Saturday, March 17, 2018

A Tale of a Tail

There once was a lovely little horse, who had a horribly tangled tail.

I don't mind the task of detangling a tail, but how and with what. Now I have detangled some horrible burr filled tails before. Luckily, this was just a nasty gnarl of a knot, no icky burrs.

As everyone knows, you start at the bottom and work your way up. On the first day, I only had a stiff hair brush from Dollar Tree and this brush from my Schneider's Deluxe Grooming kit. I actually really like this grooming kit, and this brush was okay. I didn't have any detangling spray.

Several people suggesting  the Oster version of this brush for detangeling.  I really didn't find it that helpful for really, really tangled, matted hair. Even when I got Mane and Tail detangling spray the next day, this brush was just horrible for detangling a mat.

So I moved to my old stand by; a good old hard plastic comb. I find these combs are wonderful for really getting in to a tangle or mat. That little end works like a pick to gently pull out a few hairs at a time. I used the Mane and Tail spray again.

 The thing I hate about the spray is working it into the mat and waiting for it to dry. Although Tank is trooper and doesn't mind being sprayed at all, I just got tired of spraying. I also really hate the idea of spraying on dirty hair. With this comb and the spray I did make it up several more inches.


You can see (I hope) in this picture that about half of his tail looks looser than in the first photo, which looks like a hair bat.  I did this part on Sunday and just didn't make it out to the barn again all week. Darn weather and work!

So in the mean time I found a recipe for a dry shampoo: equal parts ground oatmeal, baking soda, and corn starch. So armed with this and this comb I had bought at Walgreens for my hair I headed back to the barn. Now I am not sure if this comb was better than the other combs, but it was defiantly not worse.

Now the dry shampoo was easy to pour over the mat and really get it all the way through the mat. I didn't need to keep getting more of it. The oatmeal absorbs the oils, the baking soda absorbs odor, and the real magic is from the corn starch that looses everything up. Perfect!

Another suggestion I was given was a brush called, "Wet Brush." I did not get to try the "Wet" brush because, of course, it came after I left for the barn. I ordered the pack figuring it was good enough for Tank, it would be good enough for me also. I did try it on my hair. It really is easy and painless to use. Lucky for Tank I ordered two and so one will go out to the barn.

The end result:
Of course that sucker is now braided and tied up in a tail bag!



1 comment:

  1. Glad you finally got through the tangled tail mess. Sounds like he will not have those tangles again with the braid and bag!

    ReplyDelete

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