Tails From Provence

Aero’s zebra rug is doing a good job.  In general, he is noticeably less bothered by the flies than Flurry and MoMo.  The weather has been getting steadily warmer and the flies have been getting steadily worse.  There are loads of the small annoying ones that go into their ears, so he’s shaking his head a lot and he just looooves it when I stick my fingers in his ears and give him a good scratch.  I always use the fly bonnet when I ride him now, and I’ve been toying with the idea of using the zebra striped fly mask that came with the Bucas Zebra rug.

The thing is, I’m not sure he’ll be able to see clearly through it.

A few of us tried it on to see.

It IS possible to see through it, but looking through the different coloured stripes is different.

My gut feeling is that it would be fine on a horse in a clean, fenced pasture full of grass, but my horses live in a paddock full of scrub oak, juniper and pine trees.  Don’t get me wrong – I love their paddock.  It’s ideal for barefoot horses.  But I’d be worried about Aero poking an eye out on a branch he hadn’t seen if he’s wearing the zebra mask.  At the very least, I reckon he’d pull it off on a branch as he walks around.

So, for the moment, I’ll just use it to give him a bit of relief from the flies when I’m doing routine maintenance on his feet.

If I remember rightly, the little ‘ear’ flies died down later on in the summer.  If not, I will try the plain mask that came with his old fly rug.

Have any of my readers used the zebra fly mask?