Horsin' Around with Hair Wash

Leo is hanging out at his stall here.

So, in Maryland, it has been a kind of rainy summer. This means, in the hills of Frederick County, there was a lot of mud. No, we don't put this mud into the Hair Wash bottles and sell it. But some of our furry friends like mud. Now, furry friends can come in many shapes and sizes. They can be puppies or kittens. But my furry friend is Leo, my horse. And what does Leo love to do with mud? Roll in it. So back around Memorial Day, I decided that Leo needed a bath in order to get all of that dusty build up of dandruff and dirt from the dried mud off of him and out of his coat and mane.

Now Leo is only six years old (for non-horse people, that means he's has the mentality of a ten-year-old) and even for a six-year-old horse he fidgets a lot and is bad at standing still. So on Memorial Day, I got to his stall in the barn, I brushed the newest batch of dried mud off of him, then put on his saddle and bridle. We rode for quite some time. Around and around the ring we went, over poles and through jump standards, with lots of circles and changes of direction in there to tire him out. When both he and I were getting sluggish and a little huffy and puffy, I thought “He should be tired by now. Hopefully he'll stand still as he gets his bath.” So back onto the ground I went, saddle and bridle came off, and I led him into the indoor washing area of the barn. 

 Right now Leo is looking around at what I'm doing with my camera.

Many people know about different horse, pony, and farm animal shampoos. These shampoos can be found at local farm feed stores, tack stores, and even some of the most popular brands can be found in common grocery stores (apparently some people really like how their hair feels when they use horse shampoo, and figure that if it was good enough for their horse it was good enough for them)! Some people also use shampoos and conditioners meant for humans on their horses. My friend regularly uses laundry detergent to wash her horse since it comes in bulk! Instead of going out to buy fancy horse shampoo or even conventional cheap human shampoo, I thought that I'd use some left over Terressentials Pure Earth HairWash instead.

Between July and September 2012 I made the transition away from conventional chemical hair care and completed my hair detox. Once I finished detox, I then started trying different types of Hair Wash to see which one worked best for me. Due to my “Which Hair Wash is best for my hair?” experimental stage of last summer, I had a good amount of eight ounce bottles of Sultry Spice and Lavender Garden Hair Washes left over (I can imagine all of those Lavender loving vloggers on YouTube freaking out right now that I dared to have left over Lavender Hair Wash). Even though we generally recommend using Fragrance-Free products on animals, I had the left over flavored Hair Wash, and Leo had yet to show signs of sensitive skin in any way (horses can have allergic reactions to many things which can cause rashes and hives), so I felt fairly confident that he would not break out in hives from the Hair Wash, especially if I made sure to rinse him really well. So I diluted the Hair Washes a little bit in a small bucket, then got to work with Leo.

Since Leo was being as inquisitive as ever, he wanted to sniff the bucket and my hands before they touched him, and he was really confused at the smell. It smelled kind of like food to him, but not really. And it wasn't solid like most food is. Why would his human be mixing a bucket of not-food-that-smells-like-food right next to him?

After he got a good sniff, I hosed Leo down with lukewarm water and started spreading the diluted mud on his body and massaged it into his coat and mane. Though he had been such a good boy standing still for being hosed, of course now is when he started to fidget. So the rest of the bath happened very quickly and there are no pictures to show for it (I would not want my camera near a thousand pound horse who is bad at standing still, with water being sprayed about). The hardest part of Leo's bath was cleaning the roots of his mane. There was a lot of dandruff there. He liked me cleaning his itchy mane so much that when I was rinsing out the Hair Wash, he decided to shake his head in joy about how nice it felt. So, between his fidgets and him shaking his head, I became as soaked as he did since he wouldn't hold still when I was trying to rinse him.

 

Here is Leo (on right with a net mask on his face to keep the bugs off his eyes) and his buddy Rebel (on left) hanging out.

Overall Leo got very clean from using the Hair Wash (since it's a cleansing bentonite clay as opposed to everyday mud you find in your yard). So I hurried him outside since he had been trying as hard as he could to stand still (he's like an energetic ten-year-old boy that weighs a thousand pounds, remember?), and let him eat some grass as he sundried. Once he was dry, I put him into the field with his buddy, Rebel. And do you know what the first thing he did was? He rolled in dirt. Well, he was happy, and the old dirt wasn't ingrained in his coat anymore. So that's something, right?