Just Horses

This is NOT how a horse's mane should look when you are done banding.  This is a disaster.  Our old horse had this great mane...not too thick, not too thin and laid down nice and flat with no cowlicks.  This horse...this Stanley horses...well he's a different story.  First, he doesn't have much mane hair to start with.  Second, there's this huge cowlick about 1/3 of the way down that make that hair want to stand straight up.  I suspect it may have even laid on the wrong side of his neck way back when and someone managed to get it trained to the       correct side but not perfectly. 

 Anyway, after the disaster in this picture at the first show, we talked to his old owners and they suggested that he bands much better with a DIRTY mane.  Huh.  That's different.  Kinda like how up-do's on women work better with slightly dirty hair?  So last show we still felt compelled to get his mane wet as part of his bath and I still used conditioner, but no shampoo. That's dirty, right?  Wrong.  It was better than what I did above but still not so lovely.

Today we didn't even get it wet with his bath.  Left it dank and dirty and rolled in the mud all week dirty.  Heh, didn't even brush it out much.  And went to work with the bands.  I shoulda had the camera...it turned out GREAT!  Best it's ever looked by far.  I'll try to get a photo tomorrow for comparison's sake.  Hopefully it actually lasts through the show tomorrow since we also have one the next day.  Though the forecast isn't looking so good.....might have to scratch since they are talking thunder storms.