What have I gotten myself into?!

I did a fair amount of reading about hair care before I ever took a brush to Chroi.

However.

I still had another thing coming when the proverbial rubber hit the road (comb hit the mane?).

First of all, I’m terribly afraid of doing more harm than good! I was certain that if I braided her mane I’d come back the next day to find a chunk of her mane missing because she’d rubbed a braid off completely.

Secondly, some people swear by braiding, while others adopt a “live and let live” approach and don’t do a darn thing to their Gypsy’s hair. Chroi’s previous mom, Heidi, fell into the latter category, telling me I didn’t need to braid her hair and I certainly didn’t need to spend money on special hair care products.
Bless her heart. I’m really glad I don’t need to do those things, but to be fully honest I really want to do those things! I do loves me some pretty, fancy hair to play with.

Here’s her mane unbraided:

Our first braids, freshly done:

The same braids several days later:

They’ve held up quite well. I don’t intend to leave them out in the open like this- I’ve seen several different ways of bagging mane braids and I’d like to try that. I’m happy enough to play with her gorgeous hair, but it would be even better if I could get some more length and thickness!
So I braided her mane. Whew, that wasn’t so bad was it? On to her tail!

Oh boy, this might turn out to be a little more than I bargained for!

I haven’t been up yet to the task of washing and conditioning her tail, so I decided to braid it in three braids and use a 3-tube tail wrap simply to help keep it cleaner and neater. Sounds simple enough, right?

My first attempt was…well…a good solid effort! The tail bag is tied too high and is on her tail bone rather than below it, and I’d goofed up putting it on such that I had to twist a few things around to wrap the braids and braid the wraps. Also, I bought the wrong size and it’s a bit too long for her. Oops. All lessons learned.

I went out the next day and corrected the job, properly wrapping the bag and braids, and tying it below the end of her tail bone:
(above: my finger shows where her tail bone ends just above the tail bag.)

It’s still not the best, but I’m not expecting to be the best quite yet.

Here she is, several days after: 

Yeah, the bag slipped down. I didn’t secure it well. And yeah, it’s definitely too long. Well, now I know how to do it better the next time.

From what I’ve seen and read, it seems a crucial element to keeping hair healthy and growing while braided and bagged is keeping it regularly and generously moisturized. I plan to give her a proper bath in the near future and do everything “right,” (washing, rising, conditioning, bagging, moisturizing).

With all that, who actually needs to go to a gym??

Categories: Chroicoragh, Life with a Unicorn, The Horsey Life, Unicorn