Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Madison, Madison Let Down Your Tail. . .

Rapunzel has nothing on my mom's pony Madison. After I broke my wrist I could not keep up on her tail care. It was left in a braid, but got full of burrs. One of my goals this year is to actually get rid of all the burr dock. As you see her tail looked dreadful.














It took me two days, lots of careful combing, and bit of Main-N-Tail Detangler. After the first day I had managed to start to undo the braid and get the bottom half of her tail detangled. I banded the bottom half and pulled it up. I started off day two with this:





I sprayed the sections I was going to work on. Then groom the rest of her for a bit as I waited for it to dry. Then I held the tail and pull a few hairs out from the burrs with a comb, a few strands at a time. Finally an hour later I had this:














Now why would I go though all this when it is totally impractical and I could just thin the whole thing down to a normal looking tail? Well who hasn't wanted a real life "My Little Pony?" I have and so has my mom. It is her pony. So even though it is a major pain sometimes, I keep her tail looking like this just so I can take it down and let my mother enjoy looking at this tail. She gets such a kick out of it and when I say I want to cut it, she just sighs and says, "Oh okay." Well I don't have the heart. If it makes her happy what I can I do.

Today I have to wash her tail, which is another chore. Once I get it all washed and conditioned it goes back to the braid and bagged. Luckily the best tail care you can do is handle the tail very little.



I took one last photo of the braid before I put it up just to see how long it really is.

5 comments:

  1. Wow! There's more tail there than there is pony. Very cute! And good braiding job.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Madison needs a name change. Rapunzle indeed! Now that's one long tail. Those show class Arabians have nothing on Madison!


    ~Lisa

    ReplyDelete
  3. Now that is one impressive tail! And Madison is adorable. We've got lots of burrs around here too and my goal is to find every last one of them this year and kill them. Our manes,forelocks and tails take a real beating with those burrs.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Once: Thanks! I am getting pretty good at it, and she is getting pretty good at just standing there while I do it. :)

    Ocra: I always think if the saddlebreds at the barn when I was a kid that have really long tails, but they were like 5 stands thick. Minis have naturally thick tails, so she makes it easy. I'll be sure to pass the complement on to Madison again. :)

    Grey horse: If you figure out a good way to get burr dock out, let me know. Although I hear that the roots are good eating! Like potato.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow!!! That is an impressive tail!! I have her problem with the thick frizzy-ness with my own hair lol. I think it's great that you do that for your mom. :)

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for your positive comments. I love you hear from you!