Every Spring my mare joins a certain religion. Well, it may not be in the Spring. It may happen deep in the throws of those stormy winter nights when all the wild things are calling to her and I’m not there to run my fingers through her mane and tell her it will all be OK. I don’t know… 
All I do know is that when the Golden Orb of Spring finally illuminates the barn and I actually take a better look at her (not the cursory “are you bleeding” daily glance while feeding), I notice she is proudly emblazoned with the tell-tale signs of conversion. Yup, while I was in the house, slaving away against the harsh, cold winter, my little mare was letting her locks run wild. She was, gasp, joining the Rastas!
Does this ever happen to you? One day, all of their hair is perfectly aligned and the next, Rasta! So, today, embarrassed by what the neighbors might think, I grabbed my tools of deprogramming and set in to wrestle my beautiful mare back from the depths of dread. What are my very special tools, you ask? I use the Cowboy Magic potion of detanglement and my black Goody
wand of no resistance.
However, after an hour of intense detanglement (and rampant detachment), I had hardly made a dent against this web of darkness and dander. I knew I had to pull out the big sword, Lord Fiskar. No Rasta is a match for his blunt and brutal wrath. But, releasing the power of this holy orange belted master of Edge does not come without loss. To use the Almighty Fiskar,
I know I have to forfeit some Rapunzel. Ahhhh, the agony of defeat is adding to the sting of Cowboy Magic lotion that is searing the flesh of fine, new cuts traversing my delicate and aching fingers. This is when the mind game sets in for real… If I Fiskar the wrong artery of the dandermass, a great loss of Rapunzel is sure to happen. Which strand to cut?! Which strand to cut!! (I suddenly felt like Bruce Willis, sweating in an air duct, trying to figure out which wire to cut before the bomb explodes.)
Eventually, I just gave up and started cutting willy nilly. 
After all, I had dishes in the sink and work to tend to. But, I have found during previous Springs of Detanglement, braids are the perfect cover-up. Not only do they keep your newly de-programmed, school girl pigtailed mane safe from any further Rasta envelopment, it also covers up my ability to ruin every hair cutting job I’ve ever tried. Don’t even ask me to cut your bangs…
So, from now on until the first signs of Old Man Winter reveal his cold bald head, my little mare will be the glorious, braided maiden that she blossoms into every Shedding. Thank you, oh holy Cowboy Magic and Goody wand. Thank you.
THINGS I THINK THEY SHOULD INVENT.
1) Fear Of God Mist (or spritz): All I want is a little dab of mist or spritz or something aromatic to blast into my long yearlings who suddenly feel they are all that. My sweet little darlings from Fall have had too much time over the winter, growing and becoming full of themselves. If I had the Fear of God Mist, I could just squirt a little gentleness into their upper decks and bring them right back to where they were when they thought I was bigger — without having to spend all that time convincing them again.
2) Hair B-Gone: This could work two ways. First, you could spray it onto your clothes before you do anything in the barn and absolutely no hair will grip onto any part of you — at all. Or, you could use it post Hair Annihilation to make all the strands fall off gracefully and pile into a neat stack for the hair gremlin to come by and make it into a fashionable scarf.
3) Gate Symphony: This handy item would cover the gate like a silicon spray. Upon contact with any hoof or leg part, the gate would immediately play your favorite calming symphony. Or, it could just say, “I love you, Mom and I’ll stand here being patient because I know you are busy” in the sweetest nicker ever heard… Eventually, because the horses would also be so mellowed (or completely frustrated) by this item, they would train themselves that using the gate as a dinner bell just doesn’t work anymore.
4) Fenceboard Smacker: This little device would enable a fenceboard to come loose, but still be hinged on one side, and with velocity, come around and smack any horse on the behind who is sticking its head through the rails. Immediately the board would re-attach itself and the horse would be none the wiser. This should train any horse who is sticking their head through the fence. And, besides the benefit to your fence, you would no longer have horses with a big hunk of mane missing in the middle.
I have lots of other ideas for new inventions. Do you?
HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!
MID JUNE BUCKET FUND: ITSUKO
Itsuko, great grand daughter of Native Dancer with 99 starts of her own, won $100K, had several foals and then was left… forgotten. Starving to death. Click on photo to read her story. (photo credit, Trish Lowe)
