Posts Tagged ‘shedding horses’
Shedding Underway
’Tis the season of flying tufts of horse hair. It gets a little complicated when their heavy shedding coincides with their days confined to the massively muddy paddocks. The tufts don’t fly as much when they are caked in layers of mud.
Cyndie spent a little time yesterday brushing all four horses for as much as the mares would allow. Each horse has a different level of acceptance for being brushed.
I watched Cyndie try to win over Light with offers of treat bites with varying degrees of success. It got me laughing to see Cyndie trying to multitask brushing Light’s hindquarters with one hand while fending off Light’s face with her other hand. Light kept turning back to beg for another treat.
It is no small thing to fend off an insistent Light where treats are involved.
I leaned over Light’s back and snapped a close-up of the layers of hair.
We both knew that freshly brushed horses rarely stay clean for very long. By the time we returned to the barn to feed them in the afternoon, Cyndie reported they had all taken a roll in the mud.
Thus begins the cycle that will repeat multiple times in the days and weeks ahead.
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Horses Shedding
It’s that time of year when horsehair starts showing up everywhere. When you touch them, their hair gets on your gloves. When you rub them, the shedding hair gets in the air. With hair floating on the wind, it gets in your face. If you reach up to swipe the hair from your face, you get more hair than you bargained for.
Case in point:
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Cyndie’s brother, Steve, paid me a visit while his sister is in Florida. We stopped by a paddock gate to visit with the horses and found several of them showing interest in allowing us to give them scratches. Swings stopped by first. She stood for a bit with her nose just at the gate, breathing in our scent. I turned away for a moment and when I looked back, she had stepped forward and was reaching her head completely over the gate.
Steve and I both happily obliged her willingness and rubbed our gloved hands on her head and neck where she seemed to want some scratching action.
Upon receiving her fill, Swings stepped away and Mix moved in for her own dose of similar attention. Mix has a bit of a runny nostril and appeared to think Steve’s jacket served as a fine “tissue” for wiping her nose. Undaunted, Steve served her up a good massage around her head, coming away with two hands full of Mix’s hair.
Steve was playing in a hockey tournament in River Falls this weekend.
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I was able to show up and watch their first game on Friday night and then Steve and I visited a sports bar with live music on Main Street for a late dinner. He came back to our house to spend the night before heading back to River Falls for his second game, after a leisurely morning that included a walk with Delilah and the time with our horses.
Hopefully, Steve wasn’t still finding horsehair clinging to him while he was trying to chase the puck around in game two. I stayed home to enjoy all the shedded hair showing up in our house, and on my clothes, stuck to my boots, on our furniture, getting in my mouth, blowing like tumbleweed across the paddocks…
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