My Favorite Christmas Present

Well, okay, to be honest, my favorite Christmas present this year was just to be able to spend it with my husband and children. We almost lost my husband this year and, thus, almost could never have watched "A Christmas Story" together again, or sit together and gaze at the tree lights on Christmas Eve, when the tree is always it's most beautiful. So, truly "The Man Who Lived" was my favorite gift this season.



However, that said, I did get something that's almost as useful as my husband, if not as much fun to be around. A Wet/Dry ShopVac. Not high on the list of most women's dreams, but it rated in the top 5 of my Christmas wishes and was certainly the most realistic of them. Diamonds or a Lexus were not even in the top 50, although one day... a new used F-250 would be cool...



Several weeks before Christmas, as we were gathering gift lists, I was asked what I wanted. "A ShopVac" was not what my husband expected me to say. Not that he expected me to say anything in particular, but "A ShopVac" was not an answer that wasn't even in the top 50 of his wildest expectations.



"uhh.. okay... umm...Why?"



"I want to vacuum the horses."



Then he understood. He giggled, but he understood. We live in a desert. I have extremely hairy miniature horses. It's very VERY dry. We have a ton of dirt and enough static electricity to power the metro Phoenix area. The combination of lots of hair, lots of dirt and lots of static cling, makes for horses that can't be touched without raising a cloud of dust thick enough to obscure the landscape in several directions. Brushing only moves the dirt around because the static just sucks the dust back into the hair. I've long since given up brushing as an exercise in futility.



In the summer I can bathe them. However, since they're so hairy, it takes about 4 hours for them to dry. If you turn them loose before they are dry they roll in the dirt, making a mud pack in the hair that I just spent 20 minutes scrubbing. The mud dries and the cycle of hair, dirt and static begins again.



One of our neighbors uses a leaf blower on one of his mules. I sold the only one of my horses that would put up with a leaf blower cycloning him clean. I needed a ShopVac. Bless Santa, he brought me one! I happydanced. I raced out to the barn to pick the first victim. Braveheart was so good about getting a shave, that we decided to try him first. He was a real trooper. The hose is pretty long and the Shop Vac is pretty quiet. While giving us an "I'm REALLY trying to trust you here" look, he stood his ground and soon realized that the weird suctioning snake actually felt pretty good in some spots. I patted his rump and there was NO dust cloud. I patted him all over and got NO dust!! WOOHOO!! On to the next victim!

We vacuumed 4 horses, if you consider little "Weena" a horse. I consider her more a woolley pot bellied pig with hooves myself. Her hair is the densest of the bunch. It's long, it's thick and that's just the top coat! She's got an undercoat that can rival any sheep. I thought we'd need to have at her with a rug beater before vacuuming to have any success, but lo and behold that Shop Vac sucked every bit of dust out of the Weena Wool. Now, if we could only use it for a bit of Weena Liposuction, she might start looking like a horse by spring.