So made the coolest dis­cov­ery last night…should have put two and two together ear­lier though…I’ve been using Sulphur8 prod­ucts — a human prod­uct — on Sor­cha after read­ing about oth­ers using it, and it’s work­ing great…well, at the Black Lady Beauty Sup­ply store last night, I am aisle cruis­ing look­ing for bobby pins and such and lo and behold, what do my won­der­ous eyes should appear but the Sulphur8 prod­uct line at half the price and no ship­ping right there in front of me…then it dawns on me…

The rea­son I used it in the first place was because it is made for those that wear braids or dread­locks all the time…well duh!  I turn around and real­ize there are sooo many prod­ucts there for braids, dry hair, itchy, to add silk­i­ness, etc…that are prob­a­bly BLOODY BRILLIANT for our horses.

I keep Sorcha’s mane always braided and now that she is in a much much drier stall and though I love the Equus Sur­vivor, I need some­thing that I can put on that will pen­e­trate the braids when I don’t take them out daily.  And with her being cool and dry all the time now, her hair has become stiffer, so this is a gold­mine of discovery/realization — and ESPECIALLY b/c the prod­ucts are so much cheaper than what we get raped for with horse sup­ply stores.  

I let you know what I try, though I can say for now I’m still using my MTG-SafeGuard-Furazone mix­ture for the backs of her knees (and it looks fan­tas­tic — pink soft skin, just a lit­tle flakeys, and her hair is soft soft soft).  When I give her a bath, I would use the Sulphur8 only on her feather, HiHo Sil­ver from Rio Vista on her body/mane/tail.  After bath and when she is semi-dry (and also just a refresher dur­ing the week), I spray her body with Eqyss Pre­mier Rehy­drant Spray which smells great btw.  I spray her lightly all over, then curry comb it out/in.  Every other day or so, she gets the MTG mix­ture on the back of her front knees and then straight MTG down the rest of her feather…though I’m switch­ing to a 1:1 mix­ture of the Shapley’s light oil and MTG and I use a spray bot­tle now to put it on.  Using a comb, I lift the feather hair to get under­neath and at her coro­net area as well, mak­ing sure to get down to the root where the new hair is grow­ing out.  We are still grow­ing out what was last shaved just before sum­mer, and it grew super fast to start and is slow­ing down now…though I expect with the win­ter com­ing on, she’ll prob­a­bly fill out rather well hair-wise in preper­a­tion. I lastly fol­lowed up and occa­sion­ally when she is try or if she is itchy — which has GREATLY slowed down now with reg­u­lar use and now I’m just on main­te­nance with these things — spray down the crest of her mane and at the base of her tail the Sulphur8 anti-itch braid/dread releif.  GREAT STUFF!

Really, when you put 2 and 2 together, you real­ize that the best place for prod­ucts for our ‘hair dilem­mas’ with these horses are *already* out there, tried and true, for those who have worn dreads and braids for *years*.  Again, always take care, test and use logic as horses do strange things like eat thier own hair and put things in their mouths (though I know a few humans that do the same too), so always con­sider the ingestibil­ity fac­tor when doing exper­i­ment­ing with these things as well. 

So, for now with my new dis­cov­ery, I’m going to try a nat­ural Olive Oil based line to soften up her braids (and actu­ally myself as I’m still recov­er­ing from super long exten­sions).  I have a cream for her that I am going to put in before I braid her up, braid her up, then I have the light spray that I’m using for meself, that I will also touch up her braids there­after with.  The hard part is, with the wealth of hair she has, I go through so much prod­uct to actu­ally sat­u­rate it ALL. lol.  The other ones I con­sid­ered and will try at some point if these don’t work the way I want them to, are the Shea But­ter and Car­rot Oil based lines, and there is always the good ol’ Tea Tree Oil stuff.  I’ve used that on myself and really didn’t feall any dif­fer­ence though and it is more a nat­ural anti-fungal and scalp cleanser and that direc­tion of prod­uct ver­sus a hair growth pro­moter and soft­ener.  There is a world of things to try out there and each of our horses some­times have such unique cir­cum­stances or symp­toms.  Of course, you could just use motor oil like the Gypsy Rom do, but my thoughts are since we aren’t in the same pas­ture and envi­ron­ment and weather they are that do that on a reg­u­lar basis, I’m going to find other routes (i.e. Mudd, bugs, grass, sea­sons, weather, sand, silt, etc…all these things are very dif­fer­ent here than the grounds and area there and change circumstance).

I’ll keep you posted on progress!    And will post links to some of the stuff I’ve been using.