A New Tail for Rufus

Not much riding this weekend, unless you count hopping on Sunny this morning for the trip up to the south pasture.  I took advantage of the Monday off to sleep in, and was still in my PJs, feet stuffed into knee high rubber boots, although I had thankfully yanked a sports bra on with my tank top and scraped my bedhead into a pony tail.

Because of course we encountered the first vehicle in two weeks, a neighbor, who stopped to chat.  "You won't get much exercise up there, now will you," he informed me.  Probably not, but I was only one cup of coffee into the morning and riding sounded a lot more appealing than walking.

Should probably have ridden in the cool, relative calm really early the last couple of days because by the time 8 a.m. rolled around the wind was up and the humidity was an ugly thing.  This evening we have a tornado warning in effect until midnight and huge thunderheads on the horizon.

With all the wind, the flies haven't been too bad until this weekend.  Spray helps, as does having a nice long tail.  And among other non-riding activities we got the barn cleaned out really well so that should help with future numbers.  But Rufus, thanks to the barbering efforts of Eyore the donkey he used to pasture with, does not have much of a tail to swish with. Poor guy - his tail goes like a propeller, to not much effect!

So tonight I ran a bucket of warm water, washed his tail out and let it dry - which didn't take long - put a loose braid in below his tail bone, slightly amazed that it actually has grown enough for a decently long braid, looped it back on itself, ran some twine through, and wrapped it up with vet wrap.

The  first thing he did on getting turned back in with the rest was whack Sunny with his extension.  Did I mention I used bright aqua vet wrap?  Sunny sucked back and took a good look at Rufus.  Something wrong with this picture... he walked off, still studying the tail out of the corner of his eye, and of course Rufus followed him.  It was comical - Sunny was trotting to get away from Rufus, who couldn't figure out why Sunny was concerned but wasn't going to stay behind to get eaten if the boss was worried.  I really thought I'd split.

It took longer for the other two to notice, but once they did, they joined Sunny in a tight knot with Rufus about 10 feet away looking at them all puzzled, still swishing but much more effectively.

It didn't take too long before they'd decided his tail wasn't going to reach out and grab them, but watching them try to get close enough for a good sniff without getting swatted sure was funny.