I probably take better care of my hoses’s mane & tail than I do my own hair (and it looks like it too).  But really that doesn’t mean I take good care of their coat either.  It just means that mine is always worse.  The same thing applies to the Irish Wolfhounds.

There are some really good horse hair & coat products out there.  So many different horse &/or livestock products that have crossed over to the realm-of-human-usage.  My doctors now know to always quizz me about what farm medicine I might be taking for my own health issues……………….I usually lie……………I did discover that diatomaceous earth from the Feed Store (50 lbs. bag) is MUCH less palatable than the stuff I discovered on Amazon (for humans)!!!!!  One is mud-pie worthy.  The other one is swallowable.  And the probiotic granules for top-dressing on animal food do not mix smoothly (nor taste well) in my yogurt.

My children have become wary-eaters.  I only use creative additives for their own good.  Come on, I’ve done the research!  My eldest got very verbal about her dislike for the added turmeric in their oatmeal.  She even took a picture of it for her social media stuff!  Maybe it was because I denied that I had added any “extras”(?)  Or maybe it was because the oatmeal was orange that was the giveaway.  Come on kids—–read the studies—–I’m not steering you wrong.  I’ve gotten them used to the expected grittiness of my stews and soups………………..HA!  I’ll never tell!  I have them all trained now in how to make my lemon mud-drink with apple cider vinegar & stevia…………………

Hey don’t judge.  It’s tasty.

You don’t stay this pretty without additives!

I use a lot of them———animal products.  I have discovered that dog treats usually do not taste as good as they smell, but the wormer/Pyrantel Pamoate really is yummy.  Over the years it has come in both banana and vanilla pudding favors.  And salt blocks?  Well, they are really salty.  My absolute favorite horse hair product is “Cowboy Magic Detangler and Conditioner”.  It’s great goo!  I buy it by the gallon.  I have long hair, damaged by bleaching and now just gray at the halfway mark (I’ve officially given up).  But I swear Cowboy Magic is holding it together.  A little dab’ll do ya!  I’m not advertising.  I’m not hawking.  I just use it with regularity.  Due to Florida’s heat & humidity, I usually twist my hair and put it up in a bun with a pencil or chopstick or hoof pick.  Or I braid it just to keep it out of my eyes and stop it from sticking to my neck.  If I don’t comb it out immediately after a shower and just put it up, then the snarls dry in there creating almost permanent rats-nests.  But if Cowboy Magic can take barb-wire pieces & dried-poo-dreadlocks out of my horse’s tail, then it’s good enough for me.

Which brings me to braids.  French braids———either right-side-out or inside-out.  I’m really not sure what I do, but I do know what I do to my own hair is the same braid that I do in my horses’ tails………..we match.  And it’s the same painful braid that my Father used to use on his horses and later on me too.  Dad would really get into the stay-ability of a good braid.  I swear he would put his foot in the middle of my back while braiding, just to make sure there was really good tension with no slack.

Some of our drafts have docked tails, but if I was lucky enough to buy them as babies then I would ask the breeder not to dock them.  There are just too many massively-armored, vampire-ous bugs down here.  A horse needs all the defense it can possibly get from the swarms of biting/stinging/sucking things here in the South.

So with docked tails there’s this fun little thing you do with what’s left of their tail.  You start at the top and inside or outside braid it down to the bottom.  Then you loop it up & around and poke it through one of the loops at the top.  Secure with rubber bands and copiously decorate with silk flowers from your nearest Wal-Mart in your barn-colors.   (Our barn colors are purple & green—————a gay couple we know stole our colors (we had them first) for their farm.  But theirs were eggplant and teal———isn’t that the same?  Purple & Green———Eggplant & Teal?  But why do their colors sound so much better than our colors?  (There’s an obvious style-inequity here.)

Here’s another example of an animal product that made the transition over to the realm-of-human-use.  How many of you out there have heard of “Absorbine-Jr.”?  Well that’s because the original “Absorbine” for livestock & horses worked so well that they decided to make a similar product for humans to use…………..or at least that’s what I was told.  (I have a big quart bottle of the original in my bathroom for post-riding-aches——–it doubles as a hearty-perfume smell too———(to counter-act the hoof-pick smell in my hair.)

We’ve all heard of “Utter Balm” too, haven’t we?  Plus there’s “Udder Butter” and the infamous “Masto-Cream”.  Guess who that was used on first?…………………yep…………..the girls……………….dairy cows and goats with chapped teats.  But those ointments are great for human chapped hands and heels too.

Lastly, I have discovered that I can’t use my razor to shave my horse’s chin whiskers and then expect to be able to use it on my legs after that……………….well at least not without a good rinsing and a change of blades.