Donut Update: Bathing

I can't remember the last time I wrote about Donut.  She is still alive and well and mostly staying out of trouble.  (With the exception of a puncture wound just above her eye, which is now mostly healed, but is a story all on its own.)  I haven't been doing too much with her except basic grooming, hoof care, and continuing my work with her and water.

You may remember that when I got her, she was opposed to all water that wasn't completely natural.  While she didn't mind being in the rain or walking through puddles, she was absolutely not having any water applied by a person or a hose on her body.  Even damp sponges and rags were offensive to her.

Over the past year, I've been working through her concerns, and we reached a milestone a few weeks ago.  She will now stand reasonably quietly in the outdoor wash area in cross ties while I hose, scrub, and otherwise remove filth from her.  After many, many months of asking other people to hold her, washing her tail in a bucket in her stall, and other creative strategies to convince her that water is not evil, it feels like such a luxury to be able to use both my hands to wash her while she stands still and doesn't try to kick water droplets that commit the cardinal sin of landing on her person.

We are still not at the point where she is patient enough for me to give her a whole bath all at once.  I'm still keeping the sessions short, and I typically will wash only one body part or section at a time.  If I do rinse her whole body, I need to be prepared for her to act like a just-bathed dog.  If I put her in her stall afterward, she rubs her whole body against the stall walls.  I guess to try to rub the water off?  Or put more dirt back on?  And if I graze her outside, she wants to rub against the fence.  It's kind of comical to watch.  I don't think I've ever seen another horse behave quite like that.

The other bonus is that she is no longer fussy about me spraying her with things.  I stopped using fly spray with Nimo many years ago when I realized he was coughing a lot when I used it.  And every once in a while when I experimented with it, I didn't notice much of a difference between how many flies bothered him with the spray versus no spray.  (I am convinced that Virginia flies are some kind of genetically modified organisms that are impervious to poisons...)

And with Donut, she was initially quite worried about being sprayed, so I didn't use it, and I've found the same thing.  Using it just seems to attract dirt while not doing anything about the flies.  (And yes, I do understand I could wipe on the fly spray, but Donut used to be worried about that too.)  Anyway, Gemma told me a few weeks ago that she sprayed Donut with fly spray when she was out in the field.  Why, I have no idea.  My child's mind is mostly a mystery to me.

I was horrified, and asked if she'd gotten kicked.  Gemma looked at me like I was an idiot, and told me of course she hadn't been kicked.  Why would Donut kick her?  Right, so apparently all the work with the hose also resolved the spray issue, and Donut is fine with being sprayed by an assortment of products now.

And the most blissful thing is to be able to cross-tie her.  I've done work with tying her in her stall and she seemed to handle that well, but the wash area is a wide open, outdoor space.  So I wasn't sure how long it would take for Donut to handle that.  In fact, once I started working on it, it didn't take long at all.  She has a very good understanding of pressure and so if she moves a little and feels the pressure from the ties, she stops.  I started out by attaching one tie and then holding the lead rope on the other side.  Then I swapped the sides.  After a couple of weeks of doing that, I attached both ties and haven't had any problems.

My future goals are to lengthen the amount of time she can stand tied and transfer her skill set to the indoor wash area.  But for now, I am super happy that I can get her clean on my own.