The promised story of the sheath cleaning and the girl scouts. It's a 100% sure thing that as soon as you start cleaning your horses privates someone who 1) knows nothing about horses and 2) will be shocked and stunned will suddenly show up in your barn.
It doesn't matter if you pick the least active time of day around the farm, hide in a back corner of the barn and close every door and window.... as soon as you are covered in slimy stuff and up to your elbow in a horses wiener hut SOMEONE you don't want to show up.... will.
In my case the most embarrassing time this happened was the first time i was working for Jeffery and Paul and taking care of Hunter and Trooper. It was Trooper's turn at a good scrubbing so i waited until the day the farm was closed, shut the barn up tight, got all my supplies together and got Trooper into the cross ties.
Now for those who don't know, Trooper was a 3/4 Clydesdale, 1/4 paint who was the first horse I ever met that came close to being perfect. He was big, hairy and kinda slow witted. He was kind of like a St. Barnard trapped in a horse's body. He also looked absolutely fabulous in a Santa hat.
At any rate, I had already coated the horse's bits and pieces in water based "personal lubricant" (I prefer this to soaps because if the horse gets annoyed and doesn't want you to rinse he won't get itchy if he is left with a residue, but it works well to soften the gunk) and he was drifting off to sleep in the cross ties while i stuffed my arm literally up to my elbow into his body cavity.... when the door swung wide open and the faces of two girl scout leaders and about 9 girl scouts carrying boxes of cookies appeared, started to ask if I wanted to buy cookies then suddenly fell into shocked stunned silence.
There was a 3 second moment of silence that felt about 4 hours long, then one of the leaders said, "I'm sure there is a logical explanation for this. If not, now would be a great time to make one up."
Once i stopped laughing I assured them all there WAS a logical explanation. This then lead to a 15 minute lesson in the glamourous life of the professional horse groom. The other leader finally said, "Do you think this will qualify for the girls to get their horsemanship badge?" The other leader said, "After this the girls deserve a badge and the horse deserves a cigarette."
I bought two boxes of Thin Mints and two boxes of Caramel Delights. lol.
