enough to get the job done. And let’s be clear, all horses are born with an extensive knowledge of the rules.
#1. Apply muck and guck to entire body.
#2. Repeat as often as necessary to remove excess hair.
#3. Watch as your gritty, gleaming, mud soaked body reduces your owner to tears!
Sadly most of us lack the time or inclination to deal with our horses’ care-free solution to the springtime shed-a-thon. So, as our horse stares us down, every hair on their fat furry bodies straining to be unleashed upon the world, we’re stuck trying to figure out how to whittle away the winter woollies with as little help from our furry friends as possible. Tucked in, taped up and sealed to within an inch of our lives we head off to the barn… Springtime challenge accepted!
There’s an eerie silence that settles over a barn full of overly enthusiastic owners who are attempting to return their horses to a sleeker, slimmer, springtime silhouette. Currying, clipping and cutting their way through winter coats thick enough to make a polar bear proud is a momentous task. Whoever that wise person was that observed how people often resemble their pets must have been privy to springtime on a farm. The sheer amount of statically charged hair suctioned on to every owner makes it extremely difficult to differentiate them from their trusty steeds!
I can only imagine what people with little to no horse experience must think wandering into a barn full of horses being groomed at this time of the year. It must seem a very serious business indeed what with the aisles full of industrious people working very quickly and quietly in such a tight lipped, hush, hush manor. Never has the barn been quieter or more focused…out of sheer necessity of course for anyone with even a little experience around horses in springtime knows one thing for absolute certain: any individual dumb enough to open their mouth during shedding season will invariably spend weeks coughing up the equivalent of a small pony!
So, with that said, I’ll now gladly shut my mouth and prepare to get down and dirty for the next few weeks cause everyone knows, I simply don’t have the room for one more pony even if I did cough it up free of charge!
