How many grooming things does a person with 2 horses need?

Apparently, all of them.

Call this "before."

Not pictured: saddle, two bridles, a breastcollar, several sets of reins, the good halter, a couple of fancy bathing products... lol All stuff that either should not be in the trunk long-term (well, ok, the helmet shouldn't either; I need to change that) or is needed rarely enough that it can just be tucked away to go to the barn in a bag when I leave the house.

For the record, in that state, it was taking me 4+ trips and probably 10 minutes to unload my trunk.  It's freaking annoying.

So I bought a cheap trunk (with wheels! and a handle!) and decided to put my day off to good use by doing an inventory and re-packing.

Let's start off with the preface that this:

I tell my husband these are his brushes.

Is not my fault.  My parents bought me a grooming kit for the Christmas after I bought the ponies.  I appreciate it, but... umm... let's say it maybe might have been unnecessary.

For those counting at home, that would be:
12 curries
2 shedding tools
3 pairs of gloves
3 hoof picks
6 washclothes
11 brushes
and 1 roll of vet wrap that I have no idea why I have it.

What's that?  That sounds like a lot of grooming stuff?

Ha.  Haha.  Ahahahahahahahahahahhaah.

This is:
6 combs
7 brushes
1 rake comb/brush/thingie
1 skein of yarn
1 seam ripper
1 package of clips
2 containers of hair bands
2 plastic needles
and 1 pair of scissors.

Y'all, I haven't braided a horse for a show since 1996.  But I am effing prepared for if and when I ever need to.

What's that?  You don't see bathing stuff?

How about three separate sweat scrapers, four sponges, a bottle of magic horse bathing fluid, a spray-on detangler, Cowboy Magic, two bottles of fly spray (in my defense, one of them is nearly empty) - oh, and antibacterial gel and the hardware to repair a lead rope?

Halters?  We've got halters.

Halters for a good boy - although I guess I don't still need the halter he grew out of...

Halters for Miss 'Standing Tied Is Boring.'

Halters stretched out to draft size by Miss 'Standing Tied Is Boring.'

9 halters.  7 lead ropes.  *facepalm*

Other horsey stuff?  Sure, we've got that too.

1 pair of nylon split reins
1 dressage whip (okay, it's technically a pig whip, but there's... not much of a difference)
1 riding crop, well-aged but barely used
1 pair of garden gloves that... I honestly have no idea why I bought them and put them in the trunk, but I assume I had a reason?

1 uber-soft sorta-chamois cloth
1 weight/height tape

2 round lunge lines
1 pair of driving reins

1 flat lunge line
1 hat I've had since the 1990s that miraculously still fits and has not fallen apart

2 girths of a size that didn't fit Cessa
1 pair of side reins with extra hardware that I got as part of a pacage
1 pair of the most awesome European gloves, well-loved and with at least two holes from lunging escape attempts

1 surcingle
and 1 girth that really does fit a certain fat bay mare

How about human stuff?  YEP.

1 helmet, of an age that it probably ought to be replaced even if it hadn't spent the last few years in my trunk

1 pair of mud boots

1 pair of nice Ariat paddock boots
and of course, the most hilarious box to hold the boots ever.

Or maybe it's just me that wonders just how Santa's beard got glitter all over it and whether Mrs. Claus knows...

Net result?
Victory.

Note to self: next time, maybe buy new paint pens and don't use the paint pens you bought like 9 years ago that miraculously still worked, but tended to get paint places you didn't intend to put paint so that you then had to go out of your way to make it look intentional rather than clearly a drip or mismark...

One day...

One day I will learn to take my goofy selfies with the camera not pointed at the sun...

That day was not yesterday.

In other news, somebody has figured out back muscling and neck muscling and is starting to look more and more like a real horse.  So of course I only got a 3/4 view proof of this.  lol

Someone has also figured out that humans sometimes hide treats and that maybe if he puts his mouth on said humans, they will give him treats.

He seemed somewhat surprised when I kicked his butt for that little trick.

Also, a thing to file under weird shit the Appaloosa gene does: my horse has stripes.

I've seen LP horses with rib stripes before; it's really easy to mistake rib stripes for ribs standing out, though, so I don't tend to post photos of that when it shows up.  But this is on his spine.  He's also got lots of golden patches and lots of almost black patches; based on this year's shed, those golden patches are going to be white, probably when he sheds out for the winter.

It was too freaking hot to go chase down Cessa, so no fat bay mare photos this weekend.  :)

In other news, this is my next horsey project: organization.

It's not that I keep ALL of my horse stuff in the car. It's just that it takes me 10 minutes to unload what I do keep in there...

And now it's summer...

The heat has arrived.  Yaaaay.  I ended up at the barn on Memorial Day itself, because Saturday was 96 degrees and like 90% humidity (yeah, NO) and Sunday morning it rained like crazy.  Monday was still hot, but without the humidity, it was actually bearable.

Well, 'bearable' in the sense of, "Oh, look, there's Cessa up by the gate; let's just grab her, because if you think I'm going to take a stroll across 20 acres of mostly-treeless pasture on a hot day to get her fat ass for nothing more than a grooming session, you'd be wrong."

She was impressed.

I had thought ahead and, for giggles, brought the bareback pad my parents bought me for Christmas.  And since she's worn a saddle before (and a surcingle, and a blanket, and...), it was - well, pretty much the non-event I was expecting.  Mostly, I just wanted to see if it fit.

All dressed up and ready for a ride.  Now all we need is saddle training...

While I had her up, I decided to tackle her mane.  Someone likes to stick her head through fences, which leads to sections that are show-appropriate-length and sections that are... well, I could call them fairy-locks, but let's face it - when the knots are as thick as your thumbs, they're dreadlocks.

"Hello, yes? My horse is going for the Bob Marley look and I'm not enthused..."

Maybe emphasis on the dread.

Still, I'm stubborn and patient.  Me and the hairbrush that Cessa's hair is slowly destroying?  We got this.

Magical unicorn look achieved.

(Side note: I kind of love the Tangle Wrangler brush.  Yes, Cessa destroys them because her hair slowly eats bristles, but they do a really nice job of detangling even on her.  Kind of funky to use the first time, though, because the parts of the brush head do spread out - on purpose!)

Of course, once I got all the detangling done and stood there looking at the mess of short hair, kinky hair, and longer/thinner hair, I... kinda went, "Eh, screw it."

Magical unicorn look: revoked

It... it looks so weird on her, and not just because I basically just flipped it over her neck and hacked it off with scissors.  But at least now I know I've got a couple of months before I have to tackle another dreadlock!

Oh, and then I tortured her with the plastic bag the saddle pad came in before I let her go back to the pasture.  Level of caring: almost none.

"This bag is defective. It doesn't have cookies in it."

I took a "omg, it's hot" break in the barn.  About the time I decided to go get Justice, I looked up to find this:

It's the headless horse, man! (I crack myself up sometimes...)

I was going to sneak up on him, but the girls gave me away.  lol

I'm so embarrassing, my horse is in Witness Protection.

So I goofed around with him and the bareback pad and the plastic bag.  Bareback pad?

No problem, Mom!

He was much more concerned about the plastic bag than Cessa, but in the end, not so concerned that I was worried about it.  He wiggled, he squirmed, he walked away - but that was about it.  In the end, the bag and I won; he stood quietly and waited for me to stop losing my mind.  But no pictures of that part - wiggly baby + potentially scary plastic bag + no other humans outside meant I left the phone safely in my pocket.  :)

Farrier day / wet spring

Mom, did you bring the cookies?

Spring is being a pain in the butt.  We're now on weekend three of "Hey, so I see it's Friday - nobody minds if I rain all weekend, right?"

*sigh*

But I did get out on the 12th for farrier day, since we were low on humans to fetch horses that day.  I got out there a little late to see Justice get his feet done, but early enough to catch the tail end of Reign being a shit like her momma.  (I laughed.  And thought, again, that if I ever breed Cessa for a foal for me, I am going to have to find a stallion with excellent conformation, plenty of draft blood, and a sweet, kind personality that stamps the hell out of that personality on all of his foals, because damn, does Cessa implant hers on her foals.)

Also, a tiny victory!  The BOs co-own a young stallion that was purchased out of an... interesting... situation.  He's a bit socially stunted and very shy of people he doesn't know.  He's improved by leaps and bounds since he showed up, but he's still a work in progress.

Please excuse the dramatic stare off into the sunset. That's actually the stare of, 'wtf did this update do to the camera on my phone and why the hell can I not figure out how to reverse the camera now?' with a side helping of, 'I really hope this is in focus and actually has at least 50% of us in it this time...'

So we're all pretty pleased that he let me halter him.  It took a couple of tries; the first few times he trotted off nervously and then circled back to stand where he'd been before.  Then we took selfies to show the BO before he got his pedicure.  :)

Ah, spring...

Look, Ma, no ribs and at least 50% less assembled-by-committee!

When awkward babies start looking less awkward and start reminding you that they still need brain surgery...

And when you take pity on your mare, because the flies were making her miserable...

Fly spray: horrible to put on, but post-horror, we are 90% less fly-covered.

And your BOs do an undercarriage check while you've got her to make sure that she's just fat, not that a certain silver black stud colt got up to more shenanigans than previously thought.

Don't give me that look, mare. If you stop standing at the hay bale all day, I'll stop calling you fat-ass.

At least she's shiny and doesn't jiggle yet...?

Oh baby

As I told my BOs: I distinctly remember buying a brown baby...

This is not brown.

This is a chocolate marble cake-colored horse.

I mean, he's cute (from some angles)... but he's not exactly brown...

Also, I'm pretty sure the Mane N Tail Spray-Away Horse Wash stuff is magic.  Used it when I bathed baby boy two weeks ago, and he is just... silky, despite the rain and mud that happened since then.  And I used it last fall on Cessa, and she stayed surprisingly soft-coated all winter.  It's a little awkward, because you're basically carrying around a small jug, and it sometimes takes a little extra effort to wash out the soap because it sprays it into their coats really well, but... uh... I'll take it?  Particularly at less than $15 and we've washed at least four horses with it now and we've barely made a dent in what's in the bottle.

Speaking of Cessa, she got some photo time too.  She is in raging heat right now, so she keeps coming to check on the boys.  I actually got a nice series of photos of her talking to one of the boys, but it wasn't until I got home that I discovered how interested he was in her.  Yeahhhh, I'm just... gonna leave off posting those on the internet... lol.

And last but not least, new baby is still stinking cute:

She's also officially silver black, which tells us who Daddy was.  Considering he was... uh... taupe as a baby, we're not sure how dark she'll end up.

Well, crap

Just found out that the only relative in my extended family that ever understood the horse thing passed away last night.  She'd been unwell for a while - diagnosed with a brain tumor a few years ago, which went into remission but was coming back as of last year - and the gallbladder surgery she had about two weeks ago was evidently too much for her.

I would have liked to have her come up and meet my hooved beasties, but never did get that done due to her health.  It's only fair - she let me meet hers, a very long time ago.

No date on this one, but I'm guessing 1990?

1992

Somewhere, I've still got the books and the Breyers she passed on to me when she decided she'd outgrown them.  Including the one I figure I'm destined to keep: I sold it at one used bookstore, didn't see it for a couple of years, and then managed to buy the exact same copy at a different used bookstore.

So... yeah.  Hug your horsey mentors, y'all.  Life is short.