employed her to plait all of her horses' tails in the
future. Quite the request; Jane normally just shaves
and avoids it altogether.
His whiskers were shaved and his hairy ears were
trimmed. The ends of his tail were straightened.
And finally, his bridle path was cut and his forelock
braided, tucked and sprayed.
Now, every woman knows that hair is nothing without
make-up, and Felix was no exception. Black for his
black bits, chalk for his white bits, hoof oil for his
hooves and baby oil for the rest of him.
At long last, he was done. We put on his cover and
prayed that he wouldn't rub it all out or off before the
show in the morning.
The show in question was in Oxford, a grand total
of thirty minutes' drive away. Forty, if there is traffic
in Rangiora. Felix was on at half past eight in the
morning. Allowing for horse-float speed, that took
the drive up to an hour. We wanted to get there in
plenty of time to allow for tidying him up, cleaning
the practically guaranteed nervy-poo off his legs and
the like, so that meant setting off sometime around
half past six. That meant getting up at five.
Well, we'd put this much effort in, we weren't about
to give up on it now. So, we obligingly hauled ass out
of bed. Quite literally; Murphy the donkey was also
entered, in the Donkey section, and was fast asleep
in his hay when we went down to catch him. Felix
was awake, though none-to-keen on navigating the
sheep field by torchlight. But we managed to bribe the
two of them into the horse float with buckets of feed.
This was made somewhat easier by the fact that we'd
neglected to feed them the night before. A little mean
perhaps, but it was six AM and cajoling takes time.
We arrived with a good hour and a bit to spare. This
was well, because all of Felix's beautifully braided
rosettes were now wonky and had hair sticking out
everywhere, even in spite of the hairspray. Both he and
Murphy had done poos in the float, not unexpectedly,
and needed their legs washed again. And because we
had neglected to bring the chalk, Felix wound up with
perfectly white front legs and one ever so slightly less
white back leg.
I began to lose hope for `best presented', but then
again, the point was to expose Felix to new things,
I began to lose
hope for the `Best
Presented' award.