Bath Time

This sexy beast of a horse got a bath! This was on the fourteenth and I've only now gotten around to getting the pictures edited. :) The cool thing is that I bought one of these:

It's a Chameleon Garden Sprayer (click the picture to see it on Amazon) and is normally used for spraying chemicals or liquid fertilizers on plants, but I used it to give Chrome a bath! I got the idea from Clinton Anderson's EZ-All Sprayer. Since I didn't have the money to buy one of those I tried a cheap garden sprayer and it works well. I didn't use soap in it (just vinegar - makes the coat extremely soft, shiny and also keeps flies/gnats at bay - also because it's acidic it can help prevent problems like rain rot!) and it attaches to the hose and automatically dilutes the vinegar for you. It didn't have a lot of water pressure, but that could have been the long hose I was using instead of the sprayer itself. It still worked out well.

I learned a couple of things though. First, groom your horse before the bath!! It would have gone quicker and easier if I had curried the mud out of his coat and untangled his mane. Second, wash the mane and tail before your spray the body down! I did the body first, then the mane and tail, then had to do the body again to get all the soap out (vinegar is great for removing soap residue) lol. So next time it will go a lot easier. Anyway here are the pictures!

This was Chrome before his bath. Not horribly muddy, but a lot dirtier than I like lol.

After being sprayed off. He doesn't look impressed huh? It was seventy or eighty degrees out, so he wasn't cold, although I don't have a hot water hook up so the water was a little cold. Poor guy!

This was my hands after rubbing the excess water off of his coat! I don't think I've given a horse a bath in a winter coat before lol.

He's all alert because I went inside to get him one of my homemade horse cookies. Look how shiny the vinegar made his coat (along with the flaxseed I feed)!!

Yawning with impatience because I took too long getting his treat. His long, winter coat looked weird when it was soaked lol.

He got bored while I was combing his mane (yeah I did it wet, bad!) and was playing with his rope.

Then I turned him loose to graze while he dried.

His mane and tail look so white and sparkly clean after his bath!

Then I brought him up to groom him (he's shedding like crazy!). Here's a picture of his pretty three tone tail. It goes black, white, blonde. So cute!

So shiny after his bath and being groomed (I even washed his brushes).

He got bored and was pawing.

Look at that shine!

Pretty mane. I just wish it would grow out some. They pull it out by his withers from biting and playing. :( It's totally worth it though for him to live out in a herd!

He's getting so much white in his coat!! I'm curious to see if he will dapple out this year. I'm guessing it will probably be next year though.

Another picture of my beautiful boy!

His face is going so gray!!

Gray face! Too bad he didn't inherit those big expressive beautiful Arabian eyes!

It's weird how the top half of his mane is dark and the bottom half is white! Anyone know why it's doing that?

Chrome makes Faran look even dirtier lol. He needs a bath too! (P.S. It's just the perspective of the photo that makes Faran looks so small. He's definitely bigger than Chrome!)

He spotted my husband out at the barn and went on alert, but still relaxed.

My handsome boy!

Anyway, sorry for the picture spam! I just love sharing photos of my silly Chrome. Hope you enjoyed them! Oh and before you all get jealous that he got a bath in March the rains started a few days later and he was covered in mud again. It was nice while it lasted though. ;D