Beyond Thrilled!
Not because the new fly spray worked. There was no new fly spray. I was in out nearest “big city” and didn’t stop at the feed store. I thought about it but decided I was going to wait until I went through our town and stop at the co-op. They would have the fly spray I wanted and it would keep the business local, so on and so forth. I stopped in and looked around while the group talking finished their conversation and maybe even bought something. I found the fly spray. There was a bottle of horse spray for twenty some dollars, how do people afford to by anything labeled horse? I go through that in a day trying to get them covered. There was a bottle of hard core cattle spray concentrate, same size as the horse bottle and same price but a concentrate that would probably last me for years. I read the label carefully, I am unable to comprehend labels and directions as much as I love to read these things are like a foreign language to me. If I have to buy things unusual for us at the store I regularly bring home the wrong thing completely and have to send my husband back to properly read the labels. (Of course, reading up on it there are many people not fond of Permethrin, maybe I’ll do more reading and see what I can find)
Anyway, I stood for a very long time reading and rereading the label. At first I thought I had found the stuff I wanted, upon a reread I saw that it said Non-lactating dairy cattle. It is a very important difference between lactating and non-lactating. Anything that can be used on lactating dairy cattle is safe for horses, and people. When the old guys were finally finished talking I asked if they anything else, they didn’t, I left. I might have been a little grouchy, I am now in the process of ordering it off Amazon.
But I digress.
I did get a spray nozzle. That part of the day made me happy. I watered flowers with it then took it back to the corral closest to our house and wired it to the fence. I then lead the horses into that pen and carefully locked them in. Then I turned the hose on! They were not happy.
I had the nozzle set on a fine mist, it wasn’t squirting them. I left them to sulk in the corral for awhile then came back to offer encouragement. I asked Rusty to come to me as I stood near the edge of the mist. When he did I clicked and rewarded. We moved backwards, into the spray, with Onna following, until they were both stand right in the middle of the spray with water dripping off their bodies. Coyote couldn’t stay away if the other two were getting food and he joined in the fun too.
I left to care for children and they wondered away from the water but when I came back they happily waded right back in. I left again and they left again so I decided it must not feel that great. Opening the gate i let them out into their usual quarters. They snorted, trotted around and all rolled thoroughly. If the water doesn’t help repel flies maybe the mud will.
I would call it a rousing success. Not exactly in a fly repelling sense but definitely from a training point of view. I taught Rusty to target the nozzle with water spraying out of it. That is an awesome accomplishment for a horse who has always been scared of water!
That would feel good on a hot day