a bit cleaner

dear readers, here you can see the magnificent bonzo at rest, with his dear friend libby standing guard. it may not seem that someone as small as libby would be required to protect someone as large as bonzo, but let me tell you, this libby is a fierce little creature. young dave and i have learned from bitter experience to stay well clear of her heels. so bonzo can doze in the sunshine safe in the knowledge that no mountain tigers will be leaping on him from above.

i would have used a picture of the actual subject matter of this post, but this is a family blog and while this post is about something connected with family, using a photograph might result in it being filtered out by those helpful little creatures inside your computer that protect you from scary things. (herself had cause to wish she had some of the helpful creatures in her computer this week. bonzo and libby's field is drowning in mud so herself decided she needed to put down more hardcore. all i will say, dear readers, is do not google 'hardcore' without adding 'ballast' or 'rubble'.)

the reason for my caution is that this post is about the magnificent bonzo's magnificent wedding tackle. (i have added a link to the definition of this phrase as last time i used it there was consternation among my readers in canada. and possibly elsewhere.) it seems that horses, unlike lurchers, are unable to keep their own wedding tackle clean. this is because of the way they are designed. so their owner has to clean it for them. mr snake charmer is the sponsor for the wedding tackle, but herself does not trust him to approach the task of todger husbandry with sufficient gravitas. (i would advise my readers against googling 'todger' without turning off the image search facility. for those readers of a curious nature, the correct term for this operation is 'sheath cleaning'. again i would recommend switching off image search.) herself has bought some special stuff to do this with. on the label it says 'sheath cleaner' and then underneath, to my great relief, 'for horses'.

herself has never owned her own horse before so has never had the responsibility for this task. many years ago she had a horse on loan, but this was a lady horse and therefore did not have any appendages. herself was rather alarmed at the prospect of tackling the wedding tackle, and has been trying to rope in her maamship to provide moral support, using blandishments such as what a good story it would make if her maamship was asked to give an after-dinner speech at a judicial function.

herself delivered her sales patter by e-mail. she thoughtfully attached a description of what was involved which she had found on the internet. unfortunately the e-mail arrived at her maamship's at lunchtime. her maamship was not overly pleased to receive this helpful discourse and e-mailed herself back to say it had put her off her soup.

herself made a couple of attempts to persuade the magnificent bonzo of the importance of a clean todger but he was having none of it. uncle gary was approached and gave herself instruction on how to proceed. mrs lupin asked her brother, who has a horse, and was told that baby oil was the way to go. herself continued to prevaricate and was chatting to mrs toby, her new friend who has a horse near bonzo and libby's field, about the problem.

"oh, i'm an expert sheath cleaner!" said mrs toby, "toby has a bit of a problem down there so i have to do it quite often. i'll give you a hand." i should explain that toby is mrs toby's horse. mrs toby went on to explain that once a horse understood what was going on he generally got to quite like the experience. it seems toby likes it rather more than is entirely decent, and goes into something of a trance.

mental note to self: make sure my boy does not come out with comments about horse porn when the nice ladies from social services are next round...