I used to show my grey mares a lot in addition to doing NATRC. I showed one of them at halter a few times too. What we do if we want to have a nice tail, is to wash is with quick silver about every week or two, and condition it. We used beauty supply bleach and other detergents, but they make the tail brittle. You can do a quick fix to make it presentable, but if you want to keep the tail very nice for frequent showing, you have to "Bag It". We buy fabric bags over here at Broken Horn, but you can get them in a catalogue. You braid the clean and dry tail, and put it in the fabric bag, and it velcro's in place. The nice thing is that the bag is long and has swishy things on the end so they can swat flys. The big show barns braid up the tails, and wrap them in Gar-tex, and sometimes they don't put a fly swish on, but I think that isn't very nice. Of course some of them also have fly systems. When I went on rides, I would still keep the tail bagged until check in and ride day. I'd let their tail down,
and ride, and get it real dirty. Then I would rinse it after the ride, and when we got home the horse got a good bath, and the tail went up again. This all sounds kinda stupid, until you go into the show ring a few times with a grey horse with a yellow urine stained tail, and everyone else has a clean white one. Then it looks as if you have slopppy grooming. Especially on video, what a sight! Actually though, I think that braiding up the tail maybe is helpful when there are so many ticks out. I even have the broodmare's tail bagged so the colt doesn't eat 7 years worth of growth in a few days. I'm not sure it's good for colts to eat so much hair anyway. If you bag the tail, you find it gets real long and you have to cut it periodically (except for halter people who let it drag). It is more work with mares, because they pee backwards, and geldings pee forwards so their tail looks nicer all the time anyway.
Beth (who has had 4 greys, and finds chestnuts and bays a lot easier)
