Getting White Horses Clean…or not
Why do we keep buying grey horses? Why aren't our finest scientific minds working on a formula for Manure-X? Where do all those gorgeous little white show ponies come from, and has anyone ever been tempted to name one "Farnley How Are We Going To Keep This **@!$* Thing Clean"?
There are fancy shampoos to make white horses whiter. Note that shampoo people assume I'm starting with a white horse. Not so fast, Sherlock! I'm starting with Theodore, a cheerful fellow with a khaki - colored camouflage pattern all over his body. Am I supposed to use the shampoo 'to enhance pea green horses', or do I rent a sandblaster? The only thing that's ever reliably clean about Theodore is the white of his eyeballs. On Wednesdays.
It seemed like a good idea to use the industrial cleanser that worked on my truck's carburetor, but as I congratulated myself for removing the semi-permanent green spot off Theodore's haunch, his whole left hind quadrant dissolved entirely. Oops. Now he has only three legs (getting a good extension has just become a real problem), and I still have to find a way to remove the primordial ooze from his neck. Also, if I accidentally erase the whole horse, I won't be able to tell when Theodore is in his stall and when he's not. Invisible horses are inconvenient. There's probably a whole population of transparent white horses out there whose frustrated owners have given up and bought bays.
Forget about car washes. Your horse would look ridiculous with one of those pine-tree air fresheners hanging from his ear.
Judges adore snow-white horses. You have achieved a grooming coup when a judge misses a pilot error because he was blinded by your horse's brilliant coat. The white glow can also be used to signal low-flying aircraft. A word to the wise: once you've got the horse white, for Pete's sake, Scotchguard the beast immediately!!!!
White horses, like white couches, invite spills. Never drink purple Kool-Aid in the saddle of a white horse.
In fact, you can tell a lot about a rider's career choice by the way he or she reacts to a dirty horse. With the advent of the yuppie generation, any number of dirty grey horses have marched into the arena sporting a White-Out paint job. Many a house painter has tried to rectify a bad situation with leftover Colonial White, only to discover that aluminum siding, while more difficult to install, requires less maintenance.
The gray horse whose green stain has been cleverly altered to resemble a fictional Warmblood brand calls a graphic designer "Mom." The horse coated with pale foundation/concealer (white horses are 'autumns') belongs to an Avon lady. A lawyer will tell you that the mud on her horse's rump is legally a 'wetland' and disturbing it would classify as endangering a wildlife refuge. That leaves the politicians. Their horses are dirty, but they're pretty sure the competitions' are dirtier.
Explain to the judge that your groom 'passed on' without warning. He does not need to know that your groom showed up at 5 a.m., took one look at a gray horse the color of fresh broccoli, and passed on the chance to groom the animal. Sadly, verbally 'venting' your frustration will not decrease your building emotional pressure; your screams will only encourage your horse to roll again.
I had a book that correlated horses' coat colors to their dispositions. I don't but that…but you can correlate the horse's color with his owner's temperament: People who own gray horses are crankier than the rest of us. Owners of bays and chestnuts are more cheerful, and spend more time practicing skills other than scrubbing. Like riding.
Maybe it is easier to keep a horse clean in a sandy locale. But my home state's seasons aren't, as you might suppose, called spring, summer, fall, and winter. No, the seasons are Deep Mud, Baked Mud, Cold Disgusting Muddy Ooze, and Glacier of Mud. For white horses, that is four seasons of mud bonanza. Face it, until we clean all that nasty dirt off the surface of our planet, our gray horses are going to be gray in name only.
The good news: you don't really have to clean those stains under the horse's belly. Any time a judge gets a close-up-and-personal view of your horse's naval, something's gone very wrong in your performance anyway.
I was so excited when khaki came in vogue on the hunter circuit. Then I came to realize they meant khaki breeches, not horses. So I tried to collect my horse's Loss of Use insurance; he was too dirty to show. The insurance adjuster didn't but it, but I made him a deal on a gray horse, and we'll just see how he feels next year.
How many white horses does it take to change a light bulb? Doesn't matter. If you're ever in a brightly-lit room surrounded by gleaming white horses, it's probably St. Peter's waiting room.
I know it isn't Theodore's fault. Theo would willingly jump the moon for me; he'd catch bullets in his teeth on command. What he won't do is stay clean. The White Horse's Motto: Mud onto others as you would have others mud on you. "What's next, cleaning your own tack?!" the herd stallion would say to any white or gray horse that absent-mindedly walks around a mud puddle. "Where is your self-respect?! Go roll in the wet tar over there. Move it, move it, move it!"
You've heard the expression 'white lies'? How do you think that got started? Anytime someone tells you a horse is white, he's lying.
Someday, when horse sports are a household phenomenon like football, we'll watch TV commercials in which people dressed in white chiffon walk down the beach, leading white Arabians, diffidently discussing products that remove embarrassing manure stains.
Kermit was mistaken: It is easy being green.
