Gray horses do not want to be gray. They make this clear to us every time we turn around, seemingly — gray horses want to be brown, green, or black. They let us know their preference by rolling in whatever camouflage they can find, whether it’s fresh spring grass, an alluring pool of mud, or sadly, manure.

Since spring grass, brown mud, and manure are not accepted colors by any breed organization that I can think of, it falls upon we horse owners to get our horses cleaned up and back to their original colors before anyone else sees them […]

One thing most horse-people have in common, whether we rein or race, trail-ride or team pen — our horse’s tails must be long, flowing, and beautiful. We go to a lot of trouble to keep up our horse’s tails. Some people keep them braided and safe inside tail bags. Some people never brush a tail without spraying on detangler. Some people knot a tail up on a rainy day so that it doesn’t get muddy.

Which is what makes tail-chewing such an agonizing problem for the horseman. All of sudden, your horse’s flowing tail […]